Sugar, Sweat and The Vanishing T-Zone

Our experiments in snake-oil continue apace. The Boy slipped a bit in his adherence to the program, so we've kind of been hanging fire for a couple of weeks. Even so, he's using half the per-meal insulin he was a couple of months ago, and starting to lower his daily insulin.

The interesting thing to me is how exact the predictions have been. Just as predicted, his blood sugar dropped low, and he had to lower his insulin. Then it came back up, so he had to raise it again. Just as predicted, he started spilling sugar in his urine; when it stopped we were to lower his insulin till it started again. And the cycle of stopping and starting was supposed to speed up, which it has done.

He's still not quite in the zone where things are really kicking in, which is a sort of frightening thought. Although diabetics are controlling for high blood sugar, the short-term danger is from low blood sugar, which can happen if his pancreas suddenly starts creating insulin while he's injecting insulin. (We've had a few rather low readings since starting this, but mostly The Boy has been very aware, very cautious and very diligent.)

Meanwhile, I've had a few interesting phenomena arise. My weight's held steady after dropping those 20 pounds (and the doctor looks concerned about me dropping more) though even though my weight hasn't changed in a month, people seem to be noticing more. So, I think something is happening. (I haven't gotten to my mom's gym for a fat test yet.)

On anther front, my "T-Zone" vanished, sort of. This is kind of amusing, because I can't seem to find anyone who remembers the "T-Zone" commercials. If you have oily skin (which I always have) but you have dry skin over your eyes, and down your nose, you have a "T-Zone". I forget what they were advertising, exactly, but it was probably some sort of moisturizer. (No, I didn't do anything about it. Why would a guy care if he had a "T-Zone"?)

Well, mine started getting extreme (as had happened occasionally before) with all kinds of dry, flaky skin, and then, over the course of a week, it started shrinking, until it was sort of an "i-Zone". Now it's just sort of the dot (the tittle, technically speaking) over the lower-case i.

The doc says, "Oh, that's just vitamin A deficiency."

Also, I'm sweating. I've never been a sweater. Em. I've never been one who sweats. I mean, sure, when working out in 100 degree heat in our tiny dojo back before it got A/C, I did some sweating. But not as much as other people by a long shot.

The theory being batted around at the time had to do with playing a lot of sports as a kid and developing your sweat glands at a young age. It's not a crazy thought, really: The body does a lot of things in reaction to activity. (You're not born with hip sockets, for example. They're created by the action of crawling.)

The theory might even be true. But my doctor offered another theory, since she has lots of guys who are suddenly sweating a lot: The body doesn't sweat because it's dehydrated.

Well, duh.

That's one of those things that's so obvious when you think about it, you feel stupid for never having thought of it yourself.

Weirdly, I've written a fair amount of (unpublished) fiction. At one point, when I took stock of what I had written, I became aware of how much I wrote focused on water. People being thirsty or dehydrated. (I even thought at one point of collecting all my water-themed stories together to make a movie.)

Wild, huh?

Even more interesting, according to this program, once you're up to snuff, your body actually makes most of what you need. You only take a couple of calciums (which are not in our foods, unfortunately).