Back to the Basics

It’s Been a While…

Hi Everyone! I’m back with a new blog post. Let me go ahead and dust the cob webs off. I took a brief hiatus from my posts since the summer of 2019. I thought it was important to re-engage in the blog to provide an update to my followers on my status.

So, my big update is….there is not much of an update. I am still going strong and have surpassed 6 years of being medication free as a T1D. Overall, I’ve been on cruise control. I continue to have A1c readings at 5.8 or lower which is right around a non-diabetic reading, or, barely in the pre-diabetes stage.

This blog means a lot to me. I hope I have, and continue to, accomplish my goal of helping as many other T1Ds improve their lifestyle and strive towards living with this disease without taking medication.

Hiatus From New Posts

I was systematically making a monthly blog post for about 4 years, but for a variety of reasons, I decided to pause my monthly posts.

Candidly, I started running out of good material. My first few years living medication free was an awakening for me, but the last 3 years I have not done much research on the disease. Living within a mostly raw vegan diet has become second nature to me and my blood sugars have continued to be relatively stable for over half a decade.

Life got busy with kids / family / career and I just couldn’t find the time to continue researching like I used to. Also, I feel my existing blog is almost like a book that any T1D (or T2D) can read to arm themselves with the essential data needed in the fight to remain medication free, contrary to your medical doctor I’m sure. I feel like whether I continue to blog or not, my story is out there on the web as a legacy document that can help T1Ds forever.

Back to the Basics

I do have a slight update on my experiences. While I wish I could say that I haven’t noticed by blood sugars slightly rising, that isn’t the case. Over the past six months I have noticed a steady, albeit slight, uptick in my fasting blood sugars, along with my highest A1c reading that I’ve had in 5 years (5.9).

I have always tracked daily my fasting blood sugars and also the corresponding quarterly A1c levels since I became T1 in January 2014. As you can see, I’m not perfect but have always stayed below a 6.0 A1c since right after diagnosis.

Typically when I start to get anxious with my blood sugars slightly rising, I go back to the basics and get extremely strict with my raw vegan diet to make sure I can still get my blood sugar levels back to that of a non-diabetic. I think part of my rising blood sugars is just getting into a routine of small cheats here and there that adds up to an overall rise in my blood sugars.

I Still Got It!

I started on March 1, 2020 and wanted to go 1 full week of eating full raw vegan to see if I could get my fasting blood sugars back into the 90s and even 80s. I’m happy to say that I was able to quickly get my fasting blood sugars back down to the 80s and 90s within a few days of going strict. In fact, I went five days in a row with my fasting blood sugar being under 100!

I put a couple charts below of my fasting blood sugars over the past week. I still got it! The top graph shows my full day’s blood sugar readings on a day which I juiced for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with no snacks in between. As you can see, my blood sugars were running 70s / 80s for most of the night.

Hang In There T1Ds

In closing, I will likely do some periodic blogging, but I doubt I’ll be consistently making monthly posts any more. I believe the knowledge base that my blog provides is transformational for any T1D that is looking at staying off of medication. This diet isn’t for everyone, but there is no greater feeling than being a T1D off of medication and waking up with an 89 fasting blood sugar.

Hang in there all of you T1Ds, I realize it’s tough out there. But always know no matter what the mainstream doctors tell you, there is hope in managing this disease for an extended period of time without an onslaught of pills or insulin injections.