Doctors have been saying “you need to lose weight” for a very long time, decades at least. Aside from a small sliver of patients this advice is typically ignored. People want a pill for this, not to have to give up that bucket of KFC or the supersized McDonald’s French fries.

Recently, patients raise hell with healthcare workers’ bosses if weight loss is advised because it’s “mean” or is “impacting my mental health” regarding body image. So the suggestion is not made as much in general in the last 5 years.

The problem on this one isn’t often the doctors.

Now, if a patient needs surgery and is too obese for it to happen then there’s a path forward to advise weight loss without repercussions. If cholesterol is high there’s also a path forward for advising diet change, again, without repercussions. Diabetes, again, diet recommendations so you don’t fall into a coma and die, and so you can potentially keep both your feet.

All of that said, you hit diabetes phase you do have it forever, but with type 2 you can manage it by diet if you behave well, reduce weight, and maintain healthy eating. This is great, but it doesn’t mean the type 2 diabetes is gone just that it’s well managed, or “diet managed”. Another way to think of it is that it’s in remission by virtue of your good behavior but not cured. Go on a month long food bender and things can change back again.

To reverse, you need to lose weight and adjust your diet, per your doctors instructions, as soon as your doctor tells you you are pre-diabetic.

Nutrition consults typically come with the diagnosis, but people are notorious for not following up with the next specialist. Diabetic educator is a position as well. Your doctor is booked like an airport by his/her bosses and probably can’t cram that into the 15-20min time slot allowed. Referrals are made for a reason.

Two things that commonly happen to thinking on this topic. Oh, I’m prediabetic, whatever, it’s something we watch, nothing to do here, I’m safe because no insulin required. Or, I no longer need Metformin or insulin or whatever, so I must no longer be diabetic. Both are typically wrong.

Another thing that happens is hardcore denial of even having type 2 diabetes because “I don’t take insulin.”

This isn’t all people, this is simply a piece of the mess involved with diet and exercise advice in health care alongside type 2.

In keeping with the probabilities game that is the human body, here’s a fun fact. There are morbidly obese people in the 500-700lb zone who are not diabetic and still guzzling sugar like none other. Someone has to exist on the tails of the bell curve.

As always, bring your health questions to your doctors, don’t take some random dipshit on the internet seriously.

There’s an odd mentality that you just need to dose more insulin, no big deal, when eating poorly with diabetes. Understanding is sometimes the problem.

Here’s a better way to think about it in terms of body damage over time.

Think of sugar as fuel, because it is. When you have diabetes you lack the capacity to regulate the concentration and intensity of that fuel once you ingest it. You can add other things to the mix that can and will help (insulin and various oral agents) but the efficiency and immediacy of the inherent system simply isn’t there when you have diabetes.

Think of excess sugar in the blood as a caustic fuel that slowly (speed varies by individual as well as food consumed) burns out the vasculature (blood vessels) over time.

This burn out due to excess fuel is why nerves in the feet die. Neuropathy is the official name for the numbness and tingling in toes and feet that diabetics generally, eventually, experience. The burnout is also why toe tissue dies and toes need to be amputated, along with a foot or even an entire lower leg with knee, depending. Eye tissue is another location hit particularly hard by this burn out effect from sugars.

So there’s impact over time based on how much caustic sugar fuel you pour into your own bloodstream.

Also, sugar is addictive. Like meth or heroin, people struggle with letting it go.

I’d worry less about the sweet tea and more about how contaminating your laundry is given the amount of plastic microfibers washing away with the waste water. Polyester is plastic. You deliver microfiber bits of plastic into the wastewater with every load of wash. How much of that is really filtered out?

If you end up in the ER or hospital, you will have an up close and personal experience with plastic. Blood: in a plastic bag. Plasma: in a plastic bag. Platelets: in a plastic bag. IV fluids: in a plastic bag. The tubing that delivers any of those things directly into your bloodstream: plastic. The syringes used: plastic. The IVs placed in your veins: plastic, including the catheter that sits inside your vein for the duration (heated to 98 degrees). The wrappers on each individual pill: plastic. The bottles the pills originally come in: plastic. Thermometer covers: plastic. The tubing used during dialysis: plastic. Tube feeding: plastic bottle of food fed through plastic tubing directly to stomach. A chemist or engineer could detail out what type of plastic is used and whether it’s a potential problem far better than I.

I question the “biodegradable” items used with seedlings. Why is the mesh from the Burpee peat pucks still fully intact in my compost pile after 4 years? Pucks baked wetly on a heating mat. Buy seedlings? Probably baking in the sun at a garden center in a cheap plastic pot.

A lot of shelf stable food is stored in plastic, and we don’t know how hot or cold its getting in the trucks or warehouses before it hits store shelves.

As someone inside the healthcare system, I can confidently state that COVID simply brought out a lot of festering problems that already existed. The pandemic didn’t create those problems, it revealed them.

The one “but” here is that COVID did help speed up the timeline on doctor/nurse/caregiver burnout as well and create a bottleneck in getting care due to sheer numbers which is still happening right now. How long are you waiting for your next PCP appointment, or to get established with one? (One example).

And as another “but”. What I just said above was already the trajectory of the system. We simply had a little healthcare “inflation” that sped all of that up.

Everything you’ve said is correct. The basic chaos and statistics of life is too much to process for some people. However, the number of vaccine deniers is now a movement, and growing, and being given lip service by people in charge. That doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

We are both correct in our main assertions.

It’s a mimic of how most charlatans start their pitch for bullshit solutions.

This deserves a link.

RFK and conspiracy thinking right alongside Luigi are ALL symptoms indicating the same problem: a health care system that enriches CEOs at the bankruptcy and death of the masses.

At base it’s like the Hepatitis C cure when it rolled out. A $ amount is put on this cure, only X number of people get it each month, up to a certain $ amount across all claimants, and the rest are SOL. Healthcare itself is like that. We did 18 NICU babies already this month, or we did 32 cardiac cath procedures this month, time to delay, deny, defend.

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could figure a way around needing that healthcare? If you could do 6 simple steps that are entirely under your own power, cheaply or for free, and fix your health on your own? What a dream that would be. This need for health independence is as predictable as a Luigi.

RFK is like a cherry on the shit sundae of our present system. He’s symbolic of the need for something other that we can maybe have more control over. Unfortunately, drinking raw milk has a higher potential of adding more problems.

Note that he’s got all the data collection CEOs paying him now. Power consolidation.

Bill Burr has this take that corporations are the mobsters of yore, they just kneecap or whack people in different ways because the law is on their side now. Until it’s not.

The more we sub, the more they’ll make everything a sub. They’re eating your wallet with this crap.

Apple wants you buying from them. Remember how a simple charging cable was a problem back with the first iterations of the iPhone.

Isn’t that the entire idea behind Windows 11. Well, not the entire, it’s also about DRM.

We don’t do “smart” TVs. We set up our own systems.

Because you can block ads. I don’t want to watch anything with ads, my free time is worth more than that.

This is annoying. Idk how we fix it.

Product placement was the least annoying. I’m pretty sure we all wanted to know why the original Daredevil law office had Progresso bread crumbs in their coffee corner, so it’s not like it went unnoticed.

An act that says 2 things:

1. Don’t look to me, as your leadership, to help you.
2. No one will help you.

Notice the motif though? There are lots of media bits in a patchwork quilt across sources this last month encouraging prayer. Heritage, probably.

Signal or WIRE.

When the article about end to end user encryption messaging platforms mentions neither I have to question why it’s even an article.

Signal or WIRE.

Some jobs give you your work day wage for jury duty as a benefit. Why not go? Get paid by work to take a break from work and watch live court drama.

There’s value in knowing how it works.

If your job doesn’t pay you, the $15/day, or whatever ridiculous amount, won’t pay your bills so yes, get out of it.

Have you ever been on a jury? In my experience it’s 2-4 strong personalities and a bunch of people confused by lawyer speak (because two confident authority figures are telling them to believe e two different things and they can’t reconcile the contradiction) and people who just want to go home and thus go along with the strong personalities.