Back in the Ring

I've had the album Shore by the Fleet Foxes on around the house this week.

Summer all over

Blame it on timing

Weakening August water

 

Like many I'm sure, I'm looking forward to fall, a break in the weather. I sense a true re-emergence approaching with the cooler air. A resounding confidence that the worst is now behind me. Give me an accurate CGM and a half-unit equipped insulin pen, and controlling blood sugar has never been an issue for me. I'm extremely disciplined with food and have never found that to be an issue since my diagnosis. Taking small doses of Humalog at a time has completely eliminated lows and I had the best endo appointment I've ever had this past week. Far more interesting and challenging to me has been the attempt to completely repair my immune system. About a year ago, I really thought after years of a revolving 86+ research articles on my phone at a time that I had found the answer. And I gave what I thought was the answer a real try, unfaltering daily consistency. It wasn't until my most recent blood work (not dire by any means, but unchanged) that I finally accepted that it just wasn't going to take me to the finish line. Not on its own, anyways, which has been my main take-away. The failure of this had a crescendo effect. Every path I'd been trying to go down, break into a full sprint until I was breathless and escape down, was blocked. Completely, unbearably blocked. Sitting on my back porch one morning recently, sipping my coffee and listening to Chris Pureka's Back in the Ring, I conjured up the motivation to bring my laptop out and go back to the drawing board. And a lot of what is coming up are exactly the things that appeared to me in the years prior to my diagnosis, in a total crisis mode I was in for a while. I feel certain now who and what appeared to me at that time were true lifelines, healers, and I didn't give them the focused, long-term attention that I should have. Back then, I was taking at least 10 supplements at a time, mass-produced capsule supplements that were probably mostly rice powder, in a kind of fleeting attempt to feel better without knowing the root cause. Now I have a more sustainable, both personally and environmentally, minimal approach to what I try over an extended, uninterrupted period.

I am writing a post about these immune proteins called Interferon at the moment and their role in the autoimmunity aspect of Type 1 diabetes, as well as another one about mitochondria. This one is specifically about how poor air quality destroys mitochondria and how that ties into the current diabetes epidemic. Planetary health, ecosystem health, is human health. You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level. -Eckhart Tolle