Month: January 2021

Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM)

~ betsyhartley392 ~ 2 Comments

I’ve been using a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) for over a year now to help me keep type 2 diabetes at bay. I knew it was an amazing tool at the start, but a year of steady use and I can happily and without exaggeration say….

It is life changing.

Being able to contrast life trying to reverse type 2 diabetes 8 years ago using meds/insulin/finger-sticks/blood tests with staying healthy eating low carbohydrate and right now having a gadget to give me real-time feedback about my choices with the swipe of my phone…. More than a few times I’ve had deep, grateful moments of realizing I have instant info and can take action to make things different. Right now! HOLY SMOKES! That feedback and implementing those changes in the past would have taken MONTHS of waiting and follow-up blood tests and endless finger sticks to basically GUESS at a next best direction.

It’s a small ‘button’ I wear on the back of my arm for 2 weeks at a time. It collects data 24/7. When the two weeks are up, the app warns me – and I insert/attach a new one to the other arm… SMALL, tiny, flex-tubing inserts in my arm. DOES NOT hurt, I barely feel it or notice it at all. PROMISE.

I can instantly scan the ‘button’ with the app on my phone and get information 24/7 about what’s going on in my body.

Happy to see the entire line in the green bar… That’s my goal! STAY IN THE GREEN!

I can tell how stress, sleep, activity, food are all impacting my glucose. Hell – I can tell when I am starting to get sick or accidentally got some sugar in food.

ShingRx shot threw my body for a loop. Wasn’t just my imagination — we could SEE it….

It’s an awesome, unobtrusive ‘detective’ sitting passively on my arm and collecting data for me! It allows me to make the ‘next best choice’ and take action for my own health. Over short periods of time I can use the information it provides to figure out what works best for ME. {Obligatory reminder… This little gem of a tool is in addition to regular health care. It is NOT a replacement for regular visits and care.}

I am metabolically – pick your favorite word – deranged/damaged/fragile. I did years and years of ‘training’ my body to work and respond in a certain way. That’s the nice way to say my lifestyle and food choices did some hefty damage. Now I get to live a slightly different life than the normal person to stay my healthy best and off meds. I now have this great tool that gives me positive reinforcement and helps me answer questions in real time about me and my body and how it reacts to what I do/put in my body.

You want a concrete, personal example of what’s different for me? I aim to keep my glucose readings to stay from 80-120 mg/dL (The green stripe on the screen shot above). I work to keep it ‘between the lines’. It would be amazing if I could keep it at 80 mg/dL around the clock. But bodies, life and glucose don’t work that way. 🙂 I took insulin and meds for years. Now I don’t. I would love to never, ever have to take any of them again. So, given that Type 2 Diabetes is largely a lifestyle disease – the results rest in large part on me and my day-by-day choices and habits. I use food and activity to control my health and stay out of the diabetic range. So for me, I try to move 6 days a week with sweat and intention. I try to keep my net carbs at/below 50 grams a day. THAT seems to be the sweet spot my body works at and responds to the best. I now know all of this life-changing information because I have a year of working with a CGM. The combination mentioned above is what gives me consistently good readings. 🙂

I do pay out of pocket for this sucker. Insurance companies don’t want to pay for prevention. (Yes… I’m sitting here cussing about that like I do on the regular…) Yet I am lucky that I can find some creative ways to make it work because a year into using this device I KNOW I can take smart, educated, fast choices for my own best long-term health. I would encourage anyone who knows that they have a pre-diabetes/diabetes diagnosis or one they suspect a diagnosis is looming around the bend to think about asking your Doc to prescribe one of these. This could be the tool that helps you avoid that specific and dangerous footpath and puts you back on a health track. If you’re pondering it, wondering about it all – please reach out! I’m happy to talk about any/all of it. I was a skeptic. I wasn’t sure it could help me. I thought it would be a pain in the ass or wouldn’t be accurate or would hurt 24/7…. But a year into using it I have too much hard evidence that this thing is helping me make sustainable, healthy changes that work specifically (and maybe only!) for ME. It’s not a mass-market diet or silver bullet or cure-all; but it’s one hell of a tool to help you find your best long-term health.

Special thanks to Dr. Mark Cucuzzella and Christina van Hilst, DNP with the West Virginia University Center for Diabetes and Metabolic Health for the help and guidance in this whole year-long process. If you are interested in using this technology reach out to their center at 304-596-5038.

Ode to a visor. {My hair can be an asshole at times.}

~ betsyhartley392 ~ Leave a comment
WIND was ferocious at the top. ‘Can I take a picture?’ ‘Yeah but HURRY UP.’ We climbed, we photo’d, we skedaddled back down.

I always chuckle to myself when people ask me about the epic views I get to see hiking/running in and around the amazing Cascade Range of Oregon. I nod and say yes, nature is in fact glorious. She doesn’t have a bad view.. Cause, I mean c’mon…

But I chuckle because… THIS… This is my reality. This is what I saw for 3+ hours today.

THIS is what I look at on the day-to-day when I’m training to do a trail race/event. I live in Bend and have access to amazing outdoor spaces. I treasure every minute I get to be outside. Yet, views from the mountain top aren’t what it’s all about for me. I honestly have just as much love and appreciation for being able to watch the ground move and change under my feet for hours on end. I may not be able to reliably identify a mountain peak, but I can often tell you precisely about rocks, mud, ditches and downed logs on local trails.

I think both the view and the journey are deeply rewarding.

One of my favorite memories from my 100 miler was at the finish line of Mountain Lakes 100. It boasts that runners pass 25 mountain lakes on this jaw-droppingly scenic course. He’s my friend now, but it was Colton’s first 100 mile finish too and at that time I only knew we were both now 100 mile FINISHERS. His parents were there to support and crew. We were all milling around the finish area, limping, whimpering, trying to figure out what in the hell had just happened to us after almost 30 hours of moving. I hear his mom say ‘Colton, were the lakes beautiful?’ and Colton’s reply with much exhaustion and a big fat bold question mark was ‘there were lakes?’

I remember that I laughed and butted in to say ‘I didn’t see any lakes either!’

I wear a visor for a variety of obvious, functional reasons; but it’s also a physical blinder to keep me focused on taking one step at a time. If I’m tackling something tough, I tend to do best if I can focus on the 8-10 feet directly in front of me. NOT the big picture. Not the people around me. Not what’s halfway up the hill and still distressingly *insert whining* FAR AWAY…. I do really well if I focus on where I’m going to put my foot in the very next step. Then the next. Repeat over and over and over again.

And I love a good visor for other reasons too. I mean, beyond the fact that my big head doesn’t fit in most hats AND then add in my hair… Lordy. My hair. She has her own zip code. My hair can be an asshole to be honest. I learned early on in my running adventures that a visor meant I didn’t have to try to control that mess on top of my head, no headache and I got all of the other benefits on top of being a tool to keep me focused on the work needed in the moment.

Once I have my running shoes on, my hydration pack, gloves, whatever else… The visor is usually the last thing I put on before we head out. I put my head in a natural, comfortable position and put the visor on carefully so that my view is very purposely restricted to what’s directly in front of me. I only want to be able to see 8-10 feet right off my toes. For good reason. Today’s challenge was trying to get up and down Gray Butte. One step at a time. I knew I needed to focus.

We’re about 2.5 miles in at this point in the picture and I want to go to the top, near that tower…

For two+ hours of climbing THIS was the my view from under the edge of my trusty visor…. While I worked to reach the top of hill.

+

We hit the trailhead, I get ready at the car. I try to do the same things in the same order – so nothing gets forgotten. I tie my shoes, make sure I have everything in my hydration vest pocket-by-pocket and put my visor on. While I’m going through that comforting routine of getting ready for a harder effort – I’m also mentally giving myself a pep talk, setting the stage for how I want to ‘show up’ for the run. Today it was these three points:

  • Stay in your lane Hartley. Doesn’t matter what ANYONE else is doing out there today. Comparison is NOT your friend. Give it YOUR best.
  • One foot in front of the other is the ONLY way to get there.
  • Don’t get lost.

Then we head out.

One foot in front of the other. Giving it my best.

Looking at the 10 feet of earth off of the tip of my shoe for where to step and land and push. I glance up from under the visor every few strides to make sure I’m roughly on the trail and headed toward the top.

Moving forward. Picking my next best step. Trying to reach the edge of the 10 feet my visor gives me, so I can check out the next 10 feet to cover .

Savoring the view of the ground while continually moving forward and eyeing the horizon. Who says we can’t have it all?