Type 2 Diabetes

Very interesting thing this Type 2 Diabetes, also called Insulin Resistance. They say that your cells refuse to take glucose in because of the insulin resistance. So what’s the cure? Turns out they choose to add more insulin: very logical solution. It kills 2 birds with one stone: first it kills the pancreas, which stops producing its own insulin (used to work well before the treatment); and it kills any hope to ever go medicine free, which is a good news for the pharmaceutical companies.

I have a history: both, my mother and my mother-in-law, were turned into diabetics 40 years ago when the experiment with Type 2 Diabetes just started. They both believed the doctors and took the medicine offered to treat their conditions. My mother-in-law now completely depends on insulin and gives herself a shot after every meal. My mother refused to use insulin treatment (she could do that even in horrible Soviet Union) so she was treated with other hormonal medications, she is also dependent on the medication she takes. Her chronic condition is good for the business. Both of them are paying, and paying, and paying all these long 40 years.

Both of them were menopausal women in their forties or fifties at the time they were “forced” to start the medication treatment of their high blood sugar. I am a menopausal woman now and my hormones are out of wack too. My sugar numbers are not stable, but my pancreas is making insulin, it’s alive and well. Thank you, my insurance company, for not paying for the deadly medication which would make me drug dependant for the rest of my life just like my mother.

I Googled Diabetes and Wikipedia has all this info about Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. They talk about insulin-production by the pancreas, and about liver part in glucose making out of fructose, and other hormones that take part in the process of converting excess of fructose into fat. Turns out the whole process was well researched and conclusions were drawn. 40 years of study did help to solve the mystery:

Type 2 Diabetes is not caused by malfunction of the pancreas; it is a different metabolic disorder which can not and should not be treated with insulin. They know that today, the doctors will give you a medicine which does not work on your pancreas, it works with your liver. This is their new experiment: what will happen to Type 2 diabetic if we slow down the liver. Interesting. I almost became a subject in this new experiment, like my mother became a subject of their experiments 40 years ago, which will take another 40 years and many thousands of people to find out that it’s a bad idea. They should not slow down my liver; right opposite, they have to stimulate it to work faster and cleanse my body of all impurities faster too.

My own hypothesis is that my liver was already too slow and covered with fat. This is why I get fat so easily. It’s easer for my liver to store the toxins in fat instead of removing them out of my body. There are holistic researchers who tell me that to help my liver I should change my diet. Eat more food that stimulates the work of my liver like radishes, leeks, pepper, cabbages, onions, and garlic. I do have to cut on sugar, which I love in my coffee and tea, but I only cut it in half, I still put 2 teaspoons in my cup. This is important because half of the sugar molecule is fructose ring which will be converted into fat by my poor lazy liver. I have to continue with my exercise routine, I just have to add some aerobics to make my heart to pump the blood faster from time to time.

TO TEST OR NOT TO TEST

I am familiar with all tests we already use and the ones that are coming in the near future. The future does not look very promising. In the past I was always defending state tests. I really believed that in this old failing system of education test preparation had been the only working motivation and a class management tool. To control the behavior and outcomes I used to bring the topic of regents prep and everybody would start working.

Not any more. This motivation does not work at all. I always knew that the change would come from the kids, not from a new administration or politician. I could not imagine how exactly the new will grow out of this old and festered system. Now I see it. The kids do not care any longer if they pass or fail, they do not want to learn for the test, they do not want to learn abstract stuff we had obediently memorized and happily forgot as soon as the test was over. Our children refuse to play this hypocritical game of pretending that they are coming to school to learn something to pass a test.

In reality they learn something in spite of the school hindering.

There are too many adults though who are playing the game, pretending that they are doing something important, and using the taxpayers’ money for their own benefit. Because these adults need to prove all the time how their “job” is so important, they create more and more tests, and exchange one test with another one. The salary keeps on coming. They completely changed the job of a teacher as an educator into a babysitter.

There are still too many really good teachers who will move on into the future together with the kids. Those teachers will help the kids to learn what’s important for them. The English teachers will pick books to read that will be relative to the kids lives. The math teachers will bring problems relevant to real life too. History teachers will relate the past with the future. The Science teachers will help to understand how the surrounding world works. And all of them will use all kinds of art, games, sports, theatre, concerts, exhibitions, performances, technology and quiet time to just sit alone if the kid needs it.

Sorry, today it's not about teaching.

Today in the news (ABC 6 a.m.) they told us about a family that had to hide from doctors and authorities. The family has a son with some kind of cancer; the doctors want to treat the boy with chemotherapy; the family chooses to use alternative medicine. When I hear cases like this I can’t stop thinking about the state of our medicine. This kind of news put me in a constant state of horror, one day they will come after me in an attempt to save me from myself. Only people with special interest or brainwashed idiots may think that the suffering this family is going through can be fixed in court. Prosecutor can’t care about the health of this boy more than the parents. The doctors can’t tell us that we have to pay for their treatment over the treatment of our choice. Pharmaceutical companies can’t be always right. These doctors can’t cure anything with an exception for some surgeries (which make us incomplete anyway); they can only convert us into chronically ill people so they could collect our money for the rest of our lives. It pays if we live longer and seeker. It is not in the interest of any doctor to really cure us. I have to admit that it’s not in their interest if we die either because then only the funeral services will collect. The doctors can’t cure us because they do not know how. Every medicine they try to use to cure one part of the body turns out to be poisonous to some other part. There are so many new disorders and malfunctions of different organs that it, by itself, is an epidemic right now. Man-made epidemics: epidemics created by doctors and pharmaceutical companies while experimenting on us their new medications. Have you heard this commercial that tell that 57% of an experimental group showed that the medication worked? What???? 57% is a half. What kind of a conclusion can you base on 57%? Shame on both the company and the FDA that allowed this medicine; now 43% of people who try this medicine are at risk. Thank goodness the insurance companies are on our side: they just refuse to pay for these experiments. This permanent state of experimentation made me think of modern medicine as a large Lab where all of us are a large experimental group. One question has still been unanswered: why do we have to pay for the experiment? Even if I agree to allow the doctors to experiment on my body I would expect them to pay me for putting my life at risk. The opposite is happening in real life: I am required to pay for becoming the subject of their experimentations. The logical conclusion to this absurd situation is there already in today’s news: we can’t even say no to that treatment any longer, the doctors, authorities, and pharmaceutical companies will send police after me to enforce the medication. I am taking this event so personally because I recently had similar experience. Luckily the authority were not after me to force unwanted medication and the insurance didn’t pay, so I didn’t have to buy the pills that supposed to cure me from so called Type 2 Diabetes.

What's wrong with K-12 approach?

I am a high school teacher. I love my job, I love the high school kids, I love the fact that my students are an everyday challenge, they are full of surprises, thinkers and doers. I love to trick them into learning something new. I love that they teach me a few things now and then. I can't imagine teaching kindergartners or elementary school kids. I don't want to describe why, I just can't. I know many great teachers who can't teach neither elementary nor middle school level. The job requires completely different set of traits in a person. I always get frustrated when hear all of us, teachers, put in the same pot of K-12 which ignores the specifics of both: the kids level of comprehension and the teachers' skills and talents. In our days you often hear complains about schools. Some even say that the education system is in crisis. Maybe. If we want to fix it, let's first agree that the elementary school teacher has to teach the kids just to read, write and count. They have enough responsibilities teaching everyone how to use a bathroom and how to clean their noses. They have to teach the kids the rules and how to be a student. They have to teach the kids about day and night, about seasons and weather. They have to teach the kids how to read time and find the length using a ruler. Are we sure that we want the elementary school teachers to teach "science" to their students? or any other subject that was not their major? I don't. I prefer to teach not reteach. Many good high school teachers will tell you how hard it is for us to reteach the mistakes made by an elementary school teachers. The subconscious always overpowers the new information we try to put their. Elementary school teachers fill in subconscious before we train the brain to think. I have to think about this. Continue later :)