Been doing some research into things relating to my diabetes.

It started with a worry about the lack of results I am getting from my insulin injections.

Now, I might be worried over nothing. It might just be that I have not found my dose yet. I started off at ten units and I am up to 26 now, but who knows what the right dose for me might be?

It is true that the higher the dose I need, the sicker I am, so part of me keeps hoping that the next dose increase will be the last one. I will have found the dose needed to get my blood sugar levels down to normal, and I can stop increasing the dose and just be healthy.

The sooner I find that level, the less sick I am. It makes sense, in a way. But right now, it is looking like I will practically be dumping the entire pen into me (60 units)each time before I see any definitive result.

And this worries me, and I have been wondering what other factors might be causing such high readings.

Some of my readings have been so high that I should feel way sicker than I do. And that made me wonder.

Then I remembered an incident many years ago, the last time I was testing regularly, when I tested my blood sugar and the result came back “Error, level too high to read”.

This freaked me out, even though I did not feel that sick. So I got Joe to drive me to the ER (that’s what it said to do in the manual for the tester) and went through that lovely process. Always fun sitting there waiting in a series of waiting rooms when you have no idea if you are, like, dying or something.

But eventually, I got a bed, and hooked up to fluids, and they determined that I had been dehydrated the whole time, and that caused the super high reading.

Fast forward back to today, and I have been wondering if that might be happening again. I have chronic mild dehydration, and that causes my blood sugar test readings to be artificially high.

So last night, I decided to look that up, and I came up with this.

Theory confirmed. Dehydration causes blood sugar levels to spike. It is not exactly a false reading, just a somewhat misleading one. Dehydration causes low blood volume, and so the percentage of glucose in my blood is higher relative to total volume.

The blood testing meter is doing its job just fine. The readings are accurate. But the problem is more than just a lack of insulin response in my cells.

But the thing is, I drink plenty of water. Too much, perhaps. Drinking a lot of water can flush out the salt in your blood, making you less able to retain water, making you lose fluid rapidly, making you… guess what… thirsty again.

Throw in the diuretic effect of caffeine, and you see why some people drink diet cola all day long, or drink so much damn coffee.

Anyhow, I drink plenty of fluids, and I add a little salt to my food here and there to make sure my sodium levels are sufficient, and so I can’t imagine I have the classic sort of dehydration.

But sodium is just one of the electrolytes. What about the rest?

So I checked out this page and it suggests, to me, that I likely have pretty rotten electrolyte levels.

Especially calcium. I don’t drink milk, nor do I eat a lot of cheese or other dairy products. The only source of calcium in my diet that I can think of offhand is the very tasty almonds we get from Costco, and those are only around some of the time.

So I probably have pretty awful calcium levels. I have no idea about the others like phosphorous and magnesium. I know I get some potassium by eating bananas fairly regularly.

Anyhow, so now I am officially worried about my electrolyte levels. So I Google up “diabetes electrolytes” and I end up at this place.

That confirms that diabetes and electrolyte issues are intimately linked. All this drinking and peeing uses up my electrolytes. And yet, how else do I keep from becoming dehydrated?

I am in a bit of a bind there.

So I figure the solution is to get some damned electrolytes into my diet, pronto.

Checking out this article about foods with electrolytes in them, I am noticing a distinct trend.

That is, of all the electrolytes listed, the one kind of food that seems to have them all is green, leafy vegetables. Hmm, interesting.

So this would suggest that I need to up the intake of green, leafy veggies in my diet. And seeing as I currently eat almost none (apart from the occasional small salad at Denny’s), increasing the amount should not be too difficult.

The bar is set pretty low.

And I am a pretty veggie positive fellow, and green leafy veggies are not too expensive, so in theory, it should not be too hard to get like, a salad a day into my diet.

That still does not provide a lot of calcium, though, unless I was to get into the really nasty green leafies like kale and chard, and I am so not going there.

So I think I will also look into some sort of electrolyte supplement, probably in pill form.

There are plenty of sugar free electrolyte drinks out there, but I do not have much money to spend and I figure a one a day pill would likely be a lot more cost effective than shelling out for drink mix.

I might be wrong, though. And a drink is certainly nicer than a pill.

Either way, I am looking to up my electrolytes as soon as possible.

This explains why I always feel better after eating a veggie-heavy meal, though.

I needs me them electrolytes!