Mock me not. I cannot tell you the absolute joy eating something, anything between two slices of bread has brought me. No, I’m not crazy, I’m a person with type 1 diabetes who has been happily eating low carb for at least a decade. That means I don’t eat bread. Well, hardly ever. Perhaps only if I’m out to dinner and the waiter brings killer bread to the table.

Even when I found this Keto bread recipe (uses almond flour rather than white or wheat flour for minimal carbs) I didn’t fashion it into a sandwich. A sandwich was such a dreamlike remote memory to me. Instead I would toast half a keto roll and have the single slice with my lunchtime soup. It sat on the rim of the bowl sad and alone.

No, I would not make myself a sandwich, not even when I made it for the husband. Somehow I just couldn’t make the leap that I can eat this bread in sandwich form, until one day last week I did. And now the simple, humble two-slice, not Danish open-face, sandwich is back on my menu. Now that’s worth celebrating, maybe with a glass of wine 😉

Should you be curious today’s filling is melted Swiss Raclette cheese, artichoke, avocado and pesto with a side of half sour pickle.

 

If you’re a mental health professional interested in better understanding the emotional impact of diabetes, and being better skilled at working with people who have diabetes, you can take a two part course to do so and earn credit.

The American Diabetes Association (ADA) and American Psychological Association (APA) have partnered to offer up to 12.0 CEUs for licensed mental health professionals interested in providing mental health care to people with diabetes.

The program takes place in two parts – a 7-hour in person program followed by a 5-hour online course. The upcoming sessions for this year take place in San Francisco at the ADA 79^th Annual Scientific Sessions and in Chicago at the APA Annual Convention.

The cost of the program is $300. It includes the live program (7 CE), the online program (5 CE), listing in the directory and 1 year membership to the American Diabetes Association. Credit from the American Psychological Association and the National Association of Social Workers is provided through the American Diabetes Association.

ADA hopes to expand the amount of providers who can help people with diabetes manage the emotional weight of living with diabetes by understanding how diabetes affects mental health, not just the everyday tasks of managing blood sugar.

For any questions, please contact ADA staff at mentalhealthprogram@diabetes.org

We like to think, especially in America, that it’s all about the individual. Everyone can “pull themselves up by their boot straps,” and if you’re failing, you’re not pulling hard enough. It’s not true.

This was a fascinating article about how some of us living with diabetes are impacted, uplifted and held down by “the system,” with a lens on how the U.S. policy on immigration has helped manufacture and worsen disease.

Excerpts from article in italics:

“Within a few years, the disease would rage out of control, causing her kidneys to fail, her leg to be amputated, and, within a decade, her death. Lacking any known genetic predisposition to diabetes, María and her mother saw the disease as a product of their estrangement.”

We constantly dismiss societal impacts on illness – How is our food grown and brought to market? What’s affordable and what isn’t? How and where do people grow up and settle?

“Blaming personal behavior is just a convenient evasion. The mismatch between “bad” foods that move freely—and people who cannot—is the real culprit behind a global health crisis.”

What resources or supports are in your community? What challenges do you live with? What financial resources do you have?

“Weathering”—the way the body responds to cumulative disadvantage and discrimination—takes a toll, affecting endocrinological, metabolic, and immune systems, and accelerating the onset and progression of disease.”

Chronic illness is a combination of self-efficacy, what you can do and social-efficacy, what society has put in place.

“Globalization has brought industrialized food to all, while undermining people’s livelihoods. These disruptions to local food and economic systems are, we believe, some of the biggest drivers of noncommunicable chronic diseases.”

For not only does society contribute to illness, sometimes it’s the leading cause.