{"id":50040,"date":"2018-12-11T11:45:50","date_gmt":"2018-12-11T16:45:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=50040"},"modified":"2018-12-11T11:45:50","modified_gmt":"2018-12-11T16:45:50","slug":"diabetes-and-heart-disease-im-fine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=50040","title":{"rendered":"Diabetes and Heart Disease: I\u2019m Fine"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was out for a run in the small, Arizona town where I live, and saw a friend of mine I know from my weekly poker game. He was smoking a cigarette. I nodded hello to him as I ran by. He nodded back, took a drag of his cigarette then, when I was right up on him, he said, \u201cJim Fixx.\u201d<\/p>\n

I stopped for a moment to have a thought about the author of The Complete Book of Running<\/a><\/em>. Fixx dropped dead of a heart attack while out for a run one day. Then I continued on.<\/p>\n

Recently, I had a stent\u2014a lattice tube placed in an artery to open it if it\u2019s clogged\u2014placed in my heart. Jim Fixx, indeed.<\/p>\n

After running thousands of miles and many marathons, including the Boston Marathon repeatedly, Fixx died of a heart attack, in 1984, at the age of 52. I, after having run thousands of miles and many marathons, including Boston and the New York Marathon<\/a> repeatedly, got a stent put into my right coronary artery at the age of 53. The reasons that Fixx suffered a heart attack, most likely were because he had been a heavy smoker for years before he began running, and he had a genetic predisposition to heart disease. Me, on the other hand, I have diabetes.<\/p>\n

When it comes to heart disease and heart attacks, diabetes \u2013 both type 1 and 2 (I have had type 1 diabetes for 41 years) \u2013 is probably worse than smoking two packs a day for twenty years. At least, that\u2019s what many doctors and many websites say about the situation.<\/p>\n

When I spoke to my cardiologist, before my stent procedure, he said that he was caring for a type 1 diabetic patient who was younger, and seemingly healthier, than me. He said his patient received a stent once every three, or four, years. After telling me this, my doctor shrugged, as if to signify that this was simply the way it is for people with diabetes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0People with diabetes don\u2019t really die from diabetes. They often die from one, or several, health complications caused by diabetes. The results of these complications, such as kidney failure; blindness; nerve damage, or neuropathy; and even amputation, lead to serious health problems that curtail life.\u00a0 The biggest of these complications, the most prevalent one, is heart disease<\/p>\n

\u201cHeart disease strikes people with diabetes at significantly higher rates than people without diabetes,\u201d according to an article<\/a> in The New York Times<\/em>, which pegged that number at two times the rate for people without diabetes.<\/p>\n

People with diabetes die of heart attacks more often than people without diabetes. Such a statement naturally begs the question: Why?<\/p>\n

In the same New York Times\u00a0<\/em>article, Dr. Robert Gabbay, chief medical officer at Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, provides the answer: \u201cAnd we don\u2019t fully know why,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Comforting. Certainly, a lot of it has to do with hyperglycemia.<\/p>\n

Some articles suggest that people with type 2 diabetes who are overweight are more prone to suffer from heart disease.<\/p>\n

That sounds, you know, fair enough. But, when you really take a look at it, it\u2019s sloppy Internet \u201cscience\u201d that suggests having the cause of the condition dictates the effect of the condition that dictates the result of the condition, and\u2026 what?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s think more clearly about this. According to an article<\/a> published in October 2018, \u201cA new Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine study reveals how, on a cellular level, diabetes can cause heart failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now we\u2019re getting somewhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the Loyola study, researchers focused on a molecule called methylglyoxal,\u201d the article said. \u201cWhen the body transforms food into chemical energy, waste products are generated, including methylglyoxal. Normally, the body does an efficient job clearing out methylglyoxal. But the cleansing process does not work as well in diabetics, allowing methylglyoxal to accumulate. Methylglyoxal attaches to key building blocks of proteins, which can affect how the proteins function.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those proteins negatively impact \u201cmicroscopic lattice-like structures called myofilaments cause heart muscle cells to contract. The cells work in concert to make the heart contract and relax with each beat,\u201d the Loyola study revealed.<\/p>\n

Now we have a cellular impact conjoining diabetes and heart disease. It\u2019s the trigger, if you will.<\/p>\n

So, how do we treat for that? Who knows? It\u2019s only a study\u2014as stalwart and well meaning as it may be\u2014so it\u2019s a mere baby step to an initial understanding of the cause and effect about how diabetes actually, and for real, impacts the function of the heart. But, it\u2019s progress.<\/p>\n

After I got my stent, I read more about Jim Fixx, and about how he died while running. Some said the running actually killed him. (Unlikely.) Others said he had partial, or almost, total blockage of his three major coronary arteries (and each one was truly, severely blocked), and that running extended his life beyond what it might have been otherwise. (Likely.)<\/p>\n

There is a sense of impending, mortal fate when one is diagnosed, or even lives for decades, with diabetes. Each one of us deals with, manages, and even comes to terms with that odd sense of managed mortality, in his, or her, own way.<\/p>\n

It can feel like an eventual death sentence. It can seem like one hears the muffled sound of a bell, far off, tolling.<\/p>\n

At the time Jim Fixx died his lone option for dealing with his heart issues, had he been properly diagnosed, was a triple bypass operation. It\u2019s a brutal, chest-cracking, get right with God, don\u2019t-buy-any-green-bananas, procedure.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I got a stent. I went for a run yesterday. I\u2019m fine.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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