more about me…

The diabetes I developed was a bit of a mystery , although looking back stresses had taken their toll over the years. (divorce etc)
it was definitely an immune response that caused it, I had spent a couple of years unable to eat anything except brown rice, broccoli and onions. anything else made me quite poorly,  I developed severe headaches and for some reason would be totally exhausted after taking anything that didn’t agree with me, even herbal teas!

Acupuncture helped me get out of that period of toxication and I lived and ate normally for a few years after that, until the Diabetes reared its head 6 years later.

Long periods of stress (work related this time) and I was feeling those signs of exhaustion again. at first I thought I was just tired from my work load, so I delegated some of my work and was still exhausted. I couldn’t understand why I was totally lacking in energy, and boy could I eat some food!

In the winter prior to diagnosis I wasn’t sleeping at night, I had very noisy neighbours who thought it was their right to have all night parties in the apartment next door! I felt stressed with this situation and the partying only got more frequent and louder with my complaints.

I started to feel my heart ‘jumping out of my chest’, I thought this was stress related. It wasn’t. It was my heart struggling with high blood sugars!

I was soooooo hungry! I could eat several extra meals each day, eating colossal amounts of food and not put on a single pound in weight!

Apparently the hunger is typical, and many un-diagnosed Diabetics lose a lot of weight before the disease is detected, I was compensating by eating more.

Using the bathroom a lot more is common too, as you need to pee more, a lot more. This was something else that kept me awake at nights too!

I was receiving treatments of Bowen technique in an effort to overcome the tiredness that I couldn’t shake off, after 4 treatments I was feeling no better. This was unusual for me as I normally respond very well to holistic therapies.

I went for a blood test to see what was going on.

I got called back into the doctor’s office the same day that they had drawn blood for testing. I was told that my blood sugars were high.

Once I got over the shock of the diagnosis of Diabetes I was put on Metformin, I didn’t get along with metformin at all. Apparently the nausea I experienced is normal and loose bowels too, but needing to plan your life around bathroom stops was not fun I can tell you!

My blood sugars refused to come down with Metformin so the specialist put me on Gliclizide. Well lets just say I just felt worse and went downhill from there! Dizziness, headaches…i got most of the side effects from these drugs, and my blood sugars didn’t budge!

Finally my specialist put me on insulin therapy. Taking 4 shots per day (3 for meals and 1 for body function like hormones etc) .

In the next couple of weeks my blood sugars came back into normal ranges and I experienced a surge of new-found energy! Now I was going out for long walks each day before work which I had read would help me to control my blood sugars.

After joining some online Diabetes community forums which were really helpful. I learned how to match my insulin to my food better, also how to manage insulin overall. Which foods would impact my blood sugars most and which ones I could eat freely. The information was invaluable in getting me well and truly on track to great diabetes management.

My HbA1c’s were consistently very good. 9.8% at diagnosis, then 6.8% after 6 weeks on insulin, and down to 5.7% for the following 3 years.

When I met JB, my Naturopathic practitioner, he told me amazing stories of how people were reversing cancer just by eating a diet of fresh green vegetables and other alkalizing foods.

I had heard, years ago, about a macro-biotic diet that cancer patients had success with in conjunction with meditation and positive thinking, so the concept of the alkaline diet wasn’t a new one.

Trying the Alkaline diet was an experiment to see what it would do for me (on any level), I blogged my way on the diabetes forums and very quickly noticed a huge change in my insulin requirements.

The blog was the basis for the book that I wrote afterwards and ‘Alkalise Me’ was born!

At the time of writing this I have been eating mainly alkaline since then and enjoy really great diabetes control as long as I stick to this way of eating.

I recommend the Alkaline diet as a really great way to manage Diabetes control….naturally!

Alkalise Me cover

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sharon D. Jones Alkalise Me  copyright 2011-2012

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Alkalise your life!

 Liquidizing your meals will aid the body to process food into usable energy quickly. This is a very important step in your healing process.

These recipes should help to get you started.

Basic Smoothie recipe

• 250ml filtered water/ almond nut mylk/soya milk (whatever suits)
• A third of a cucumber
• Juice of half a lemon

Add other soft ingredients and blend (except avocado)

Then add tougher ingredients and blend until desired consistency.

Add avocado here if you are including it, it makes the whole thing very thick and gloopy

Add sea salt to taste

add other flavorings

I got on better eating from a bowl with a spoon (a green ‘soup’) as some of these recipes are impossible from a glass!

Green Smoothie

Don’t forget to chew your smoothies! It helps the digestion process.

To make my ‘soups’ more fun I would add sprinkles of linseeds, coconut  or sunflower seeds etc for added crunch.

Other variations:~

• Kale and pear
• Kale, cucumber and ginger
• Kale, apple and ginger
• Spinach, cucumber and watercress
• Broccoli, cucumber and sunflower seed sprouts

Smoothies can be really versatile, and you can use what you have in the fridge.

This list will help you to more easily bring your body’s pH levels back into line.

• In the morning drink a glass of water with the juice of half a lemon. Although lemon is acid by nature it has an amazing alkalizing effect on the body. You can drink this as often as you like.
• Make lentils, sweet potatoes, yams, and other root crops your staples. These foods help to alkalize the body quickly
• Eat green vegetables at least once per day. They are full of important vitamins, minerals, and beneficial phyto compounds as well as being very alkalizing
• Add miso, seaweeds ginger daikon radish to your dishes. As well as being alkalizing they aid digestion and add some spice to your dishes.
• Eat non-glutinous grains. Choosing quinoa, amaranth, wild rice, brown rice and also buckwheat. These will provide important amino acids to your diet.

Fresh Broccoli

• Substitute alkalizing root crops instead of pasta, potatoes and breads and grains products. Choose yams, sweet potatoes, rutabaga, jicama, burdock, lotus root, taro root, onion, kohlrabi, parsnips, and beets.
• Eat several servings of fresh fruit daily, especially as snacks. Fruit salads are a great way to include a variety of nutrient rich alkalizing foods in your diet.
• Drink spring or filtered water, especially high in a mineral content.
• Consume fresh green vegetable juices as they are great alkalisers.
• Consider adding an alkalizing supplement  to your diet for additional support. A super greens powder is suggested here.
• Each night at bedtime take half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda in a glass of water, swish around your mouth before swallowing. This must be at least  3 hours after food so as not to affect the natural digestive process of your stomach.

Exert taken from ‘Alkalise Me’ by Sharon D. Jones.  

Copyright Sharon D. Jones Alkalise Me 2011

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Why would you do it?

I have heard of many different reasons why eating an Alkaline diet is beneficial, and many different reasons why people choose to eat this way.

I chose it as an experiment to see what  would happen.

I happen to have been diagnosed with Diabetes 5 years ago when I was aged 38. No real reason for it to develop, I mean I have never been overweight, I always ate what I believed to be a ‘balanced diet’. Even so,  I was so exhausted at the time of diagnosis and my eyesight was so blurred, frequent visits to the loo, a mammoth appetite and insomnia all summed up to Diabetes.

Being treated properly was key to getting on top of the disease, Diabetes we are told, has no cure, it is progressive. But I just had an internal ‘knowing’ that I would break through those barriers, and that one day I would no longer need medication.

During the last couple of years that I have been experimenting with the Alkaline diet, my friends have also tried out the diet, and friends of friends have tried it. And amazing as it is, the Alkaline diet seems to be working for most of the inflammatory diseases like Arthritis, Fibro Myalgia, Cancer, also High Cholesterol appears to be reduced when on this diet even though the person was eating relatively high plant fats and oils. My own cholesterol levels dropped from 4.5 to 3.8 in just a few weeks!

So all in all I prefer to eat alkaline because it helps control my diabetes, and I don’t have a need for Statins thanks very much!

So I thought a little poll would be in order, answer honestly now 😉

Copyright Sharon D. Jones ©2011

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The highs and the lows

Blood sugar control in diabetes can be notoriously difficult. You check your levels before you go to bed and they read ‘perfect’, then when you wake up after a perfect nights sleep they are 10mmols [180mg/l] for no reason!

You carefully and diligently monitor everything you eat each day but your blood sugars are never the same twice even if you ate the same thing each meal. High one day, low the next. Why?

It’s the hormones dear! Those little tykes are running your body when you aren’t looking, and they get upset very easily, I mean it doesn’t take much to unbalance our system does it? You throw stress into the pot and voila! you have unruly blood sugars again!

Stress busting can really help you to sort out those blood sugars, there are lots of different ways to get on top of stress, try Yoga, Walking, and EFT (emotional frequency technique), and for goodness sake people turn OFF that television!

Switch your diet for one that is at least 90% alkalising and you will see a huge difference in your blood sugar levels within a few days. Typically it takes around 4 days to see reductions in high fasting numbers, but seeing those reductions is such a boost and gives you the incentive to carry on the good work. And you see a difference in your daytime numbers within a couple of days too.

Go on! give it a try! What have you got to lose?

Yoga for perfect health

Copyright Sharon D. Jones ©2011

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