The stigma associated with diabetes (including the stereotypes of gluttony and "it's your fault") is so strong that I have been quite uneasy at the thought of admitting publicly that I also got it.

But I'm not special. 500 million other people also suffer from this killer disease—a number predicted to go up dramatically over the next ten years.

I've decided to share what happened to me in order to help two kinds of people with whom I strongly empathise and identify.

Story 1: Initial Warning and Denial

Imagine being given a warning by your doctor, after a routine blood check: "According to your blood results, you are pre-diabetic. For now, you can still keep things under control with diet and exercise. But please shed some of that fat around your waist, or you'll get diabetes."

"OK", you say to yourself, "it's true I'm a bit overweight. But not grossly. I cycle to work, I exercise twice weekly, I see plenty of people every day who are more sedentary and carry around a much bigger spare tyre than mine. What else can I do? And why should it happen to me?"

You keep cycling to work, but do little else. You're a busy guy and there's no time to exercise more than twice a week anyway.

Story 2: The Diagnosis

Then, a few years later, the doctor tells you: "Sorry, now you're actually diabetic." You don't know a lot about medical stuff (you're a guy, after all) but in your ignorance you are nonetheless aware that diabetes may lead to blindness and leg amputation.

You later also learn that it shortens your life expectancy by 6 to 14 years and is associated with kidney failure, stroke and a bunch of other unpopular side effects. Damn. That's the "oh sh*t" moment.

You go into repentance mode: "If I now exercise, eat well, take medicines etc, can I revert to not having diabetes? Pleeease?" And he replies: "No, it's a degenerative condition. You can slow down the degeneration and delay the side effects, but you can't regrow healthy cells."

"There is no known cure—at least yet. Once you have it, you have it."

Story 3: The Panic, And Why I'm Telling You All This

Reality hits hard. You panic. At least I did. I felt truly powerless and hopeless. I had clearly been told that nothing I might do would make diabetes go away. In other words, I had just been handed a life sentence.

And that's why I'm sharing my experience with you here.

If you're the guy in the first story, I share what happened to me so that you won't become the guy in the second story. Kind of like Scrooge in the Christmas Carol.

Act on that warning. Elevated blood sugar won't go down on its own.

Don't wait like I did.

If you're the guy in the second story, I know exactly how you're feeling, and I offer all my sympathy.

The whole world truly came crashing on me that day.

I share my experience to give you

• hope

• actionable tools

Yes, this disease is incurable, but I was lucky enough that I could eventually neutralise its effects.

Except that, at the time when I most needed it, nobody (not even the well-meaning doctor) told me how to do it.

It took me years of fruitless attempts till my friend Stuart, to whom I shall be forever grateful, serendipitously pointed me in the right direction regarding fat loss by giving me a copy of @GaryTaubes's book, which ultimately enabled me to put my diabetes into remission.

Perhaps I can be a virtual Stuart for you.

If I can achieve that, even for just one person, it will be worth the humiliation and stigma of publicly admitting that I, too, am, and forever will be, a diabetic.

Don't lose hope. We can win.

TL;DR

• Initial warning and denial (act on that warning!)

• Diagnosis (try not to get there: it's incurable)

• The panic (well justified; but there is a way out)

If you found this thread valuable:

1. Follow me for more pieces of my diabetes, keto and fat loss puzzle → @FrankStajano

2. Here’s another related thread you might enjoy:

https://twitter.com/FrankStajano/status/1752907483272933570