Day 18 - Diabetic Depression Part 2

With depression and Diabetes there is another dimension that will drastically alter the way insulin and carbohydrates reacts within the body and that dimension is the depression itself. When one goes through depression there are chemicals running through the body and the body itself is usually stagnant and that means that there will be no exercise and the processes that the body normally uses to regulate and process the chemical that is the insulin is affected by the chemicals being produced via depression. I have noticed this myself as with my experience within depression and diabetes I have noted that the effects of insulin and carbohydrate usage are drastically altered when/as I am depressed and the moment I bring myself out of that depression it changes dramatically.

For instance, I was working a dead end job that was absolutely monotonous - I could do it without being aware of myself at all. Now during the nights that I would work my diabetes was fairly easy to manage with food as it was a physical job and I would be working off much, if not all, of what I ate, even if I was going relatively slow in comparison to other days. The days that I did go slow the sugar levels would still be stable - I just would not go low as much as other nights. Now when I was depressed and working this job I would go slow, drag my feet and be in this state within myself where all I could see and think about was the thoughts that I was being depressed about and the experience of being depressed. When I was in this state the body feels heavy and unmovable - as many people who go through depression are aware of - and in this state, even though I was moving and working at a rate that should have managed the sugar levels well but when I got to break and tested the blood sugar was WAY above normal and this was solely because of the depression that I was going through at that moment.

Another example was when I would be depressed and procrastinating doing some course work. Now when I was doing this I would sit slumped, I would be resting on my hand and in a very `slackerish` position with my body and in my mind. I can remember one clear memory of when I was high (blood sugar) and things were not responding the way that they normally would. I had to inject at least 50% more insulin for the same carbohydrates that I would eat and this was certainly a notable change. In the same moment I was able to simply take myself out of that depression through a choice to start working on the assignment that I was resisting and from this choice the body changed it's position and so did the mind. Once I started to move myself even within the small tasks of typing the body started to respond by starting to utilize the insulin effectively and efficiently and the carbohydrates were being processed more because I was using myself and the mind.

There was an article that I was reading online about the causes of high and low blood sugar and one of the causes was socialization - now I questioned why it was that socialization could alter the blood sugar in those moments and what I've found out recently is that when/as you use the mind in a way with effort, a similar effort to that of physical exercise the body responds in a similar manner. I've found that when I would be doing sales and talking to people that the blood sugar would respond in a similar manner as if I was doing physical exercise and that is because I was exercising the mind in those scenarios. The same thing applies to depression where within depression the mind is not being used efficiently nor effective and this can be easily seen within the body language that one goes through within depression - so here depression directly correlates to blood sugar levels and the effectiveness of insulin and the consumption rate of carbohydrates through the body because the depression does affect the body as all emotions affect the body = anger increases heart rate = it is easy to see how emotions, such as depression, can and do affect the homeostatic process of the body

Practical Assistance with this point is to be aware when/as you're going through depression and then correct the insulin dosages and carbohydrate intake when/as depression exists but to also not accept depression from yourself and to always look at solutions to depression rather than only looking at the problem so that the compromise of the body does not need to exist


In the next post I am going to look at the point of Living with diabetes and how that may trigger depression