You are here: Welcome arrow About Us arrow Your Webmaster

Free eBook Download

Download a free copy
of the eBook
tomacover1.jpg
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Comes with free 14 day evaluation copy of
NutriBase 7
Nutrition software
Click Here

Featured Author

Toma
SearchWarp.com
Featured Author!
Toma Featured Author on SearchWarp!

Check out the weekly articles. Rate them and maybe even join my fan club

Who's Online

No Users Online

Main Menu

Welcome
Why Join?
Community Forum
Contact Us
Diabetic News
Free Diabetic supplies
Links
Member's Tools
Questions and Answers
File Sharing
Services Offered
Site Goals
Site Map
Site Rating from RatePoint
Streaming Videos
DiabeticFriendly Products
Link to Us
Healthy Recipes

Members Login

When you join as a member you will get the email series on controlling blood glucose with diet and you will be subscribed to our monthly newsletter. check your junk mail for the activation email and add us to you address book, white list or what ever else you email service requires to insure you get correspondence from us.

Faves

Digg this page
Bookmark this page on Google
Submit this page to Reddit
Stumble Upon this page
This page is del.icio.us!
Fave this page on Technorati
Bookmark this page on Yahoo

Forum's Popular Threads

  1. No Silver Bullet (10236 views)
  2. Sugar is ok? (9226 views)
  3. intoduction (8415 views)
  4. This is my story.... (8020 views)
  5. Chia or Salba what is the Differance (7503 views)
  6. Concentrated EPA and DHA supplement (5716 views)
  7. Delivery Problems with hotmail, Yahoo (5437 views)
  8. Hi I am Kjerstyn (5366 views)
  9. Hi I am Larry from Phoenix (5208 views)
  10. Hi! I'm Jackie (5066 views)

Need Server Space?

single.jpgDiabetic-Diet Secrets.com has excess server capacity.

You can help our Diabetic Mission By renting some of the excess space.

 

Click here for details

Your Webmaster PDF Print E-mail
User Rating: / 1
PoorBest 
Written by Toma Grubb   
Tuesday, 10 October 2006

Toma's Story

or

How Diabetic-Diet-Secrets.com Came to Be

 

picture of Toma Grubb
Toma Grubb, Webmaster for this site
Throughout my life, I've been pretty active. Even as a teen, I was involved in sports and activities that can take a toll on the human body. My experience as a DUSTOFF pilot in the Vietnam War gave me a taste for the rush of adrenaline that later in my life I was able to achieve without the added threat of live ammunition. Well into my fifties, I participated in sports and activities that many abandon earlier in their lives, ranging from white-water rafting to competitive Country Western Dancing. A few years ago, I started noticing some changes. At first, I thought my age was finally catching up to me. I had no energy, felt achy and thirsty and I was slowly losing my appetite. I thought I had the flu. Then, near the end of January 2005, I started feeling discomfort in my lower back around my kidneys. Thinking I had a kidney infection, I stopped drinking my 10 Dr. Peppers per day and started drinking juices--particularly cranberry juice. Unknowingly I was adding to the problem.

Things were getting worse, but since I was in Canada and had trouble crossing the border, I was hesitant to go to the Veterans Administration Hospital in Seattle. Finally, I decided to go to a Canadian doctor who told me I had diabetes and needed to go to a hospital for treatment. I spent the next day on a ferry from Nanaimo to Vancouver and then a Greyhound Bus to Seattle. Near midnight I finally arrived at the VA Hospital Emergency Room.

Some quick test told the doctor that I was in serious condition. He told me if I had waited much longer, I might not have made it. It was quickly discovered that my blood glucose was at 570mg/dl. It should be between 70 and 100. My A1C, a test to determine the sugar retained in the blood cells, was at 20.5--it should be under 7. My triglycerides were 1517 and should be under 150. I was badly dehydrated and my potassium levels were low, my eyes were blurry and my blood pressure was high. The doctor placed me in the critical care ward where I spent the next four days.

There, I was hooked up to an IV pump and administered 15 liters of saline over the next 3 days. Twelve of the IV bags contained a potassium mix. I was given so many heparin shots I lost track of them. Every few hours my blood was being drawn to monitor the effect of the treatments. They were giving me pills that to this day I am unable to identify, and insulin.

Doctors and nurses told me that my pancreas had shut down, and that I was close to renal failure. My triglyceride levels were so high that there was no way to tell what my cholesterol numbers were. Cells need potassium to be able to take in the glucose that feeds our bodies. Lacking insulin, my body was prevented from using or eliminating the excessively high levels of glucose in my bloodstream. So much that my blood was the consistency of syrup, and my urine was so full of sugar it was sticky. Sugar in my lenses even caused my eyes to blur.

In short I was in pretty bad shape. I was in the process of necrosis and had already entered into severe diabetic ketoacidosis. Over the two weeks I was at the VA Hospital, I got quite an education on diabetes--a crash course. When I had stabilized two weeks later, they sent me off with a grocery sack full of literature about diabetes and nutrition. I soon learned that the literature provided good advice but was so general it was practically impossible to apply on a day-by-day, meal-by-meal basis.

 I then headed back to join my Canadian wife at our seasonal home in Nanaimo. When I reached the Canadian border, I was told I would be refused admittance until I applied for and was granted permanent residency by Canada Immigration. Although my health had improved, at that point my Blood glucose level was still way too high. Frustrated, I headed back to my home in Denver.

Dan, a friend of mine, asked me to come stay with him and his partner, Jamie, for a while. It was while staying with them that my education really began. Jamie is a nurse and had worked for an endocrinologist. She was also a body builder and very much into nutrition. They gave me a book that really opened my eyes, called The Insulin-Resistance Diet, by Cheryl R. Hart, M.D. and Mary Kay Grossman, R.D. I recommend this book to anyone who is nutritionally challenged. It can be purchased from our books section on this web site. The book was a godsend. It was much better than anything else I had encountered thus far, especially when it came to controlling my blood glucose. However, like the literature given to me when I left the Seattle VA Hospital, I felt it wasn't specific enough. In the meantime, Jamie was teaching me to select and cook foods properly. I found a little nutrition counter that helped but was rather limited and a little clumsy to use. It only had 2000 foods listed and a lot of them were useless to me, particularly the fast food items. Nevertheless, I was making really good progress with the little hand held counter and I knew I was really on to something. I just wanted something even better, so I kept searching. Six weeks later, I finally found a software program that listed 30,000 foods and 90 nutritional values for each.

I down loaded the trial version of the software and found it far superior to anything I had found so far, but there were still some minor issues I knew could be easily fixed. I contacted the developer and started negotiation with him to produce a version of his software that would meet and exceed all the requirements I was looking for. I applied all I had learned and have been able totally controlled my blood glucose too less than 100mg/dl ever since. Then there was also the side benefit--I lost 35 lbs and am well on my way to my healthy body weight.
Blood Glucose chart
Blood Gucose Chart 2/05-4/05
Since then, my energy levels are greatly increased and when I had my last blood test, my cholesterol was almost where it should be. I started this quest with the intention of treating my diabetes. As you can see in the chart to the left, my method worked extremely well for controlling the blood glucose. I soon realized this approach would work with nearly anyone who was nutritionally challenged. My sister heard about what I was doing, saw the results I was getting and asked me to come stay with her and see if it would work for her. At that time, she was 5'3" and 310 pounds and tried just about everything from the latest fad-diets to gastro-intestinal bypass surgery. Nothing had worked for her, and she was nearing the point of giving up on life itself. 15 days later and 10 pounds lighter, we knew something was working. Never before had she achieved such results. After two and a half months, she lost 22lbs, and her lab tests were normal.

NutriCoach was born. We realized we have information, techniques and tools that are desperately needed by millions of people. I am bringing it all together in one place for easy access. The original NutriCoach website had navigation issues that made it a little difficult to use so I started looking for a better way to present what was working so well for me. The second attempt is www.NutriCoach2.com What I leaned about web design in building those sites has been incorporated in Diabetic-Diet-Secrets.com


Update 5/19/2005 3:00 pm.

To get my meds refilled I had to do a physical, including full blood and urine tests. I just got off the phone with the doctor I saw yesterday at the Denver VA Hospital. What she told me was quite surprising--all my numbers were exactly where they should be. My A1c in February was 20.5, yesterday, 5.3. Anything under 6 is good. All other numbers were in normal ranges. Based on my blood test and what I told them I was doing nutritionally, they decided to take me off all my meds. She also stated she had never seen or heard of anyone making such progress in so a short time. Like I, she believes we really need to get this information to the general public. I am scheduled for a follow up in 30 days so there will be another update then.

Update 6/22/2005

I went for my 30-day follow up and all my lab results were normal, even without the meds. I was doing it all with just nutrition. If what I learned to do nutritionally works this well for others, and me it must be a good thing. I believe it will work for anyone willing to make major lifestyle changes to obtain better health. If nothing else, it does no harm to try.

Update 8/18/2005

My Daily Blood glucose is still staying right where it should be. I am finding it a bit strange that I am getting resistance from the medical community. There is a Chief diabetes trainer at the VA in Denver who could find nothing wrong with my approach and my results, excepting that I haven't spent the years in school that she has to obtain a degree in nutrition. I would find that a valid argument if I were presenting this as my own method. In fact, I have nothing that can't be found in well-documented medical research available on the web. I simply combined it into a cohesive program and simplified the presentation so it is easy to understand.

 

Update August/2006

I have been following what I preach concerning healthy nutrition and diabetic control. In July 2006 I finally found a Canadian doctor willing to accept payment from the US Department of Veterans Affairs, Foreign Medical Program administered by The Canadian department of Veterans. The intake physical and labs were so good that he was questioning the validity of my original diagnosis.

HbA1C was 5.4 and my typical glucose readings with my One Touch meter are between 4.2 and 4.9 since I am now in Canada I am using a meter that is calibrated to the Canadian standards.

 

Update Dec 2007

 

My labs have been the best so far. The A1C which is the blood test to determine the percentage of glycated hemoglobin was 5.0%. The normal non-diabetic range is 4.5 to 6.0.

 

Update July 2008.

 

Since starting this project there has been a lot of new information come to light and what I am doing to optimize my diet and my health is changing. New information is reinforcing why I need to do what I do and adding new layers to the strategies for an optimized healthy diet. The most recent change is mostly just adding to what was already working by adding concepts about inflammation and anti- inflammatory foods.

 
Last Updated ( Monday, 28 July 2008 )
 
[ Back ]

Amazon Advertisment


Help us help others! When you rate and review this site through RatePoint you help us build trust with others. RatePoint is an independent third party rating source similar to BBB but more proactive.

RatePoint Site Seal

 

Help us reach and help others. The badge below shows how many other sites are linking to us. Are you one of them? Click here to see how easy it is to link to us. We would especially appreaciate .EDU and .GOV links

 

This website is accredited by Health On the Net Foundation. Click to verify.

 

We comply with the HONcode standard
for trustworthy health information:
verify here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Look for the HEALTLINKS symbol. It is a symbol of professional-level healthcare resources. It signifies that the Web site you are visiting was reviewed by Healthlinks.net and accepted into its directory of select web sites.

HONESTe Online Member SealWe encourage you to become a good medical self advocate.
Check us out. We recognize the importance of building trust with our members and guest.



View My Stats

Diabetic-Diet-Secrets.com

Advertisement from our A store


Google Analytics Tracking Module