Hello from my home in Helsinki! This is NordLetter #112, a weekly newsletter on living and walking in Finland.
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I created this note on Thursday and in my daily note, I wrote, “I have no idea what NL112 will be about”.
I am typing this on Sunday at 22:53.
I have known what this would be about since perhaps Friday, the day I finished reading The Diabetes Code.
I was scrolling Instagram when I came across this reel on Instagram, where there was a shot of Tanmay Bhat talking about The Obesity Code and how that book had changed his life. This was one of those videos where a talking head appears after this original piece of content, and talks about their thing. A talking head appeared after this and said, “I have not read The Obesity Code, but I have read The Diabetes Code, because that was more relevant to me” and I thought, this book is more relevant to me as well.
I was reading The Sixth Extinction then, so I looked it up in the e-library app, and did not find it there. So, I searched for it on Audible, and bought it there.
After finishing The Sixth Extinction, I immediately started with The Diabetes Code.
There is another unpublished note in my vault which is titled yoga. I had made that note in 2024, after having done yoga for a little over an year and having seen some marvellous results.
Somehow, I could never finish that note, and it remained in-situ.
The reason why I am doing this on Sunday night, is because I was looking for a reason not to. It is personal. And I was looking for a way to avoid it.
Things left unsaid have a way of doing that. Of becoming more than they were originally, heavier perhaps. Meaning and burden gets heaped onto it.
And maybe, I am ashamed of it, a little. This is my way of telling myself that it’s okay.
I was in college when I got diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. I had some viral infection which just would not go away. When I got admitted to the hospital, they found that my blood sugar was super high. The infection was treated pretty quickly but I was left with this diagnosis.
They did some tests. I was asked to come back again and talk to specialists. They advised me about the lifestyle changes I would need to make. I remember the people from Eli Lilly saying that everybody should be making these changes, so I would be living a long and healthy life with insulin. (I was worried about dying early after the diagnosis)
The thing that I am ashamed of is that I never pushed back - questioned the diagnosis. I never asked which numbers showed I was T1 and not T2. I was a little happy to know that I had T1. Being T1 meant that no one knew why it happened - which meant it was not something I had caused. I had not messed up.
I did not think at that time, or the years after that to find books to read on the topic. I trusted the specialists and the doctors and continued taking insulin (higher and higher doses of it).
After I moved to Finland, the doctors here told me the treatment plan I was on, was something they used to have in the 70s here. They changed my treatment plan. I would take some amount of basal insulin and some fast-acting insulin before eating, based on the amount of carbs in my meal. I got a Libre sensor to monitor my glucose in real time and it became a thing.
It became a new routine.
I used to carry chocolates and juices with me, because hypo was a real problem. I fainted once and had to be admitted to a hospital.
At the beginning of 2022 and throughout most of the first half of 2022, I weighed around 94 kilos. During the second half of the year, I lost a bit of weight and by the end of the year I was sitting at just under 90 kilos.
I got married in February 2023. Prerna joined me in Finland in May 2023. I weighed around the same, just over 90 kilos around that time.
A couple of things happened after Prerna joined me.
- I stopped eating out. We would still go out, but the frequency of it was way down.
- I started doing yoga sometime in June.
Before this I had met Dr Jha in Bangalore and had already started alternative treatment for my condition. The first thing Dr Jha told me was that I did not have diabetes. The second thing he told me was that I needed to be kinder to myself.
In 2024, when I had made the note on yoga, I weighed around 65 kgs. I had been at that weight since February of that year. I got reclassified as a Type 2 diabetic, because Prerna asked my doctor why. Why was I a Type 1 and not a Type 2?
Prerna had met Amit at Dr Jha’s clinic. He would help out with exercises that Dr Jha prescribed. She reached out to him to see if he could teach me yoga. He said yes.
We had classes thrice a week in the morning. Because of the time zone difference, I had to wake up super early for the classes.
In the beginning, my body was stiff. There was not a lot I could do. I would feel exhausted by the end of our sessions. I did not want to do those classes. But Prerna pushed me to not give up.
I did not.
I continued.
Slowly, things changed.
Yoga allows you to be at one with your body. You recognise how it feels. You feel every stretch. You notice every breath.
For that one hour daily, I would close my eyes, do my routine and get lost. I still do.
I used to get agitated at work. Some things would happen and I would be weird for a day. There was stress. It was difficult to manage it at times. Now, it feels manageable. At least I don’t mope around for a day. Pranayama is a game-changer.
Throughout everything though, I never understood the disease.
That changed this week, with The Diabetes Code.
The book is about Type 2 diabetes and reversing it naturally. In fact, in the first chapter of the book itself, Dr. Fung explains the causes, and ways to reverse it. In the rest of the book, he explains things in detail.
Type 1 diabetes happens because the body produces little to no insulin by itself. There is lack of insulin in the body which increases glucose in the blood.
Type 2 diabetes happens because the body is less sensitive to the insulin in the body. There is lots of insulin in the body, but since the body is not able to use it properly, there is lots of glucose in the blood.
The liver sits at the centre of the food-energy cycle. Insulin tells the body (liver) to convert glucose to fats. High insulin in the blood stream keeps giving the same signal to the liver to continue converting into fat.
When the liver builds up fat, it becomes resistant to insulin’s signals. In this state, the liver keeps releasing glucose in the blood, worsening high blood sugar. This is a vicious cycle, as high glucose means the liver produces more fat and so on.
Every cell in our body can use glucose for energy, but only the liver can digest fructose. Sugar (Sucrose) has equal parts glucose and fructose. The liver gets fatty when trying to break it down. Fatty liver causes fatty pancreas, which destroys beta cells and causes diabetes.
This is inherently reversible. Because the problem is this excess fat in the liver, if it is removed, mainly through low carb diets and fasting, Type 2 diabetes can be reversed.
Maybe I’ve oversimplified things a bit. I will write longer notes on these things as I go on. But the explanation made sense to me.
The last thing I wrote in my note on yoga was this -
And just to put this out there, I will heal myself. I will be free of diabetes.
So yeah, that.
If you enjoyed reading this, and know someone else who might, please consider forwarding this to them. It would help this grow and make me happy. 😄
Until next week.
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