Diabetics Need To Pay Careful Attention To Sleep Habits and Sleep Issues

Diabetics Need To Pay Careful Attention To Sleep Habits and Sleep Issues with Terry and Roy

There was a sleep study released last week that found if you have diabetes and don't sleep well are at an 87% greater risk of dying within the nine-year study period than those that didn't have diabetes. There was a question of correlation, does poor sleep lead to diabetes or does diabetes lead to poor sleep. Either way, sleep is an important factor in our all-around health.

About Terry and Roy

After years of weight, health and fitness challenges, Roy Barker and Terry Mallozzi made a commitment to changing their eating habits. And implementing realistic fitness goals for them. They chronicle their journey for health on the Feeding Fatty Podcast speaking to experts about related aspects of health challenges (type 2 diabetes, hyperthyroidism, hypothyroidism), losing weight (need to) and staying positive (easier said than done). Little did they know it’s not just counting calories and cutting out sweets

www.feedingfatty.com

Full Transcript Below

Diabetics Need To Pay Careful Attention To Sleep Habits and Sleep Issues with Terry and Roy

00:00:13
Roy
Hello and welcome to another episode of feeding fatty. I'm your host, Roy tearing. This, program we want to, what we try to do is talk about our journey through our wellness. That includes, how we eat, what we eat, not necessarily being on a diet, but our diet in general, we talk about exercise mindset, just a lot of things that are related to, our health and wellness and just living a better life for us. So, w w we usually have guests on as well, it's about our journey. We talk about some personal issues, but we also have guests that are professionals in the space. Typically we have them on Tuesdays on our Thursday release. We usually do our, something more personal what's going on in our life. Also we've kind of made a decision to, be more, be a little more candid about diabetes and be, do a lot more focus on, current issues or things that are going on with the diabetes, or just delivering information on our Thursday.

00:01:19
Roy
That'll kind of be our focus for some time anyway, we may change to, something else later on, but we want to go for this because, I know it's been no secret that I suffer from type two diabetes. Most of that's because of the weight I carry around my belly and then also, just poor eating habits. Something that definitely needs to be discussed, not only for my health, but I'm sure there are a lot of people out there that struggle just the same as I do, because I love to eat. I love food. I love all kinds of food. Unfortunately, some of the food that I love most garlic bread, all the sweets.

00:02:00
Terry
And things like that. Those are.

00:02:02
Roy
All the worst things for. Anyway, we're going to kind of come on. I think another thing, we'd been talking about this the last few weeks, but then, we've had some poor eating habits that, we've been eating out a lot. It seems like, and on the run and celebrations, coming out of COVID, everybody wants to go out to eat or, get together and eat. Anyway, there's just been a lot of things going on and, my dad, my diabetic readings the last week, or so were terrible. I mean, they were extreme and something I've never seen before. Anyway, it just sparked us to say, look, we need to probably talk about this more, not only to help ourselves, but maybe we can help somebody else out there.

00:02:48
Terry
Oh yeah, for sure. I mean the more information we can help put out there just for discussion, because we are not the professionals, we're not medical, we're not professionals. We're just talking about.

00:03:03
Roy
Yeah. That's something we need to always get out of the way. When we talk about this, as we are not medical professionals, we're not researchers, we're delivering our personal opinions and things that we read. We always tell you to seek out your own medical, your own physician or your own medical advisors to find out what's best with you. Also, the, your dietician people like seek out your professional because every individual situation is different. It's not, we're not all the same, but we just hear our own research.

00:03:34
Terry
I mean, google yourself. Don't get way too involved with Dr. Google, but, just do your own research. However you do that, do it.

00:03:45
Roy
Well in that way, too, because we still think, even with your own research, you need to seek out a medical professional, but at least you walk in armed with things that you could talk about. I mean, there's, and they may say, nah, that's not for you, or that's not a good thing. Or there's the side effects. There could be a lot of issues, but at least it's dialogue, which that's how we solve problems is talking about it. Our medical professionals are very smart, but they don't necessarily keep up on every new and different thing that's coming out as much as they would love to try to. There's just so many things that are coming at them all the time. So anyway, it's a good conversation starter.

00:04:25
Terry
Yeah. We, do, we want to get started with this?

00:04:29
Terry
Go ahead. Okay. So,

00:04:31
Terry
There was a study released this past week that said people with diabetes who have trouble falling or staying asleep, or 87% more likely to die of any case what? Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry to die prematurely.

00:04:51
Terry
If they have both diabetes had diabetes and sleep disruption, correct. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.

00:04:58
Terry
Yeah, so that is, I just want to go to sleep. Yeah. I don't have diabetes that I know of, but I'm good.

00:05:09
Roy
Yeah. What, it's kinda like a triangle is the best way we talked about this earlier is that kind of at the top of that triangle is being overweight. The, if you go down the, to the left side, that bottom part would be, diabetes. If you kind of go over to that right part corner of the triangle, that would be, sleep disruption in this part. What they're saying is, and they don't really know. I think some, another researcher not involved in the study actually asked the question. Do we have poor sleep because we have diabetes or do we have diabetes because we have poor sleep. I don't think they make that distinction. I think they're just saying that, if you're overweight and you go down that, then now all of a sudden your sleep and your diabetes are connected in some way. We have to be careful about that.

00:06:04
Roy
And, I've, our pillars of what we want to do for our health, drink water, exercise, and sleep is important. We talk about this, I talk about my downfall is my sleep and where we've been the last month or so, for those listening, that we've had internet issues to the extreme, we finally got those worked out, we think. Then, we haven't, luckily we had some recordings that were backlogs, so were able to keep releasing, but the reality is it's been a real struggle and we haven't recorded or even scheduled anybody for probably a month now a month or more. So anyway, we're getting back into that. We're fixing to send out some taping invites, but, I meant.

00:06:54
Terry
To, I'm sorry, I'm going to interrupt you. I meant to sh to forward you, this meme that I saw, it said, kids, families without internet service, and it was a photo of little house on the Prairie and all of them, it was hilarious. And I was thinking about it. It was like, okay, yeah, not a pioneer woman. I just want it when I want it. And when you don't have it. Oh my gosh. Yes. Yes. That's.

00:07:19
Roy
Kind of been the way we've been little house on the Prairie for awhile, but the, I guess how that relates to the diabetes and sleep is that we've had to go to eating establishments that didn't serve the best quality of food for, our, what we way that we want to eat. Then, actually having to stay up later because of the travel or coming home and having difficulty in upload. I mean, the, my sleep pattern has just been way out of whack the last few weeks. Of course that is always to me, what starts the eating, because if I'm staying up late, that means that I want to eat late. I need, I feel, tired and depleted. I feel like if I can eat, I'll get a boost of energy and what works best for that is of course, sugary substances or, carbs, things like that.

00:08:10
Roy
Bumps me up to, it's bad for the diabetes. It's bad for the weight, bad for diabetes, way bad for sleep. I mean, if you're eating right before you go to sleep, it's just, yeah. So, yeah. Then, even just getting four or five hours of sleep and trying to do that for weeks or days or weeks on end, it just, it is a negative for me. It, it starts a lot of things. Anyway, kind of figuring out this link between diabetes and sleep, it's very important and, there's so many reasons why we need to get our sleep. Also, we can relate our diabetes back to, the, I guess the instance of, Alzheimer's not going to say everybody that's got diabetes is going to get all timers, but I think there's a lot of research that's going on out there now saying that, Alzheimer's is kind of a type three diabetes.

00:09:06
Roy
Typically, if you go into older age with the diabetic issue, you may have a higher chance of, having Alzheimer's. So all of this stuff is interrelated. It's interrelated with our wellness. We want to make sure that, we kind of get this information out, but personally that we do all we can do to get that good sleep cycle, get the exercise in, and then along with eating, right. We'll be able to, reduce the, that body weight. Also I feel like I sleep better when we've had exercise, the days that we're active and we're moving and trying to work it in, I feel like my sleep cycle is much better than just, if I'm sitting here at my desk all day, cause again, I've got me a new Fitbit. So I'm excited about that. I've had a, I had an iWatch for a long time and the thing just quit working.

00:10:06
Roy
It quit updating and I couldn't get it connected, but I really I'm really like the Fitbit. I was disappointed in the iWatch, when I got it. Anyway, back to the Fitbit, it's got the reminder about taking the 2,250 steps every hour and then, I've just felt better. Those days when, we're out pushing in and getting our stuff done, I tend to come in and go right to sleep and sleep, on the, I've always been a fairly good sleep. Oh my.

00:10:35
Terry
Gosh, you do sleep well. I am so jealous. You just like hit the pillow and within five minutes, you're done here. I am. I watched a movie after you went to sleep last night. So I didn't go to bed. I was in bed at 10 30, but I didn't go to bed sleep until 2:00 AM. Yeah.

00:10:53
Terry
You just hit the pillow and you're done well, the.

00:10:55
Roy
Show were watching, we actually had to turn it off because I think I made it through like five minutes, but I was exhausted. The problem is with that is, over the last three or four weeks, been averaging, five or six hours a night. And, and they're saying,

00:11:11
Terry
They're saying, good sleep, they're referring to good sleep as seven hours, seven to nine hours, but seven hours for sure.

00:11:22
Roy
It's where I try to be. That's the other thing, I'm not sure about the iWatch. I don't want to talk it down in this, but I will say that is one thing I'm liking about the Fitbit. It shows your sleep, and I'm not sure how accurate all this is, but, I was trying to find it. I keep meaning to wear.

00:11:44
Terry
Mine. My apple watch when we sleep by forget, I'm too tired. And then I don't sleep.

00:11:53
Roy
Yeah. Because my sleep scores, I think last Sunday, I guess we must've gone to bed early. I had like an 85.

00:11:59
Terry
Oh yeah. I remember sleep score, but yeah. I was late to celebrate. And so then we, you know, my.

00:12:06
Roy
Sleep score since then have all been in the sixties. And, so anyway, it's important. I think it's, for me personally, I will say it's important for a lot of factors, just my overall, doing analytical stuff. Being able to think critically being able to be in a decent mood, not letting some of the struggles, that we've had, compound and, be more upset about things that typically shouldn't be, but because you're so extremely tired and you're pressed for time and that this, technical issue we've run into is going to cost you more time. It just compounds to a point of craziness. So, but anyway, let's get back to the sleep study. I just wanted to reiterate that, how important I feel that sleep is for me personally.

00:12:54
Terry
Oh yeah. They, it's just, it's a vicious cycle. I mean, it's you, so like type two diabetes, people who have type two diabetes tend to be overweight and may suffer from obstructive sleep apnea. They're predisposed to like kidney, issues and, neuropathy, just, everything is a vicious cycle. Everything just builds on to another thing. To where you can't even identify where it comes from. Right?

00:13:28
Roy
Yeah. This is a part of this study, they, this wasn't just with diabetics. I think that what came out of it started as a sleep study as a secondary group, they kind of looked at the diabetic part, but this is just saying that for people, even without diabetes, they are 11% more likely to die within nine year followup than people without who slept well. The, if you're, even if you're not a diabetic and don't sleep well, you've gotten 11%, more likeliness to die within this. They did a nine year followup and that's what they found. So, it's important for everybody no matter who we are. And, again, I will say, I think that they've even started linking the sleeping issue to a prevalence of Alzheimer's as well. So, if we go into our older age, some of these things that we do in our younger age will catch up with us in our older age.

00:14:26
Roy
And, there's the old saying that if I known I was going to live this long, I would take a lot better care of myself. That's another thing is that, we need to get this message out to start early because whatever you're doing in your younger adulthood, you will carry that into your older adulthood. And, there's just a cause.

00:14:45
Terry
Effect, there's a cause and effect to everything. When you're younger, you are blazing new trails, you're reinventing wheels. You want to do it for yourself. That's the main thing you want to blaze your own path, ? Right. You know that we have a few years on us, some experience helps, but, you know, we're still learning, but now I'm more open to inviting in research from all different areas, friends, family, online, all of it. I would have been if I were younger, cause I was such a rebel anyway, I wanted to do it all myself. Right.

00:15:31
Roy
Yeah. We just need to, just really take note that, a lot, there's a lot of scientific, there's a lot more good scientific information out there. So, and current,

00:15:41
Terry
It's not like you have to reach for the insight encyclopedia, Britannica, however you say, I don't know we had all of those, but it wasn't Cray was as current as it was. We thought it was cool. We didn't have to go to the library cause we had it at home. Yeah. Right.

00:15:57
Roy
Yeah. This just, again, kind of reiterating the point that I just found a caption in here and this information that we are talking to you about, it's we found this on CNN health, a lot of great places to go. And the,

00:16:11
Terry
And the study and the study.

00:16:13
Terry
Came out, on June, in June a journal of sleep in the journalist sleeper.

00:16:21
Roy
Okay. It was actually, I'm just trying to find, oh, the, Christie, Kristin,

00:16:28
Terry
Ken Knutson and E van Cotter. They did a study that was released just, well, that was released at the, in the us national library of medicine, the NIH.

00:16:42
Roy
Yeah. They are neurology and preventive medicine at Northwestern university Feinberg school of medicine. We just want to give credit to, all these great professionals that are out there looking, but, they just said that, sleep is, it's important to, I was just looking here. It said that even regardless of the diabetes, that sleep is important. So anyway, yeah. So, what are things we can do? I think they talk about people that fall asleep and, there's the falling asleep issue. There's the waking up in the middle of the night and, really need to talk to a physician to try to get a handle on that. They have a lot of sleep studies that are going on that you can be involved with again, to find out what your individual situation is. Is it sleep apnea? Is it yeah. Your root cause. And then if.

00:17:42
Terry
You, and if you have diabetes, treat your diabetes, for sure. I treat your diabetes. Right. You also need to take into effect that you're not sleeping well.

00:17:56
Roy
Yeah. And we'll talk about this more. I'm sure. The only way you can treat your diabetes is to monitor it. I, I will say that I'm not the best that when I know I'm eating bad, I don't want to look at it cause I know what's going to be in bed, but the only way to really be able to manage it is to see, where are you at when you wake up? What does different types of foods do to you? So you can know, cause there, every people are affected differently by different types of foods. Some people may be, some diabetics may be able to eat something and it not have an effect. Some others, it blows them out of the water. That's why it's important, two hours after every meal to test to see, Hey, what did that do to me? Keep a record of it that way, Hey, I can eat this.

00:18:45
Roy
One thing I can't do is, eat, even though, I try to stay under about 40 carbs a day. I can't eat all 40 at one meal. So, you have to spread those out, through the day, I try to be more carb heavy in the morning when I know I'm gonna, work off an exercise and then, or just, living through the day, I know I'll burn them off a little better, but then also the way that you pair different foods. Again, we'll talk about all this stuff more in future episodes, but also want to get this, the two people that we watched on YouTube that time about the eating. No, it was about the way that your, the, something about was being captured in your muscles. That was, I don't remember the whole deal, but it was about the insulin and the sugar. Yeah. We need to really get that information out because I thought those were two, respective individuals in the field and they were very good.

00:19:51
Roy
They had some good, a good, both of them had good YouTube videos where they actually laid it out and showed you some good. Yeah,

00:19:58
Terry
That'd be good to talk about. And, what I was also gonna mention is you in the past and correct me if I'm wrong in the past, you have taken your medication, your diabetes medication, like in the morning and at night, and now what are we doing? We doing it meal time. Yeah. Trying.

00:20:20
Roy
To do it at meals. Yeah. I'll just see if there's a difference. I just don't think I've ever had much luck with the medication that I'm on. What we've tried to do is, what I've tried to do, look at some different research and, there's some people that say take it in the morning and at night. There's some that say, take it with a meal. So we I've moved to taking it. We haven't done that long enough to really see any, see what the effect, but trying to do it with that last meal of the day, especially to see since we don't, a lot of times we fast in the morning until lunch. So, I'll may take one just when we get up, just because, but, yeah, but the, yeah, I just have I've always felt like it really hasn't helped me that much. So, trying to move some things around and again, I just, I carry so much weight that is the biggest issue with me, even if, even when I eat clean, I can still test bad just because I carry so much.

00:21:27
Roy
So working on that simple, yeah. It's way important. I need you around honey. I'm like, I don't like those high readings. All right. Anything else you want to talk about before we get out of here? No, just.

00:21:42
Terry
How important sleep is to everybody, but I'm, just if you have diabetes, treat for sure, treat your diabetes, take your meds, get your readings, even though you don't want to know what they are, get them. Maybe something will click in to make you take measures to get to a better place. Right. You know, it's yeah. Sometimes we have to be scared.

00:22:10
Roy
Into I'm scared into doing something. When you see some of those extremely high readings, and of course that can be a catalyst.

00:22:19
Terry
Reality is just the reality setting in it just.

00:22:23
Roy
Yeah. And all the damage. That's the thing is I, we need to really lay out the damage of diabetes because, somebody like myself, I've never been hampered by it much. I don't think I give it as much thought or as much consideration or revered as much as I should. Again, I think it's cumulative that, in the beginning stages, you probably don't have a lot, but as you'd let it progress. As you age, there are going to be ramifications for not dealing with it in a timely manner. Again, those are, those would be some good topics for some future episodes to say, what are some of the different, not only the people that the professionals, that we want them to see, but also some of the, what are the, yeah. What are the ramifications of not dealing with it?

00:23:16
Terry
Yeah, because I mean, pre-planning is important in all aspects of your life, ? And if you just reality of taking the readings and not acting like you're Bulletproof, because we are aging, I'm aging. I'm not throwing.

00:23:35
Terry
You under the bus,

00:23:37
Terry
We don't need to wait until something drastic happens. We don't need to re we need to respond and react.

00:23:45
Terry
Because it's too late. Then that's.

00:23:47
Roy
The reality with this. Don't want to get too graphic, but if you have to lose a toe or a limb, you can't go back and say, okay, I'm going to get my mind right now, do it. Or if you damage your kidneys and then of course the Alzheimer's connection, all of that stuff, you just can't turn it back. It's not a do over it's. This is, this is life. Yeah. And it's done. So, all right, we look forward to bringing you more information on that, but for today, that's going to do it for me. Yeah.

00:24:16
Terry
If you, if there's anything that you want to talk about specifically about diabetes, aging, whatever, please go to our Facebook group, go to our Instagram, please reach out. We'd love it. Yep. Yep. We're.

00:24:29
Roy
On all the major platforms, social media platforms. We probably hang out, I would say on, probably Instagram more than any place is our preferred place. You can reach out there. We're on all the major podcast platforms, Google, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify. We're not a one that she listened to reach out. We'd love to get on it and make it easier for you to listen to us. Our website, www.feedingfatty.com. Also, there's a fairly new logo that we just put up. We'd love to hear your comments. Terry designed that one herself. I think she did an awesome job. It looks great. Check us out, see what you think. And, yeah. We'd love to hear any comments about professionals in this industry that you would like to hear from your story. If you have a transformation story, we would love to hear that, just reach out.

00:25:26
Roy
We'll see if we can, book a date to the table and if you're struggling,

00:25:29
Terry
Come on. Let's, you know, it takes a village.

00:25:32
Roy
Let's talk about it. Yeah. Cause we can, sometimes being there to support each other is what it's about or, being able to find the correct help. Always. We can see what we can do, but yeah, starting a discussion. That is the that's the first. Yep. That's the first point. With your medical professionals, not just us, but talk to a medical professional, registered dietician nutritionist. There's a lot of great professionals out there that can help. And, we have, if you haven't checked us out, go back and look at some of our past episodes. We have had some amazing guests and we've got some amazing ones lined up for the future that we can't wait to get out here. We'll try to be a little more regular on these Thursday releases, about what's going on with us. Not only that, but trying to focus on the diabetes for a while and see if we can get that going.

00:26:24
Roy
Anyway, until next time I'm Roy Terry,

www.feedingfatty.com