Hello All, hope you are well:

My neurologist sent a note saying that some of my lab results were back and there were two things:

First, my vit. D level is low (again) and he prescribed 50,000 U of Vit. Softgel to take once a week for six months. I have had to do this before.

Second, my fasting glucose came back borderline at 101 (normal is <100).

I don't know if these results are causative of my PN. I am having additional labs drawn Tuesday from Athena Labs. My neurologist ordered a PN profile and a MAG profile.

Mere

Mere--I saw an excellent video about vitamin D you might be interested in seeing. MrsD referenced it in one of her recent posts. It is rather long, but well worth watching, especially since your levels are low. I hope I got the link correct: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ-qekFoi-o.

I have often wondered.....they keep lowering the ranges on labs.

Glucose used to be 120. Then they lowered it to 110. Now 100.

Same with cholesterol. Hmmm.

Cyclelops, I wonder why that is? Do the levels change based on age? I am 48.

My glucose, non-fasting, is usually just outside of the range for normal. Always borderline. I suppose the neurologist will let me know if this has any bearing on or is causative of my PN. I suppose it could be that it is normal for me.

Mere

i think it changes with how much money the pharmaceutical companies want to make which of course is always more. If someone had the patent on b12 you could bet that 800 would be the minimal accepted level.

I agree with C and Ela it is driving me nuttier then I should be. Sue

FASTING BLOOD SUGARS ARE NOT THE GOLD STANDARD, and havent been for years! you need a glucose tolerance test! minimally a post prandial level.
many persons with faulty glucose metabolism maintain a "normal" fasting while having elevated post prandial numbers and doing damage to their systems........good luck!

There is increasing evidence and research (Johns Hopkins, Cornell-Weill, etc) regarding the relationship between a pre-diabetic condition (consistant high 'normal' readings) and the onset of PN.

I know, but how low is all this going to get? Cripes, when I did triathlons, and was buff, I had trouble keeping a cholesterol total below 180....my glucose ran lower, but I couldn't keep up eating what I needed. I just wonder if any of this is driven by the desire to create a demand for drugs, as some one mentioned. I know of stellar athletes who dropped dead of heart attacks, and people who needed to lose 100 pounds keep plugging away.

I wonder if we don't drive ourselves nuts with all this.

My GP wants me on a statin....I have refused up to now, because I already have myopathy and neuropathy....how miserably do I want to live??? I can have a great cholesterol level and be in a wheel chair! I admit lately my diet been too much high fructose corn syrup, so I need to clean that up. I am not going to be running or cycling long distances anymore, but I admit, I need to walk more. I just loathe being fully upright these days, not to mention it is freakin cold where I live and I am an hour from a mall for walking. Yes, I did buy a treadmill which I call 'the rack'. I have a genetically low HDL. No matter how hard I pounded myself, it never exceeded 46. My hubby sits on his duff and his is 60.

I should just start eating a clove of garlic a day...keeps the vampires away...and any one else too. The perfect solution for any one with social phobia.

I recently saw the movie, King Corn. It was well done, and had great understated humor. The premise of the movie is that everything we eat is corn.

Even meat, the cattle are corn fed for the last 4 months before they are butchered...if left on that diet they would die around 6 months....meat is all fat now as compared to a generation ago when cattle was grass fed. There are farms now with 14,000 cows. One was just approved in our state, for 8,000 dairy cows! Peeeyuuu. I have a farm with 500 down the road....that is like being near a city of a million people in terms of poo. So a farmer has a 1000 acres on which to spread this....so if you go in the field, you are walking in dung, not just dirt with dung, but pure dung...smelly, nasty dung. Then we have chicken farms with 250,000 chickens in each, and they poo out a lot of chicken crap, which gets mixed with the cow poo....they spread it at night in the winter, so, people don't associate the smell with the poo spreading. I don't know how else we can feed 6 billion people either, so this is not a value judgment.

The movie follows two guys from Boston who return to Iowa where their great granfathers farmed. These two guys plant an acre of corn and follow it. It is quite funny, since they know nothing of farming. I thought it was hysterical when they planted their acre in 18 minutes, with a 32 row planter....lol, they had 8 rows. They don't make any judgments, they just follow it and you can take from the movie what you want.

It was sooo cute....and at the same time, disturbing.

So in the face of all this modified food, we have to try to control our blood sugar?? How? Well, I know HOW, but it is growing increasingly difficult for me to grow my food and process it, since my hands are very limp....you can't afford organic on what we will retire on. Hubby does not want me to raise chickens....I can't imagine why.