Diabetes in the Family

2009 Tiyomari’s trip to Japan in celebration of Grandma’s Tiyo’s 100^th birthday.

Tiyo Yoshida married Yuzo Watanabe and had six children: Nobuo, Isao, Hatsue, Katsundo, Takao and Fumiko in 2009 they have 16 grandchildren and 35 great grand children.

On this trip to Japan I was able to do some research on the diabetes in the family.  I learned that  grandpa Yuzo  developed type II diabetes before he died at age of 76.  All my fathers’ brothers and sister Hatsue  have type II diabetes.  The only one of Tiyo and Yuzo’s Children who does not have it is Fumiko, the younger child today at age 63.  

Uncle Nobuo’s diabetes apparently is type II and not type I juvenile as I was told by my father growing up.  Also according to his daughter Mutsuko it developed in his 50’s and not in childhood.  I think this bit of information should be double checked since I have heard my father say that Nobuo had diabetes since I was a child about 40 years ago. 

Uncle’s Takao’s diabetes seems to be the worst case in the family since he is having hemo dialysis which would point to renal failure.  He has also lost one eye due to diabetes.  During my stay in Japan, I was unable to visit uncle Takao, since he lives about two hours from Fukushima, where I was staying and on the day assigned to my visit there, he was having hemo dialysis for the whole day. I was very curious about his diet. I would have liked to know if his diet was similar to Uncle Nobuo’s family.

Uncle Nobuo’s diet is basically vegetarian, with an occasional egg or fish. They eat a lot of cucumbers, eggplant, and vegetable preserves. I was introduced to the bitter yomogi. It grows like a weed surrounding the fields of rice and it has small pointy leaves. The taste is very bitter when the leaves are chewed and the tea made out of yomogi leaves is also very bitter. The Japanese make yomogi mochi which is a rice cake which ends up green because of the yomogi color, where the bitterness fades away and we are left with an interesting and different taste.

I would assume that since Uncle Nobuo inherited the land and the other sons had to fend for themselves, maybe Uncle Takao didn’t have a vast expense of land to live from. As a city dweller, he might have had a different diet than his brother, Nobuo.

Aunt Hastue showed me her diabetic journal and her numbers go as high as 231 on a daily basis. However, she’s not having medication. She seems to be controlling it with diet alone. She does relish on vegetarian diet, however since she lives in Tokyo, she also might not have access to plenty of fresh vegetables like her country brother.

Uncle Kastundo’s diabetic condition also seems to be under control. I was not able to visit him since he lives in Hokaido, which is about 11 hours by car from Fukushima.

My father Issao has had diabetes since his 50’s. Now, in his mid-70’s he has abruptly lost most of his teeth, a common symptom uncontrolled diabetes. In September, 2008, he had two strokes, also another symptom of uncontrolled diabetes.

I would have liked to also discuss depression, which I saw my father have most of his life. This plagued me for some of my adult life. However, I was never able to talk about this subject openly while in Japan with my relatives. 

Of the grand children of Tiyo and Yuzo I am the only one with type II diabetes.  My cousin Mariko older than me does not have it and when I told her that I that I have had the condition for the past 7 years she was surprised that I had developed it so early.  The first very big visible difference in the lifestyle between my life, my father and the Japanese relatives is the diet.  In Brazil meats and dairy are available and abundant and in the US as well.  Since I became a diabetic in the US I have been urged to eat lean meats by my doctors as part of a weight loss plan. 

Both, my father and I experienced confusion, fatigue, lack of memory, focus and depression prior to the full blown symptoms of type II diabetes.  I know this is a sad genetic inheritance to pass on to my descendants, but nevertheless it is in the genes and it will keep moving on from generation to generation.  Over the years I learned a lot from the disease, the medical community and the diets. 

My father was born in Japan and immigrated to Brazil when he was 22 years old.  In Japan he never ate meat (pork, chicken or beef), dairy or sweets.  He never got used to eating sweets or dairy after he moved to Brazil.  The meats however were a treat that he always indulged during his first 30 years in Brazil.   When I was growing up in Brazil meats were never as available as they are in the contemporary American society.  They were a special treat, sometimes chicken on the weekends or a small steak.  The bulk of the diet were the fresh vegetables plus rice and beans.  Usually we would have rice, beans, 2 types of cooked vegetables and a salad sometimes eggs and an occasional fish or chicken. 

Throughout my childhood and early adult life in Brazil fast food chains were inexistent.  Processed food was unheard of.   Sodas would be parsimoniously consumed on special occasions only.  When my father was 50 he was formally diagnosed as a type II diabetic.  Prior to that in his 40’s he had many bouts of confusion, disorientation and helplessness.  He would improve with the alkaline diet already widely known in Brazil in the 70’s.  My family followed this diet for periods during this time.  After the diagnosis of diabetes when the doctor recommended that he moved back to the alkalinizing diet and be serious about it.  He did it and was able to control his diabetes for over 20 years with good health.

When Ciro, Rodrigo and I moved to the US in 1989, I was very shaken by the distance from my family and the total lack of any household help.  Cooking vegetables like I used to do in Brazil is time consuming.  The vegetables have to be bought fresh, washed, and cooked with different recipes that will enhance their natural qualities.  Rodrigo was a darling 3 year old boy and missed the family terribly.  As soon as he started school in the US he brought home the 4 food groups chart, which gave equal importance to meats, dairy, cereal and fruits and vegetables.   Ciro soon had all his time consumed by his studies and I was in charge of taking care of my child, household and trying to make a little extra money.  

When I observed the American eating habits, MacDonad’s Burger King, KFC and many others, they were very different from what we used to eat.  They did surprisingly fit the 4 food groups chart and also they were cheap, fit our student’s budget the natives ate that and seemed healthy so I thought I might as well try it.  So try it we did.  On the following 10 years we indulged in pizza, hamburgers, processed foods and sodas.  I immediately started having weight problems and so did my son who gained weight that would not go away even with him going to Karate 4 times a week and biking 4 miles a day. 

Extreme allergies, confusion, fatigue, lack of memory, focus, tiredness and depression hit me hard during those times as well.  In 1995 I was pregnant with Juliana.    On the first pregnancy meeting with the OBG nurse, she talked and talked about the importance of eating lots of carbs as opposed to following the 4 food groups chart apparently the FDA recommendation had changed.  That was news to me.  At that point I knew something was wrong with the 4 groups food plan, so I went for the pastas that the nurse was recommending.  Soon I developed blown out gestational diabetes. Because of that I started having weekly consultations with the nutritionist.  She recommended a diet rich in fat free dairy, vegetables, whole grains and lean animal protein.  My father was controlling his diabetes with the alkalinizing diet that is different and I pointed this out to her.  I offered to have alkaline foods for breakfast and even to make my diet totally alkaline.  She declined my suggestion.  She added that I should avoid oily fruits, nuts and vegetables such as almonds, coconut and avocados, as a way of avoiding calories and keeping my weight low.  After Adriana my third child was born the depression got so bad that I was virtually catatonic.  The doctor was quick to prescribe Prozac, however she also recommended the book “the Zone” by Barry Sears which advocates a diet similar to the alkaline diet, cutting heavily on carbs including whole grains, but still with the addition of lean protein and dairy.   My improvement from the depression was so formidable from the depression after I started that diet was so amazing that from that day on I became a firm believer on being able to control one’s health with the diet. 

Because I had had gestational diabetes I was on the watch for type II with the recommendation of loosing weight after the deliveries.  For the next 5 years I tried to loose weight on the low carbohydrates, animal protein diet unsuccessfully.  The lack of energy continued to plague me, again and again I would request doctor appointments and ask to be tested for thyroid problems or the diabetes, the doctor kept telling me that it was normal for a 37 year old woman with 2 small children to want to sleep 15 hours on a 24 hour period and that I was just tired. 

Indeed type II diabetes developed and in a way I was hoping that with the treatment for the diabetes I would finally solve the energy and weight issues I had had for the past 15 years.   The first recommendation was to stick to the diet with low fat animal proteins and dairy and a lot of vegetables, it worked for a while and soon did not work any more, my A1c levels were getting high and I started on Metformim, also the cholesterol was high and for that I got started on Lipitor.  As I started on the Metformim my appetite for sweets and carbohydrates became ravenous.  I knew I should not indulge on fruits, however my will power was not enough to hold me back.  Gases in the form of flatulence and burping were taking away my social life. I was so irritable that again I was on Paxil. The dosages of Lipitor and Metformim kept increasing and my daily sugar readings kept increasing as well.  The next step for me was to be started on insulin.  By then I was 45 years old with 3 kids, measuring my blood glucose 3 times a day and on 3 prescription drugs. 

I turned to alternative medicine and started acupuncture and homeopathy.  For the acupuncture in addition to the twice weekly needle sessions I was prescribed a daily tea.  For the homeopathy I got started on Oreo Daphne and felt immediate improvement on the fatigue.  On the following 3 monthly lab blood test in my health clinic my cholesterol had gone down abruptly.  I increased my trust and started to take very seriously my alternative medicine providers.  I weaned out of Lipitor with the help of my homeopath Deborah Olenev and she also suggested that I checked out my urine PH and tried an alkaline diet.  With my antennae on for the PH topic I found the book PH miracle for diabetes and my energy, lack of depression or mood swings, the blood sugar readings improved dramatically  and the A1c reading performed at the clinic’s lab as per my primary care physician is improving.  At this point I weaned out of Lipitor, Metformin and Paxil.  After a year I stopped the homeopathy/acupuncture regimen as well.

After some months on a vegetarian alkaline diet my allergies went away.  I who was suicidal in 1992 because of Hismanal, soon after it was off the market -  lot of people did commit suicide – and underwent over 5 years of allergy vaccinations with no improvement was out of a sudden allergy free. 

In April 2009 I spent 20 days in the clinic of Dr. Carlos in Caeté Brazil.  Over there I was introduced to the Ayurvedic regimen, discovered that my Dosha is Kapha and a lot of things started to make sense to me.  How my husband thrived on breads meats and sweets which more and more I realized were poisonous to me.  As I studied the Ayurveda I started to realize that the PH diet suits the Kapha subgroup very well and is timely in the US with the diabetic epidemic.