Andrew Miller: Diabetes is like termites in a wooden house - not so sweet

I make the first coffee of the day, using a decent machine, while the suburb is still quiet and Jane the cat is strutting and posing, demanding my attention.

She can wait.

I like the ritual — the smell and sound of a rich dark caramel shot of caffeine rushing into a warm cup.

It is a small, settling luxury before I intersect with whatever chaos my phone has in store.

The brew is hardly bitter, but just before I start to drink, I add some brown cane sugar anyway.

There it is — my small addition addiction. It can’t be that bad — can it?

“Sugar, oh honey honey, you are my candy girl, and you got me wanting you” — began the number one hit for The Archies — a cartoon band, in 1969.

To go with this crescendo of sweet-tooth culture — pretend prosperity for the masses — the Americans were leading the way on sugary, youth-targeted junk food and beverages.

Between the 1950’s and 1990’s the incidence of obesity in the western world more than tripled, as recommended caloric intakes were smashed.

My generation of men often claims we had superior parenting “back then.”

The spurious claim, that being left to our own devices never did us any harm, is wilful survivor bias.

I don’t remember any mention of healthy eating choices during my mince on toast childhood.

I would often have Aeroplane jelly, two-fruits and ice-cream, or Coco Pops for dinner, graduating to Red Rooster when I left school.

Our hunter-gatherer brain will put whatever energy-rich food is available into our stomach at every opportunity, unless we override the instinct.

We must teach children to seek out diverse unprocessed foods, with a proper perspective on treats.

Fortunately, my wife is brilliant, as I am venally complicit in allowing myself to be manipulated by the cunning pre-primary kid.

I thought of Steve Austin — the bionic Six Million Dollar Man — when I unboxed my very own new part, a continuous blood glucose monitor.

It is about the size of a bottle cap with a short, very fine pin sticking out of it. It adheres to the back of the upper arm and is immediately forgotten.

The sensor connects via Bluetooth and produces a graph of glucose levels in real time, leveraging our phone obsession to some advantage.

I don’t have sugar diabetes — yet — but I do have a family history of Type 2, and a couple of borderline high glucose results.

The plan was to chart my levels for two weeks, because honest appraisal of the facts is the most effective tool for diagnosis of every malady.

Constant high sugar levels literally poison the whole vascular system — kidneys, heart, retinas, brain and right down to the toes.

Having diabetes is like getting termites in a wooden house — without treatment, the structure can be quietly, relentlessly destroyed.

I learnt that white rice, cereal and hot chips are specific provocateurs of high sugar levels for me.

I can now approach the long game in a way that my stubbornly glucose-powered, technology enslaved brain better understands.

Type 1 diabetes is more difficult to control because the insulin producing part of the pancreas is wiped by an immune system gone rogue.

The trigger often remains unexplained, but incidence are reportedly increasing since COVID-19.

Biosensors are hugely helpful for these patients. In future other stick-on sensors will assist management of all sorts of diseases.

I was always worried about the bionic man’s unmodified spine, as he lifted another vehicle full of bad guys.

Technology does not make us immune from harm — it matters how we work with it.

I was reassured to learn I can still cope with half a sugar in my coffee.

After two days everything tastes just as good with less sweetness.

The cat tells me to put my phone down and feed her.

She says she knew all this already.