busybee fluffy rambles

If this were coming out of the blue I’d be really worried, but I think this is just a sign that my resting pulse continues to drop with my daily DDR play. According to Apple Health my wakeful resting heart rate is 55 these days, and when I’m asleep it goes as low as 43BPM. Although it seems to also go up to 91, which I assume is what’s happening when I’m either having an apnea event or being woken up by a low heartrate indication.

Anyway, for now I’ve reduced my sleep heart rate notifications to 35BPM, so hopefully this will go back to being helpful for me.

So, hopefully this is actually a sign of really good cardiovascular health. That said, I really wish this intensive workout regimen would help me lose weight and get my friggin' blood glucose back in order.

That leads me to a thing which has been going on for a little while but I haven’t actually blogged about; last October I had a not-so-annual physical with full blood chemistry panel, and my A1C came back as borderline prediabetic. I’ve had that happen before but it was easy to deal with: exercise more, cut sugar out of my diet, that sort of thing. But this time around I found it a lot more difficult to actually do that, and a couple weeks ago I started feeling pretty gross after a meal. I took my blood sugar and it was 201 — well into the danger zone and then some.

I’ve been monitoring my blood sugar pretty regularly since then and unfortunately it’s still pretty elevated all the time, with a morning fasting blood sugar of 110-130 and a post-meal of 160 or so. Exercise doesn’t bring it down at all. I worry that this indicates some sort of diabetic onset, either insulin resistance (type II) or a lack of insulin production (type I), or, heck, could even be both.

All of the guides to treating those before it turns into full-blown diabets start with “lose weight, especially visceral fat,” but I mean, I’ve tried, I’ve been trying, it’s not like it’s a choice.

I keep on hoping that if I can get my sleep in a better state then my body will be able to actually deal with these things. I mean, I have a pretty healthy diet for the most part, as much as doctors all want to immediately assume that I need help from a nutritionist, and the near-daily DDR over the past 14 months or so seems like it should be helping me with that as well, but aside from the lower resting pulse, I’m not seeing a lot of positive impact. My stamina hasn’t improved any, I haven’t lost any weight, I don’t seem to have significantly more muscle tone, my cholesterol levels are still stupid high (or at least they were in October), and, as I said already, my blood sugar is also shitty.

And of course I still have issues with fatigue and chronic pain.

Usually when I play DDR I’m doing fairly high-intensity high-stamina levels and can usually eke out 30 minutes of exercise. My peak heart rate while doing this is 160 BPM, although that’s only after ultra-intense songs and usually I’m sitting at around 145, which happens to be what Dr. Internet says is appropriate for my age although I have no idea how to verify that it’s what’s appropriate for me.

Add to all this that I’m still not on any sort of ADHD medication; insurance denied me for armodafinil (which I have appealed), and all the other medications I’ve tried have been awful, due to being ineffective and/or causing awful side effects. Yesterday I tried drinking some fully-caffeinated green tea as an experiment and it did help me focus but I also felt just barely shy of a panic attack. Plus, I had to pee. A Lot. So that doesn’t feel like a sustainable solution.

I just really don’t now what my next steps should be. I feel like I’m doing everything right and everything I can, but nothing’s actually helping.