Being Positive

Getting a diagnosis of diabetes can be pretty depressing. Then we're usually given a lot of admonitions about things we can't do. Don't eat this. Don't eat that. Don't eat too much of anything. Don't drive without testing first. Don't sit down and read a book when you could be walking on a treadmill. And the list goes on.

Thus it's a pleasant change when one comes across some diabetes information that is positive.

One such find is an article by type 1 blogger and author Riva Greenberg and Boudewijn Bertsch that describes their approach to diabetes treatment. They are currently traveling around the world teaching health care people how to implement their approach and report that they are getting a lot of interest.

"Last night in Almelo, the Netherlands, 62 doctors got it. And trust me, a Dutch crowd isn’t easy," Greenberg wrote on her Facebook page.

They call their approach the The Flourishing Treatment Approach, and it focuses on health rather than on disease, the positive rather than the negative.

The authors call traditional treatment a Coping Treatment Approach, in other words treating a disease and helping people cope with the difficulties caused by the disease.

Their Flourishing Treatment Approach, on the other hand, focuses on the causes of health instead of the pathogenesis of the disease. For example, rather than asking how the patient is coping with "dietary challenges," the health care person should focus on "dietary successes" and ask the patient to think of ways of increasing these successes.

I think many health care professionals (like many parents) want to improve their patients' (or children's) lives by pointing out their faults so they can correct them. If you have a stellar hemoglobin A1c, they won't mention that but will point out that you need to lose more weight. I've heard many patients complain about that and say it makes them depressed, because no matter how hard they work to improve their health, they get criticism rather than praise.

Focusing on the positive results should give patients an incentive to obtain more of them, and everyone should benefit.

The other source of a positive approach is Adam Brown's book Bright Spots & Landmines: The Diabetes Guide I Wish Someone Had Handed Me. Brown has type 1 diabetes. He is a senior editor at diaTribe.org and leads Diabetes Technology & Digital Health at Close Concerns. He calls things that work and should be done more often Bright Spots, and things that don't work and should be done less often Landmines.

For example, Brown finds that eating breakfast foods high in protein, fat, and fiber is a Bright Spot for him. Other than eggs, one example is his chia seed pudding, which also includes nuts, seeds, coconut oil, and berries. The recipe is in the book. Eating white foods like bread, potatoes, rice, and so forth is a Landmine. He says that the Landmines should be done less often; he doesn't say you should never do them, which is more daunting.

The good thing is that Brown has put the Bright Spots ahead of the Landmines in his title. Like the Flourishing Treatment approach, this ordering tends to make the reader focus on the positive instead of sulking about the negative.

Sure, there's definitely a downside to having diabetes. But I think focusing on that just makes things worse. Let's focus on flourishing with Bright Spots and dietary successes instead.