Figure 6.1. The point of bouncing is to distract your mind and body while you practice the exercise.
Correcting Diabetes
Diabetes is a condition caused when the body cannot produce insulin or does not utilize insulin in the right way. Insulin is actually a hormone. Insulin’s basic function is to transfer sugar (glucose) into the body’s cells. There is also a tendency for patients with diabetes to experience poor blood flow.
Poor blood flow can lead to major difficulties in the body, from heart problems to a loss of limbs. And today, we are very aware of how important proper blood flow is to the visual system. Because of poor blood flow to the eyes, some diabetic patients get cataracts, retinopathy, and neovascularization, which are very similar to conditions related to high blood pressure. They lead to continuous bleeding in the retina, which could lead to blindness.
Poor blood flow leads to a response in the retina in which new vesicles are formed. This response is very useful in every other part of the body. For example, if you are bedridden for a month because of a serious illness, you’ll have pain when you first stand up, partly because you don’t have enough blood flow to your legs. Very quickly, though, the body will form capillaries to bring you circulation, sometimes called collateral circulation. If your main arteries are clogged or not functional in any way, when the main arteries open up, those vesicles (the capillaries) will degenerate, and the main blood vessels will take over. So, the second or third time that you stand, your legs won’t hurt.
Because of diabetes, high blood pressure, or other systemic problems, you do not get enough blood flow to the retina, and the body will form capillaries to nourish the retina. Many times those capillaries are defective; they leak and destroy the sensitive and small photoreceptive cells.
To prevent diabetic attacks, always carry fruits or seeds wherever you go so you can have healthy snacks if there is a rise in your sugar level. More important, learn to exercise in a way that loosens the neck and brings more blood flow to your whole body and prevents lack of blood flow to your head and retinas.
Exercise Program for Diabetes: 40 Minutes Daily
• Massage: 20 minutes daily.
• Shifting/Looking at Details: 10 minutes daily.
• Extra Exercise for Diabetes: 10 minutes daily.
Many people with diabetes do not develop eye problems. Doing these specific exercises may help the health of the eye. Concentrating on neck and shoulder exercises may prevent eye problems from occurring because what we need is more blood flow.
Incorporate these exercises into every part of your day. Don’t just practice for one hour in the morning or one hour at night. Find five minutes here and five minutes there, all day, every day. Your diabetes is with you every minute of the day. So you must work to overcome the disadvantages of your diabetes constantly.
For your extra daily exercise, you may choose from any of the following. On some days you might want to practice them all!
Figure 6.2. Bringing more blood flow to the head and retinas.
Extra Exercises for Diabetes
Tapping
I have found throughout the years that tapping on all the bones of the body makes a difference with diabetes. After massaging your face, head, eyes, neck, and shoulders, tap rapidly with your fingertips on every bone of your body. You can also stand under the shower and have the shower massager tap on every single bone of your body.
Tapping helps to stimulate blood production.
It’s also good for you to sit down, hold your legs, and rub your feet one against the other. That can help you to create more circulation. The extremities, such as the feet and hands, are far from the heart. So are the face and, of course, the eyes, and they have a complex vascular system as well. What we want is to bring better blood flow to every part of the body. Blood flow is what nurtures the body. The better the blood flow, the more vital, vibrant, and happy we become.
Whenever you massage your body, you have to massage toward the heart. Start by massaging your feet, then your calves, and then your thighs in a rotating motion. Then massage your buttocks with your palms; use your fingertips to massage your inguinal area to loosen up the tension in the hips. Then massage your abdominal area firmly, but with some gentleness, and in a rotating motion toward the heart. Massage your chest and tap on the bones in your chest. Next, massage your forehead and then your entire head. This massage therapy can make a very big difference in terms of the blood flow in your body.
Waving
Many people with diabetes develop a major blind spot in their retina. If this is happening to you, hang an eye chart on the wall at eye level and wave your hand in the area of the blind spot while looking with the healthy areas at the eye chart.
For this exercise, the point is to go back and do all the other eye chart exercises while waving your hand in the area of the blind spot you are experiencing. Review all the exercises in the rest of the book and do them with the stronger eye while you wave your hand in the blind spot.
Patch the Strong Eye
If you have a small damaged portion in one of your retinas, wear a patch on your strong eye and place a piece of paper with a small opening in the area of blindness in front of your weaker eye. Then go for a walk around your yard or somewhere else safe. This will force the weakest part of your eye to do all the work.
If you cannot see anything this way, go into a dark room with your strong eye patched and put blinking lights in front of the weak eye until you begin to experience some sensation of light in the blind spot. Refer to the chapter on glaucoma for suggestions on using blinking lights.
A Note about Laser Treatments
I would like to discourage you from having too many laser treatments. Many concerned physicians do preventive laser treatments in which they basically scar a big portion of the retina to prevent rubeosis, or bleeding in the retina. But if you improve your blood flow, there will be no rubeosis.
Too many laser treatments can weaken the retina and blind too many parts of it. So while I respect and accept the use of laser treatments to stop continuous bleeding once it occurs, I would like you to aggressively embrace exercises, movement, and dietary change and to work on damaged areas in order to help the parts that are not damaged.
These days, doctors use injections to stop bleeding. While injections of Lucentis and other future medications may be effective and less damaging than laser treatments, they still have some damaging effects. My recommendation is to do the injections only when there is bleeding, and not otherwise. Exercise to increase the blood flow, and you will decrease the bleeding.
Cataracts and Diabetes
If you do have cataract surgery, pay attention to your general blood flow and demand to be checked by the doctor every two hours after the surgery. Doctors hate to be patronized by patients, but don’t worry about it. Your health comes first. Make sure that you are being tested every two hours, and have them test you for bleeding and for any compromise of your retina or optic nerve.
Correcting Glaucoma
Glaucoma is a disease of the optic nerve, often caused by irregular pressure in the eyes, that results in loss of the visual field and, eventually, blindness. Glaucoma can be a scary disease for many people because of this, and also since its symptoms may not be obvious until the disease is quite advanced.
The loss of vision that occurs with glaucoma has a few factors. One is pressure, and another is weakness of the optic nerve and disk (the area where the nerve connects to the retina). So if you have a very strong optic nerve and disk, even high pressure will not necessarily lead to a loss of vision. But if you have a weak optic nerve and disk, even low pressure could lead to a loss of vision. For this reason, everyone must be evaluated to determine whether they have a weak or a strong optic nerve and disk before the effects of pressure can be understood and predicted accurately.