The Sugar That Ate Me
Sweetness as Sabotage
The body learns to lie before the mind does.
It began with brightness. Everything was just slightly overlit — screens, streetlights, the reflections on shop windows. The mornings shimmered as if the air itself had a fever. I thought it was the heat, or fatigue, or maybe just age.
My energy came in bursts — sudden, dazzling productivity followed by a collapse that felt like sleep deprivation inside my bones. I told people I was “burnt out.” They nodded; we all were. It’s the modern condition.
But the body was whispering in another language.
I started to notice thirst. Not the casual kind — not “I should drink more water” — but a bottomless craving, as if every cell in me had cracked open. I kept a bottle on my desk and refilled it obsessively. Still, my tongue felt like paper. My skin itched. My eyes blurred at the edges of focus.
There was also the hunger. A manic, urgent kind that hit me mid-afternoon — not stomach-deep but in the head, a fog of want. I ate granola bars, fruit, rice cakes — things that sounded virtuous. The relief lasted minutes. Then the shaking began again.
Sometimes, after lunch, my heartbeat stuttered, irregular and soft. My hands went cold. I could feel the edges of myself dissolve — thoughts slipping out of sequence, words half-formed. I’d open an email and forget why. I’d walk into a room and stop, suspended between impulses.
I told myself I was just tired. Everyone says that. But fatigue had become my native state.
At night, sleep was a negotiation. I’d drift off and wake in heat — soaked, pulse quick, mouth dry. Sometimes I’d stumble to the kitchen and drink from the tap, feeling like I was swallowing light. I began to dream in strange repetitions: doors that led nowhere, sugar spilling endlessly across the floor.
The GP listened, nodded, ordered “a few tests just to check.” My bloodwork came back “borderline.” Not sick, not healthy. Just in between. The word she used was pre-diabetic. She said it gently, like a warning or an apology. “You’re still young enough to reverse it,” she added, as if youth were a switch I could flick back on.
I nodded. I made promises. I downloaded apps. I replaced white rice with quinoa. I said no to dessert and yes to protein and water and discipline.
But my body wasn’t obeying. The mornings felt syrupy. My head thickened after eating. My fingers swelled, my rings no longer fit. I began to forget things — small things at first: keys, names, words. Then bigger ones: conversations I swore I’d had, plans I couldn’t remember making.
It was like living slightly out of phase with myself.
The strange thing was how invisible it all was. To everyone else, I looked fine — even “healthy.” I ran, I worked, I smiled on cue. But inside, I could feel the quiet rot. The cells starving amid abundance. The slow corrosion of trust between mind and body.
I started testing my blood sugar at home. The numbers flickered like a code I couldn’t crack — too high in the morning, too low by lunch, unpredictable at night. I tracked everything: meals, steps, moods. The data became a mirror of my own failure.
Then came the day I walked out of a meeting and forgot where I’d parked. Not in the absentminded way — in the lost way, the kind that leaves you standing still, heartbeat loud, world tilting slightly. I checked my phone, my watch, my notes. Everything was recorded; none of it made sense.
That was when I understood: this wasn’t tiredness, or age, or stress. This was the architecture of my own neglect.
They call it insulin resistance. The body stops listening to its own signals. The sugar stays in the blood, thickening it, dulling it. The cells shut their doors. The brain, starved of its steady feed, begins to slip. Thoughts slow. Focus fractures. The self becomes porous.
I didn’t collapse. I didn’t faint. I just drifted.
I remember sitting at the kitchen table, hands around a glass of water, watching the condensation bead and fall. The hum of the refrigerator became a pulse. The room tilted in imperceptible degrees. It was ordinary, and it was terrifying.
I wanted to scream, but what came out was a whisper — I’m still here.
I don’t remember if I said it once or many times. The words looped, half-prayer, half-reminder.
That night, I slept without dreams. In the morning, my vision felt clean, but too sharp. The world returned, but slightly rearranged — colours cooler, sounds distant. I made coffee but didn’t drink it. I sat there, pulse steady, blood humming with sugar and fear.
The test strips on the counter glowed faintly in the light. Numbers waiting to tell me something I already knew.
Not sick. Not well. Just suspended — halfway between sweetness and decay.
–––
These stories aren’t rare.
They’re just rarely told early enough.
Most decline begins in silence —
a skipped check-up, a cough you dismiss, a breath you pretend is fine.
She didn’t need saving.
Just a warning sooner.
––– Pause Here –––
If this feels familiar, you’re not alone.
Most illness doesn’t start with a bang.
It starts when silence becomes habit.
Lingzhi isn’t a miracle.
It’s a habit.
A quiet, daily way to care for the body —
before silence becomes suffering.
Lingzhi is a traditional food taken to support general well-being. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. For personalised advice, please consult a qualified healthcare practitioner.
#SubHealthStories #HealthIsAHabit #HappyHealthyLingzhi
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