Minor rant about unsolicited advice

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MarinaDE

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I've just come back from a business trip where I had very little control over what I was being served. Generally the same meal was served to the entire group. Occasionally I would quietly tell the server I have diabetes, and ask them not to serve me dessert, which was all fine. But one place we went to had a meal based on alt/medicine principles and the owner started off by telling the group that the green soup starter was to "lower your blood sugar levels," which didn't sound right to me, but I let it pass.

I told the server not to bring me dessert and the owner then told me that if I followed her advice for a couple of months, she could completely reverse my diabetes. I told her I'd die without insulin, and shut that down pretty fast.

In the months since I was first diagnosed, I have noticed there are some people ready to weigh in uninvited with advice about supplements, nutrition, you name it. No doctor has ever bounded across the room at a social event to start telling me how to change my life, but there are some people who can't wait to do it. It's very annoying.

It's worse for a friend of mine who has kids with Type 1, as other people will berate her to her face about the sugar they imagine she must be feeding her kids.

Does this happen to anybody else?
 
There will always be some nosey-parkers who are desperate for you to "benefit" from their "advice". I just glaze over and nod non-commitally! But I'd have been furious if someone had suggested that I was harming my son when he was little.
 
Yes, I have been "mansplained" about diabetes management a number of times, including being told by someone with eno medical training that I must have been misdiagnosed because adults cannot get Type 1 so I just need to eat less carbs and I can stop taking insulin. I can roll my eyes very "loudly" which usually gets the message across.
 
Yes, it happens a lot @MarinaDE I’ve had people ask me why I don’t just “take the tablets” rather than inject; I’ve had someone tell me I must have eaten too much sugar as a child; someone tell me my Type 1 would go away if I did X; someone tell me I “wasn’t allowed” to eat a cheesecake I’d chosen (I’m afraid I told them where to go, and not very politely either!).

There’s a huge amount of ignorance about Type 1.
 
Ah hugs @MarinaDE

Alas it seems to be part of the territory from time to time. Fortunately it doesn’t happen all that often to me. Depending on whether I have time and inclination I’ll decide whether it’s an opportunity for some “it’s not quite as simple as that unfortunately” explanation of diabetes myths and misconceptions more widely, or whether to quickly correct the error and move on.

It has also served as a huge wake-up call to me in terms of how I try to think and/or ask about other conditions (assume everything I’ve heard in the media / films / TV is completely wrong and ask lots of open questions)
 
I'm acutely sensitive to it because I have strong (negative) views on alternative medicine. Usually I keep them to myself, because it's none of my business what other people do re: their health, and I just politely pass on any offers of supplements or whatever. But I'm really struck by how diabetes brings out the advice givers, and pretty much all of them have no idea what they're talking about. So now I'm faced with the double whammy of unwanted advice + unwanted alt medicine talk.

(As opposed to very welcome advice from this forum.)
 
It happens all the time for a number of things - basically anything a bit ‘different’. Try being vegan and watch all the (totally untrained) ‘dieticians’ rushing over out of ‘concern’ for you to burble on about protein and calcium.

Interesting that you don’t get it much @everydayupsanddowns I wonder whether there’s an element of sexism involved too.
 
Inka said:
It happens all the time for a number of things - basically anything a bit ‘different’. Try being vegan and watch all the (totally untrained) ‘dieticians’ rushing over out of ‘concern’ for you to burble on about protein and calcium.

Interesting that you don’t get it much @everydayupsanddowns I wonder whether there’s an element of sexism involved too.
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You've probably nailed it — there's a sexist element involved. Plus, I think women are naturally more inclined to offer each other life advice.
 
MarinaDE said:
You've probably nailed it — there's a sexist element involved. Plus, I think women are naturally more inclined to offer each other life advice.
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As I started reading this comment, I was nodding until you came to the bit about women offering advice.
I have not experienced this. I get the mansplaining - another side of sexism.
 
helli said:
As I started reading this comment, I was nodding until you came to the bit about women offering advice.
I have not experienced this. I get the mansplaining - another side of sexism.
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I don't mean that in a negative way — women are trained to try and be as helpful as possible and sometimes that manifests as passing on advice. Half the group I was with last week came down with Covid, and it was the women pulling ibuprofen out of handbags and offering tissues and suggestions about gargling. But people of both sexes who are into something can get very evangelical about it, though in different ways, and that's not welcome.
 
Inka said:
Interesting that you don’t get it much @everydayupsanddowns I wonder whether there’s an element of sexism involved too.
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Sadly I fear you may be right. White male privilege strikes again :(

Though I do rant quite a bit about how annoying my diabetes is being at any given time, so friends and acquaintances probably steer well clear of the subject for fear of setting me off again.

The visible tech has been the bigger culprit in recent years for me. People having read that the ‘artificial pancreas’ is pretty much a cure, or that I needed an insulin pump because my diabetes was particularly ‘bad’.
 
Yes we’ve had it a bit, most annoyingly from primary school teachers who weren’t my daughter’s class teacher and therefore not in any of the meetings about how to deal with her diabetes, yet still thought they knew better than I did! And refused to listen when I tried to explain. It isn’t just the diabetes though, she’s now in a wheelchair (completely unrelated problem) and gets all sorts of condescending comments, people demanding to know what’s wrong with her (to which she is sorely tempted, although not yet brave enough, to reply “I’ll tell you all my medical history if you tell me yours”), and just a couple of days ago she was in a nail bar with a friend, and some random woman patted her on the thighs and said “there, there…” in a comforting voice, my daughter and her friend just looked at each other thinking “what on earth just happened there?!”
 
I wonder whether a bit of sexism is involved when on several occasions people (both men and women) have immediately stared at my waist area and exclaimed 'but you're thin!' when they’ve discovered I have diabetes. Do they stare at men's figures and make the same comment, I wonder?
 
Be careful, you might be reported for offending someone who thinks they are fully medically qualified to offer medical advice about not taking NHS prescription medication advised by GP who has studied medicine, god forbid anyone state that "simply reducing carbs" has not led to the promised land of becoming model thin and going into remission instantly! Or just report me for highlighting these inconsistencies, whatever makes you feel better, I'm part of minority group so that means I'm just doormat and scapegoat and punchbag for all of your hatred and vitriol and personal problems and I don't care about minority group issues, really punchdown coz nobody cares here!
 
Robin said:
I wonder whether a bit of sexism is involved when on several occasions people (both men and women) have immediately stared at my waist area and exclaimed 'but you're thin!' when they’ve discovered I have diabetes. Do they stare at men's figures and make the same comment, I wonder?
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Yes, I have had the "thin" comment more than a couple of times, usually along the lines of "you can't have diabetes, you are too thin."
On one occasion, a colleague who I barely knew (and male) laid into me telling me I need to put on weight (I didn't: my BMI was well within the "healthy" range) and I wondered 1. what right did he have and 2.how much he would have said if he thought I was overweight?
 
Way back in the early 1970s I used to get comments that I 'ate like a man' as all my mother's family were carb intolerant and so ate low carb to stay slim - I used to go sailing and in bad weather, when cooking was impossible, I would eat raw beef. I was insufferably cheerful at 5am in a Force 7 gusting to 9.
 
@MarinaDE similar but different, here's my rant about unsolicited advice from people playing doctors and nurses who are not medically qualified but arrogant enough to think they know better than qualified GP's in telling new members to not take any licensed medication for diabetes, wow slightly dangerous and disturbing, what next telling fat people to take speed to lose weight fast after all the fat-shaming and medication-shaming whilst everyone on the forum ignores this?? Don't forget, losing weight is "so easy" in gloating tone, of course...

 
Drummer said:
Way back in the early 1970s I used to get comments that I 'ate like a man' as all my mother's family were carb intolerant and so ate low carb to stay slim - I used to go sailing and in bad weather, when cooking was impossible, I would eat raw beef. I was insufferably cheerful at 5am in a Force 7 gusting to 9.
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When I am grumpy (too early, the sea is too rough or anything else than upsets me), anyone who is cheerful is insufferable.
But I am ambivalent to cheerfulness when you have been eating something I don't. You can enjoy your raw beef to your heart's content as far as I am concerned.
 
helli said:
When I am grumpy (too early, the sea is too rough or anything else than upsets me), anyone who is cheerful is insufferable.
But I am ambivalent to cheerfulness when you have been eating something I don't. You can enjoy your raw beef to your heart's content as far as I am concerned.
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It was a survival tactic - it seemed to stave off seasickness and hypothermia.
Having seen people requiring urgent medical attention and heard of cases needing to be helicoptered ashore, there was no way I'd lay myself open to such defeats.
 
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