Alfheimr Renaissance

Unn asks if I know anything that can help or cure 'honey urine' which is a tricky problem. Honey urine? Unn clarifies that it is when the urine tastes sweet and attracts flies, and the person is usually thirsty and hungry, and even if the person eats extra, the person becomes emaciated and dies after a few weeks or months, although some live years. Okay. They have limited ability to diagnose things, and urine is important to check because it is the body's outlet for residual products that are not pooped out, and tasting is more of a test. I didn't fucking think about that! Tasting urine! Yuck! Anyway, logically, that must mean a lot of sugar in the urine, and something that is a common problem and sugar based should mean... Diabetes? Oh fuck! Imagine getting type 1 diabetes here! I understand why the person doesn't live that long once that develops. Shit. I have two friends who have type 1, and know older people who have type 2. A human ending up here with type 1 is screwed!

My reaction has betrayed me, so I say I think I know what it is, and humans call it diabetes. Jane immediately reacts to that word, and her "Diabetes?!" and the face she gets as she say "Oh, bloody hell!" while she covers her mouth, makes everyone understand that she too knows, and that it's not good.

So I explain that humanity separates that disease into two types. Type 1 that you develop at a young age, probably before the age of 25. Type 2 becomes common when you are older and about one in four or five older people get it. So far humanity has not solved any cure, but it is treatable, however, that treatment is advanced and I don't know how we can solve this here. I explain simplified and roughly what I know about how the body works. The body converts the food we eat into different things, and the most important is a type of sugar called glucose, followed by fat. For example, muscles use sugar and fat to move. The muscles consume the sugar and fat during movement. Residual products from that work become water we pee out as urine, and carbon dioxide we breathe out. Humans say that muscles burn or consume the energy. But the brain and other organs cannot use fat for energy and needs sugar. Several of them already know that humans generally divide food into carbohydrates and protein. Protein is meat, fish, eggs and so on. Carbohydrates are bread, vegetables, fruit, milk and the like. Protein is used to build up the body, while carbohydrates are mostly the energy we use to live and move and become sugar in the body. Fat is a store of energy, and the body can convert sugar into fat, but not back into sugar. When we eat more sugar than we need, we become fat because the excess is stored as fat. Unfortunately, the body is bad at storing sugar. If we are resting, it might last 2 days, but if we are working, maybe a couple of hours. There is a special mechanism that kicks in during starvation, but I don't know how that works.

So it is important that the body's handling of sugar works, and it is managed by something mankind named Insulin. There is another gland called the pancreas, and cells in it create the protein insulin, but if this production does not work as it should, the body becomes ill, and this is what humans call Diabetes. Type 1 is that production ceased, and that was solved about 100 years ago because mankind finally managed to isolate and figure out exactly what the body needed, and began to produce Insulin - first from animals but later mass-produced synthetically. So insanely many animals needed to be slaughtered each day for all the humans that needed it, that is just wasn't viable. Like several hundred pigs. But it made pork and bacon cheaper to buy. Synthetic production of insulin via modified bacteria solved that huge issue. Humans with Type 1 diabetes measure their blood sugar several times a day, and often inject insulin into the stomach or leg fat with meals because the body does not produce the insulin itself. Eating insulin does not help, because then it ends up in the stomach. Diabetics need to think about what they eat, what the food contains in sugar and carbohydrates, how much they physically move and work, etc. Too low blood sugar leads to unconsciousness and is fatal. Too high makes them strange and is also fatal in the long run and shorten life. Too much insulin kills.

For a long time, the person could only estimate how much insulin was needed due to food and activity, and injected a proper dose, which definitely made their life better and longer, but it was not accurate enough. With advanced microcomputer technology, we started measuring blood sugar via a drop of blood. The most advanced solution is a sensor that sits on the body and continuously measures the blood sugar, and via a mobile app the person can keep track of the value and history, and via a small pump mechanism with a small insulin container that sticks to the body, they can remotely control via the mobile app so that a certain amount of insulin is injected at a certain interval. I actually have pictures of modern pumps, just because my friends have tried different ones, and I've been shown the orange plastic box with the auto-injector in case they run into problems. If you go hiking in the wilderness with a diabetic friend, that is something you make sure to know, and make backup plans if shit hit the fan. Heck, I'm the more careful one and beside being good at map reading, a GPS and walkie-talkie with the right frequencies programmed might save my friends life.

Anyway, even with modern capabilities and living in a country where insulin and the technology is cheap, it's still cumbersome and a complication in their lives, but a sensor measuring often and a pump injecting insulin solves the diabetic problem, and is so much better than just estimating and injecting. Progress has been made in making the body produce some insulin, which may be controlled via a small internal computer. The best solution would be to solve so the body can function as it should or even cure so that the body's own production never ceases, but that is still an unsolved problem for humanity. For Type 1 Diabetes it may be solved within 10-30 years, even if many people in the world will not be able to afford the treatment. Some countries help with the cost of health care, others do not.

Age-based Type 2 Diabetes is that the body's systems starts to work poorly, and Type 2 can be managed quite well with daily exercise and a good diet. Severe obesity, being sedentary and other things increase the risk of Type 2 developing.

It's been a lot of information, but that's about all I can think of right now, and they have very serious faces.

And I realise that Ciara and the others will never let me get fat or sedentary.

All information about how the body works is valuable, and is something I am writing down as I think about things. From random thoughts or info dumps like now, and Caecilia is already writing down what I said, and I repeat a few things to her and the others. I don't know where the pancreas is in a body, or exactly how it looks, but eventually we might try to operate on a dog or pig and remove something, and see if they get honey urine and so on. Trying to produce insulin from pig pancreas will be a huge issue, as the insulin needs to be purified without destroying the protein, and to not give an allergic shock when injected. It will probably take a couple of lifetimes to develop animal derived insulin. I don't know if we can manufacture any blood sugar meters in the future. When diabetics put a drop of blood on a measuring strip, some of the blood's electrical properties should vary with the blood sugar. So conductivity, capacitance or frequency response? Given that these test strips are disposable rather than electrodes that can be cleaned, it is likely that there is some kind of chemical component on the strip that reacts with the sugar in the blood. So I'm unlikely to be able to do that.

However, the modern small disc like sensors with a needle that is inserted and talks to the mobile app are used for a long time for many many measurements, but that might also be the reason why they work, because they get 'continuous' data instead of just one measurement point.

Then there's the issue of calibration and data collection, because we probably need someone with diabetes to measure how their blood differs from other people, because diet affects and blood sugar goes up and down, but so do other things after meals. There are certainly other chemicals that can make a measurable difference in the signal from a drop of blood, so how do we know what is blood sugar and what is not? Creating diabetic animals might be needed just to develop measuring technology and the insulin. Once a pig or dog can be kept alive with injections, elvish trials might begin.

But how is insulin actually made? I know they used the pancreas from pigs and cows, but how is the protein separated from the rest? How is the protein isolated and cleaned so the human-elf body accepts it instead of the immune system attacking?

This is extra annoying for me because it is such a huge problem, and I have sent many links and documents to one of my diabetic friends. I need to check my documents and on my phone, but I probably don't have any useful information, since I mainly linked to it. Which sucks. There are so many lives at stake!

Caecilia and makes a lot of notes, and I'll write down all my thoughts for the future. I doubt we'll solve any of it in my lifetime, but future scientists have something to work towards. What we can do right now is save this information, develop better medical technology and science for the future. Hopefully, future humans arriving here will know more, but if it is a solved problem or via a too high-tech solution like how it is today in Midgård via insulin producing bacteria, then there is little chance that someone will be able to help. If a person who needed insulin, say 60 years ago, had arrived here, there is a greater chance that they knew practically useful knowledge than us modern humans where it is a 'solved' problem. How many diabetic humans have actually cared about learning the history of their life threatening decease? A person who has worked with biotechnology and is good at it can at least help with such things.

Lying and enjoying the 'after sex' feeling, while feeling Caecilia's body against mine, and knowing she is also happy and pleased, feels quite ... good. It would have felt a bit better if she had been at least five years older and I hadn't had other women, but this is a different world with different standards and moral norms, and there is a lot I've had to accept. Compared to violence, duels, wars and slaves and living in a medieval world and civilizations, having multiple women and their low age compared to mine are hardly a big deal. The transition regarding women, their rights and life here, has also been greater for Jane. But my future with potentially three wives, Ciara and now Caecilia will require balancing and attention to each's feelings and needs. Thankfully, most of them grew up with this and understand it better than I do, and they obviously understand that I occasionally need help. Iselin made sure I thought about offering Caecilia to be my company for the night, and so did Ciara. Which is the reason I now lie here and feel her frankly said magnificent sexy body against mine, while I think about the day, Caecilia and other things. Both Ciara and Caecilia are quite strong in their faiths, but in slightly different religions. However, I shouldn't have to worry about religious wars between them. They also have more things in common, like in body shape and names that start with C and end with A.

Sure, it sucks arse to have to live in this medieval world, and my life will probably be fairly short with very limited healthcare and entertainment. But it could be so much worse.

The thoughts drift on and I can't help thinking about what Unn said, about my life being like a Saga, and what happened so far would be a fairly okay story, even though the characters feel too two-dimensional, and everything feels too positive. I really hope my saga gets an unusual Disney ending, '...and they lived happily ever after', instead of what is usually a better story and more interesting Viking Saga with intrigue, tragedy, betrayal, violence, pain, suffering and gruesome deaths.