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Chickenpox caused my Type-1 diabetes

Posted on September 15, 2020     Leave a Comment

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When I was in college, I caught the chickenpox virus. I was working the front office, in a medical building at an orthodontic office, where children came in for braces, daily. One of the young children, in the waiting room, had a rash all over her little body, so I asked her mom if her daughter had hives (hoping it was hives). The mom replied, “she has the chickenpox. I couldn’t bring a sitter, so I had to bring her to today’s appointment because her older brother had his adjustment today, and I couldn’t reschedule, because your office is so busy.”

Chickenpox is extremely contagious; you can catch chickenpox by breathing in the air (just like COVID-19) or even touching the same doorknob (like COVID-19). “Many cases of chickenpox are mild, but deaths from this disease can occur. Before vaccine became available, about 100 people died every year in the United States from chickenpox. Most of these people were previously healthy. Chickenpox also accounted for about 11,000 hospitalizations each year.” (source: https://www.immunize.org/catg.d/p4202.pdf)

I never contracted chickenpox as a child, and even considered getting the Varicella vaccine, but I read that the vaccine can cause a chickenpox outbreak, which is true, but what my general doctor didn’t tell me, maybe because the vaccine was new at that time, that the benefits of the vaccine outweighs the risk. If I did contract chickenpox from the vaccine, the side effects would be much milder.

A few weeks after that conversation with the mother of the child with chickenpox, I had very little energy and became exhausted easily. Then I started getting red bumps on my body, which I thought were bug bites because we were on vacation, hiking in the woods. The bites grew and multiplied. They itched and burned. I went to the doctor and was diagnosed with chickenpox. I go into all the details in my book, The High-Five Diet, about how sick I got (one night I was screaming, throwing up, and the capillaries in my eyes burst blood). A few months later, I started losing weight and muscle, my eyes would burn, and I was constantly thirsty. I went to a new general doctor, and was diagnosed as a Type-1 diabetic, required to take insulin injections for the rest of my life. A
nurse in endocrinology, quizzed me, and asked me to remember if I was really sick recently. Then, I remembered, and told her I had a bad case of the chickenpox. The nurse explained what probably caused my pancreas to malfunction, was the chickenpox virus, which attacked my pancreas and damaged it permanently.

While no one knows for certain what causes Type-1 diabetes, it is theorized that viruses are the culprit. If I could go back in time to get the Varicella chickenpox vaccine, I would; I might not be an insulin-dependent diabetic
today.

I’ve had people argue with me that the chickenpox virus didn’t damage my pancreas, but neither they, nor I, know for a fact, if this is, or, isn’t the case. What I do know, is that I had a fully-functioning pancreas before I became deadly sick with the chickenpox, and then, months later, my pancreas was damaged, so, that’s enough of a cause and effect, in my opinion, for my specific case. While I recommend people get vaccinated, I am well-aware that
certain individuals should not get certain vaccines.

In conclusion, everyone should do everything they can to prevent themselves from catching any virus. Even the best doctors in the world don’t where many diseases originate, but numerous diseases are theorized to be caused by viruses. In this current COVID-19 nightmare we are all living through, wear your mask every time you leave the house (it’s mostly transmitted in the air), keep 6-feet away (26-feet is even better) from other people, stay home as much as possible, and clean everything as if you were a germaphobe (you can even catch it by touching a contaminated object). Coronavirus is so new, that no one knows much about it. We don’t know how badly it will affect us now, or if it will harm us again later; that’s why it’s so important not to catch any virus in the first place.

If you’re interested in reading my story about how sick I got from contracting the chickenpox virus as an adult, how I had to adjust to life as a type-1 diabetic, and how I regained my health, and even figured out how to lose the stubborn fat I had to much difficulty losing with all my medical complications, you can order my book from my website https://thehighfivediet.com/ or just contact me directly.

Additional sources: https://www.health.ny.gov/diseases/communicable/chickenpox/fact_sheet.htm

https://www.webmd.com/children/vaccines/chickenpox-varicella-vaccine

https://www.healthline.com/diabetesmine/type_i_diabetes#1  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2570378/