One of the peculiarities of the field of diabetes education is that most diabetes educators are not diabetics. Many have never once pricked their own fingers to draw a blood sample, and they certainly don’t have a visceral understanding of how it feels to need to eat and eat and eat. They have some great information, but here are three things they aren’t likely to know to tell you.

1. Blood sugar testing can be painful, or painless:

If you have never pricked your own fingers, you may not know that the fleshy end of a finger has lots of nerves that pick up pain, and the sides of the fingers do not. You also may not know that pricking the side of your finger is a lot more important to keeping pain at a minimum than changing the sharp in your lancet every time. Of course, never use a lancet that has been used by anyone else.

2. Maybe you can’t control diabetes will a pill, but a pill really does make you feel better:

Your educator undoubtedly will tell you that a blood sugar level of 200 mg/dL (11 mmol/L) is terrible and you really, really need to bring it down. That’s absolutely right. If you don’t control your blood sugar levels better than that, your underlying disease, insulin resistance, is just going to get worse and worse, and there’s a very good chance you will also get fatter and fatter. However, what your educator does not know is that you felt really lousy when your sugars were running 350 mg/dL (19.4 mmol/L) and just taking the pill makes you feel a lot better. Nonetheless, you just won’t believe how good you’ll feel when they stay around 80 mg/dL (4.4 mmol/L).

3. You eat because it makes you feel good:

If you don’t like half a cup of Fiber One with skim milk for your entire breakfast, and an open-faced tofu spread sandwich for lunch, then you must be a slacker who doesn’t care about your health… perhaps your diabetes educator may infer this. Nonsense! Type 2 diabetics eat because their blood sugar levels are high and their cells aren’t getting the nutrients they need. Unfortunately, the more they eat, the less nutrition their cells get. It’s a vicious cycle.

Chances are you will need some pharmaceutical help to make your earliest improvements in blood sugar control. The lower and lower you get your blood sugar readings, however, the easier and easier it will be to keep your appetite in control. Try it. It’s easier than you might think.