‘The healthy options aren't at the top of the menu.’

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

(HealthDay News) -- Marc Onigman knew something was wrong when he looked up to check departing flights on an airport monitor and couldn't read a thing.

Onigman, a 57-year-old Boston resident, and his wife were sitting at Logan International Airport in 1999, waiting to board a flight for London .

"It was blurry," Onigman recalled. "I had been traveling a lot at the time, and I knew I should have been able to read that monitor. I looked around, and I couldn't really see letters on signs."

He turned to his wife and told her, "I have a problem." They never boarded the plane.

Instead, they went to a doctor, where Onigman was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. The blurred vision was a symptom of his disease.

"I was pretty surprised," he said of his initial reaction. "I thought, 'This is not great news.' "

But the more Onigman, who works as a salesman in the health and fitness field, thought about it, the more it made sense. "I'm relatively out of shape, overweight, all of the classic indicators for type 2 adult onset, unfortunately," he said.

There's also a history of diabetes in his family. His grandmother died from diabetes in 1955, his father had it, and his children Julie and Michael both have type 1 diabetes.

The doctor put Onigman on oral drugs to control his diabetes, and he responded well. "My number quickly came down, and since then I've had it pretty under control with the oral drugs and a stepped-up fitness program," he said.

That fitness program includes some strength training, and Onigman just bought a pedometer. He's shooting for 12,500 steps a day.

"I just try to be more active," said Onigman. "I try to stand up more. When I'm in the airport, I don't sit and wait. I try to get up and walk around.

"You burn twice as many calories when you're standing up as when you're sitting down. Look at any public area where people can stand and people can sit. The larger people are always the ones sitting," he said.

Onigman also tries to watch what he eats, but that's a tougher challenge.

"I travel a lot, and I don't have a lot of willpower," he said. "It's hard to do. The choices aren't made easy when you go out to eat. The healthy options aren't at the top of the menu."

And sometimes the U.S. food industry just flat-out disgusts Onigman with its offerings, like a pizza chain's recent introduction of an Oreo pizza.

"We were sitting there watching the ad on TV, and I looked at my wife and she looked at me, and we said, 'That's a Saturday Night Live joke, they've got to be kidding,' " he said. "But they weren't."

Still, Onigman tries to do his best. But he's starting to feel numbness in his feet -- a complication of diabetes that can lead to amputation -- and is worried about other problems that might occur if he doesn't take proper care of himself.

"If you don't keep your blood sugar under control, you're going to have problems," he said. "There aren't a lot of articles about people who live to be 81 who are type 2 and didn't do anything about it. I'm sure if that had happened, someone would have written about it. Once you're diagnosed with type 2, you'd better darned well do something about it."

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