Diagnosed 3 weeks ago. I am using an app to track my numbers and currently averaging 124 after 2.5 weeks of testing and drugs. My biggest problem is that I wake up each morning saying "OMG: I'm a diabetic". Grew up believing it was a disease of sloth. I guess like anyone who has this diagnosis I hope I can somehow get my numbers down and maybe go off meds. Is this a realistic hope??
When I was first diagnosed T2 in 1988 I was stunned. I controlled it with diet and playing ice hockey (exercise) for about 4 years. Then came the oral meds. Then finally insulin in 1996.
Maintaining you health is certainly a way to help combat the disease. But you must realize that diabetes is a progressive disease. You may exercise more, loose weight and eat healthy and be able to stop the meds. Or you may not.
The longer you stay on this site and read the more you are going to learn some very important facts. Like diabetes is different for each diabetic. What works for me may not work for you.
Good luck and remember...YOU CAN DO IT!
thank you for your insight broken pole. may i ask at what age you were diagnosed?
Hi, visart! I'm sorry you had to join our club, but we're all in this together and I'm glad you found us. Welcome!
I see from your profile that your last HbA1C was 8.5, According to Dr. Bernstein, you'd calculate your mean plasma glucose over the last three to four months thus:
Mean Plasma Glucose = ((A1C x 35.6) - 77.3)
or in your case ((8.5 * 35.6) - 77.3) = 225 mg/dl
You have plenty of room for improvement and I know that you can get that down in no time if you put your mind to it. Let us know what kind of medications you're taking and how you're dealing with carbs in your diet, what kind of exercise and how much, etc. and we'll do our best to help you.
Right now you're pretty much in shock -- I know, that's how we all were. Upset. Shocked. Scared. Wishing it would all just go away. Overwhelmed by all the buzz-words and information. It takes time to get a handle on it. Gretchen Becker has a good book, "Type 2 Diabetes: The First Year." I found it very helpful. This website is great. The Blood Sugar 101 website is helpful.
The bad news is that if you are not overweight and already exercise regularly, there's a strong chance that you have inherited some not-so-great combination of the diabetes genes (sorry!!!) and you may not be able to go completely off of medications in the future.
The good news is that if you seriously up your game (tight control of your carb intake, vigorous exercise on a near-daily basis, making sure you're not carrying any excess body fat) you might be able to get by for a long time on minimal meds and put off insulin use for a very long time.
However, please note that using diabetes meds -- especially insulin -- is MUCH preferable to diabetic complications, so try to let go of any anti-med, anti-insulin attitudes right now. They may turn out to be your very best allies in fighting off any long-term diabetes-related complications.
Right now, it's all about learning. You're about to get a lot of new information. I hope it won't feel like the proverbial "fire hose in the face". Just pace yourself and when you feel overwhelmed, go for a walk! For T2 (insulin resistant) diabetics, exercise is the golden key to lower BG's.
Thanks LaGuitriste. I work out in martial arts 5 days a week and walk 30 mins on the others. I am taking medformin 1000mg extended release once daily at night. I don't have much weigh to lose.I have to hook up with a CDE to go over diet. All I know is that any kind of bread, even recommended sprouted types spike my blood levels. For some reason every time I eat salmon my numbers go down! Do all diabetics eventually end up using insulin??
visart, I was 34 when diagnosed.
Welcome to the forum, visart!
Salmon makes my numbers go down, too. It's one of my favourite protein sources. I think it's so effective because it's protein and it's full of omega 3 fatty acids which are good for us. You may find, over time, that protein, in general, keeps your BG level or helps it lower. Fat will do the same thing. It's carbohydrates that are the tricky thing! Lots of green veggies are satisfying and low carb, but the starchy vegetables are likely to send your BG high. I can't eat any grains, cereals, pasta, starches or high-carb vegetables without raising my BG a lot higher than I'm comfortable.
I think most of us have felt ashamed, guilty or embarrassed to be diagnosed with diabetes in adulthood. The media tells us every day that Type 2 is preventable and that all we have to do is take proper care of ourselves if we want to avoid it. The problem is that this isn't true. As you'll discover, there are many, many thin adults who have T2. There are lots and lots of very obese adults who have perfectly normal blood sugar levels and who never become diabetic. This is one of the ways that we know that we didn't cause this disease. Jenny Rhul has a very helpful article about this at the Blood Sugar 101 website. Everything she writes about is fully documented in respected medical journals.
The last thing I want to say is that the thing that matters more than anything else is to keep your blood glucose within normal limits. It doesn't matter how you do it. Some of us will be able to do this with diet and reasonable exercise. Others will need to add in some medication. Some will need insulin or find that it's the medication that just works best for them. There's no absolutely right or wrong way. And, since diabetes is a progressive disease, most people will find, over time, that they will need to change or adapt their way of controlling their blood sugar. Just as taking insulin is not a sign of failure or laziness, being able to manage your blood sugar with intense exercise isn't the high road to heaven, either. We're all different and diabetes affects each of us in different ways at different times.
Ann
Hi visart -- Yes, lots of diabetics are sensitive to the carbs in grains. That's pretty universal. Starches are a big problem for most of us: potato and other starchy root vegetables, grains and flour products like bread and pasta, of course sweets like fruit juice and desserts.
After all, diabetics use refined grains, sugars and starches (things like fruit juice, crackers, etc.) to treat hypoglycemia because these foods raise blood sugar quickly.
It makes sense that salmon would help your blood glucose go down, fish and fish oils have strong anti-inflammatory effects and Type 2 diabetes is all about insulin resistance and inflammation. Many of us take anti-inflammatory supplements like fish oil, flax oil, evening primrose oil, alpha-lipoic acid, etc. as well as the doctor-recommended 81-mg of aspirin. Lots of low-glycemic (low-sugar) vegetables have anti-oxident and anti-inflammatory effects, too, such as broccoli, asparagus, tomato, all kinds of greens like kale and collards, red and green peppers, etc. Think brightly-colored vegetables that are low in starch.
Given your relative youth (you look pretty young in your picture), your active life-style, your relatively low body fat, and your HbA1C at diagnosis, I'm thinking that it is likely that you will need insulin at some point in the future. If you were in your mid-70's, portly and had been sedentary for some time at first diagnosis, I'd think there would be a good chance of you lowering your numbers significantly just through life-style changes. But your lifestyle sounds like it's already pretty darn good. That you still came up with an A1C of 8.5 at your age means that you probably have some pretty strong genetic tendencies towards insulin resistance and that eventually you will progress to needing insulin.
But do you know what? That's not really what matters right now. Just file it away in your "Things To Worry About Later" file and focus on what you can do NOW to be as healthy as possible, OK? As my grandma used to say, "Why borrow trouble from tomorrow? Don't you have enough trouble today?"
Oh, and re. T2 being mis-identified in the media as exclusively a "disease of sloth": I know several younger, super-fit people who also developed T2 despite their stellar life-style. One was a triathlete and the other a marathon runner. It happens. Sometimes our genes just aren't what we wish they would be. I didn't get Elizabeth Taylor's violet eyes, Buckminster Fuller's genius or Ginger Roger's ability to do everything Fred Astaire could do -- backwards, in heels -- either. Heck, I can't even walk in heels!!!
The sooner we accept our genetic hand, the sooner we can start playing it to the best of our ability, right?
I am 58. Good photo i guess. Thank you all. Feel like I just went to diabetes boot camp in the space of an hour. What is your source of carbs and energy? I find I have to have coffee before my martial art training. The main thing I am fighting right now is exhaustion. I am told this is NOT a side effect of medformin and but most likely my diet???
Exhaustion is directly related to insulin resistance. If your cells are resistant to insulin, that means that they can't take up the energy they need to work. All this glucose is in your bloodstream, but it's not being properly utilized. T2's put out more and more insulin to try to brute force, so to speak, energy into the insulin resistant cells.
Think of glucose being on one side of a whole bunch of little doors, and your energy-using cell parts being on the other side of all those little doors. Insulin is the key that opens these doors to get the glucose into the cells. However, the doors/keys don't work correctly; your glucose piles up outside the doors and your energy-using cell parts are clamoring for glucose, making you feel exhausted. Your body puts out more insulin to try every possibly way to get the energy into your resistant cells. T2's end up with higher than normal blood glucose AND higher than normal insulin (at least at first.)
Metformin works by making the little doors in your cell walls more likely to open up to glucose (it increases "insulin sensitivity" and decreases "insulin resistance".)
As your blood glucose normalizes, you'll feel better because more glucose is getting into your cells and less is floating around unused in your bloodstream. Hyperglycemia (high blood glucose) makes you feel tired and unwell, too, because your body isn't designed to have all that extra glucose in your bloodstream. It makes your blood not work as well at transporting nutrients and doing it's other jobs. Healing takes a while, and as you adjust to lower average blood glucose values, you might feel a bit woozy or unwell from time to time. That's normal, too. Just give it a bit of time. Bodies aren't like light switches. They take time to readjust to new conditions. Think of recovering from a bad flu. You don't expect to feel perfectly fine the next day. It might take a few weeks of metformin, dietary improvements, lowering blood glucose values, adding some supplements, etc. to feel much, much better.
On the subject of exhaustion, have you had your vitamin D levels checked?
that was the best explanation for my exhaustion ever. thank you for clarity. i take a multi, additional vitamin d chromium, vitamin d, cod liver oil and ALA.thank you again!!!
Visart, you don't look 58! :-) I always enjoy reading the things that Jean (LaGuitariste) contributes because she makes complex matters, like the relationship between insulin and cells, clearer and easier to understand. She knows what she's talking about!
About carbs and energy... I follow a ketogenic diet for the most part. What that means is that my principal source of energy comes from fat; the by-product of burning fat is ketone bodies, which are excreted in the urine and breath. For me to stay in ketosis, I have to eat about 20 or 25, and not more than about 30 grams of carbohydrate a day. Less is fine. More isn't! If I count the total calories in what I eat on a representative day, about 65-75% of them come from fat, about 15% from protein and about 10% from carbohydrates. What's most important in this combination is that most calories come from fat and the lowest number comes from carbohydrates. You can read alot about ketogenic diets by doing a search with Google or you might want to check out Peter Attia's War on Insulin blog. Michael Eades' blog is also a great resource--he is one of the authors of the Protein Power diet.
I enjoy the low-carb way of eating because I feel energetic, I'm never hungry, my BG is great and getting better all the time, and it's helped me to lose weight easily. For me, the critical factor is keeping my fat intake high enough. Occasionally, my weight loss will stall. Instead of losing about 1-1.5 pounds a week, I won't lose anything for a week or two. So far, that's always been because I haven't been eating enough fat. I increase my intake and sometimes cut back on protein just a bit, and I get back on track immediately.
It can take a week or so to go from mostly burning glucose to burning fat and, when you first start this way of eating, you may feel hungry, irritable or just a bit out of it--like you might if you're having a mild case of the flu or a cold. If you stay with it, most people find that they start to feel terrific pretty quickly. Eating good quality fat (saturated fat, including animal fats, coconut oil, olive oil, fish oil, etc.) is very satisfying. You'll feel full quickly. If you've mostly been trying to stay on a low-fat diet, like most North Americans who have believed that fat is bad for us, this can be a big adjustment to make. Don't worry that you'll overdo it, though. Do you think you'd ever sit down with a pound of butter and eat the whole thing in one sitting? Probably not! But a bit of butter on steamed vegetables tastes great, as does some whipped cream on some raspberries or floated on your coffee.
I want to point out that, while I'm a strong advocate of low-carb ways of eating, this is in many ways very close to the diet I grew up with and so it may be easier for me to follow this plan than it might be if I'd grown up eating lots of pasta, potatoes and rice. Many people find low-carbing to be helpful but it's not something that they want to adopt permanently. They work with their meters to find how much carbohydrate they can add to their meals without spiking their BG or gaining weight. Some people can eat a lot more carbohydrate than I can. Some find that they need to eat even less. We're all different!
One thing I've discovered is that I sleep much more soundly than I did before I was diagnosed. Before my dx, I thought of myself as a chronic insomniac. I could go to sleep, but staying asleep wasn't easy and I wouldn't say that I slept well most of the time. Nowadays, I sleep beautifully and wake up feeling truly rested and refreshed. I think it took about 6-8 weeks for me to feel this improvement in my sleep pattern.
Martial arts was a very helpful paradigm for me with diabetes, although my control got a bit off when I started working out 5x/ week? I have T1 but to me, the important thing is to have BG as close to normal as possible and, w/ T1, meds (insulin) are essential? If you can get good or really, great BG w/o meds, that's awesome but I don't think "no meds" is a good goal as lot of people seem to report that doctors are like "125, that's great!" when studies have shown that BG > 140 can cause damaging complications?
You're very welcome, visart. No way you look 58. I thought you were maybe 40, tops. I was diagnosed at 45, but I'm the classic T2 type: very overweight, sedentary job, not very active and enough Native American ancestry mixed in to get the "thrifty" genes.
My Chippewa/Ojibwa people were fish and meat eaters, not Twinkie and Coke eaters!
I was diagnosed a T2 wehn I was 26 training for my first triathlon and running sub 20 5ks. it sucks but it is what it is. my .02 track your food intake exercise and meds in ajournal or excel spreadsheet. it helps you understand what works and what doesn't and lets you get you hands around this and some control over it.
You just have to live and learn. anything under 140 is ok my endo told me. I try for lower. You are going to find many things can spike your BF like a cold cortisone shots spiked me to almist 400 I just had a series of 5 injections in my knees 1 a weel for 5 weeks My BG spiked. Many things white will spike you. It takes due diligence. It is GREAT you exercise so much. I a, 84 soon to be 85 and I live a wonderful and happy healthy life. Do not get discouraged you can do it. My very best to you. Reed,the Seagator. I flunked Typing 101 and thype with one ARTHUR RIT IC finger as my Secretary used to say so please excuse my errors.
I have great respect for u Reed.85!!! My mom is 92. Thank youfor the “sage” advice.
Just saw this thread so I am slow to respond, but I just want to second what LeGuitariste has said in his very informative posts. I was diagnosed four years ago at 51, but my Doc and I can trace the start of complications due to diab to my early 40's. I wasn't diagnosed at the time because I was athletic, not heavy, and didn't "look diabetic". What finally prompted the test and diagnosis was a very rapid degrading in my vision (which will scare you into getting your glucose under control fast).
I'm recently off Metformin as my exercise and diet have the BG under control (and like some commenters above I aim for very tight control), but the feelings of being weak and tired take a while to fade. But the good news is that they do. Many days I would show up for workouts convinced that I was too weak to get through it, but then have a terrific performance. I didn't feel strong, but the body was actually stronger than ever. I'm convinced that smoothing out the spikes in BG during my day have helped with the tiredness, and overall health. Even after the fasting BG is back in the normal range.
I also find that I need to add some carbs to my diet on days of heavy training. Muscles that have been worked hard need some glucose to repair. It's a tightrope act keeping the overall glucose numbers from going high (or low) but a bit of extra carb right after the workout helps a lot.
Good luck! I can measure my athletic performance in hard numbers and I've improved a bunch as my glucose has come into control.
Thanks. Your experience sounds like mine. What were your numbers when you cut the metformin?