Lack of Continuity in Information out There -I Give Up!

Hi Ray,

I get lows, but I get highs too.
My last AIC was 6.3, which is a BS of 147
I get the same symptoms with the highs and the lows–shaking, trembling, my voice wavers, I feel nauseous, can’t concentrate.
I have tried all sorts of diets. Exercise does not affect my weight. When a half hour didn’t work, I upped it to one full hour. When I lived back east, my neighbors commented how I was out there in 12 degree weather, rain, snow, did my 4 miles every day.

I am at the point where I stopped. It doesn’t matter if I exercise. I was even doing resistance exercises and I cannot build any muscle tissue.
I had gone to an endo on Medicaid. There were 2 to pick from. One had a dead phone number. The other, I went to see him, told him everything, he got out his Rx pad and wrote me a script for Metformin. Never even asked me to come back. I asked the girl at the front desk who gave me this, “oh, I dont know.” I said, “Why is it my problem to make you ask him, so you make it my problem, when he flew out of the room?” Jeesh.
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I am nauseous a lot, with stomach pain, so I don’t always eat on time, or I get called into work, and it turns into 4 hours, and my blood sugar gets low. I try to control it then, by eating a piece of candy, so I am not sweating and shaking.
Thanks for looking up the protein calculator!

Stomach upset is a side effect of Metformin that usually goes
away in time. I don’t know your dosage or type of Metformin
you are on. I can only guess that you are on 500 mg twice
a day ? I recommend you switch to either SR slow release
or the XR extended release. Usually people on Metformin tend
to lose weight. If you are on 1000 mg per day you might want
to try 500 XR. I feel that you are over dosed on the Metformin.
Can you tell me the amount per day and the type ? I feel that
you are eating too many carbs to compensate for the over dosage.

I am on Metformin ER. I could not tolerate the regular Metformin. This ER still gives me some stomach upset, but not near the problems I had with the regular version of the drug. I am now on 1500 mg per day. 1000 mg per day is a base dosage, so it is not too much.
I have not lost weight on it. It has not impacted my blood sugars.
Exercise does not help me lose weight or impact my blood sugars.
Diet has not affected my diabetes, and I had gotten to where I was barely eating carbs, my only carbs are vegetables. I may eat a lot of veggies, but they don’t add up to a lot.
So I am not eating too many carbs. Not unless I go on this Diabetic Educator’s diet. Then I will be eating 150 grams of carbs per day. Right now, I would say I am not even eating 30 per day!

I have come to the conclusion that diet and exercise do not affect diabetes. I think the whole ADA thing of diet and exercise is ridiculous. This whole thing is nuts. Either I am doing too much, not enough, etc. etc. I tried monitoring my blood after I ate, to see if certain foods spiked my BS, but there is no rhyme or reason to it. I wake with high blood sugars.

And right now, I am treating myself to a bag of potato chips, which I haven’t had in about 15 years. They taste pretty good, and heck, I might as well enjoy my life instead of all of this nutty obsession with food and “you can have 1/4 of a piece of meat the size of a deck of cards.” I’d like to deck those dietitians with a deck of cards!

Your right, vegetables do count, just not very much. Most from what I understand are about 5g of carbs per serving. I personally think you should seek a second opinion. However, if you think about the glycemic index, there are many fruits and vegetables that hold a decent carb amount, but are better for diabetics to eat. Like red potatoes instead of russets or bakers potatoes. If she meant that then she is not explaimning herself correctly. She may be a good dietician, but a bad communicator. Although why only 15g of protein is beyond me, maybe she’s a vegan and is pressing her attitudes and beliefs on you. That seems more likely.

You should enjoy your life but you should also look after your Diabetes, the two
go together. Exercise is good for your mental and physical health. A walk a day
will do a lot for you on both accounts.Exercise does help your Diabetes.
It;s hard to tell but maybe if you lower the morning dose to 500 mg it would
level off your sugars better. Have you ever had a C Peptide test, that will tell
you how much insulin is being secreted by your pancreas. The Govt should
pay for it and I feel it will help you a lot in solving your problems.
Enjoy the chips !

4-6 oz of protein a day seems a bit ridiculous to me. I’ll have 2-3 times that in a meal quite frequently.

You may be having some reactive hypoglycemia - when are your lows relative to your highs? I have a T2 friend who’ll spike into the 180s post-prandial and then plummet like a rock back into normal range.

Personally, I’d probably dial back the carbs (especially the starchy veggies) and eat more protein, and see if you get better numbers. You may also want to consider eating fat with your carbs (e.g. almonds or peanut butter) to slow down digestion/absorbtion.

Being T1, my understanding of the T2 medicines isn’t all that good, but I believe that metformin sensitizes the body to endogenous insulin, and therefore is not associated with hypoglycemia, as opposed to the sulfonylureas, which stimulate insulin production and can cause lows. So I don’t think the metformin is the issue.

Adam,

Vegetables have different carbs. Similar amounts of lettuce & peas have very different carbs.What amount is a serving:)

Glycemic index may be helpful for the general population, but studies determining GI values haven’t included people with diabetes. How non-diabetic people process carbs is far different from how we do.

The carbs she is having me eat…I am starving now. I can’t stop eating. It is like a food craving high.
I didn’t have this eating low carb.
My blood sugar was 208 after dinner, and she said that isnt bad at all.
I thought it was high.

I have had plenty of tests. My doc says my diabetes “isn’t that bad.” I said, "Does it have to get bad before you do something?"
So then he sends me to this Diabetic educator. Now I am hungry all of the time. More carbs, more hunger. What gives, she said the extra carbs would make me less hungry.

Walking is a waste of time. Did that for 10 years and my diabetes has gotten worse.

how long after dinner was it 208 ?

More carbs makes people more hungry.

Then don’t eat like she suggests.

208 is very high & not surprising given what she told you to eat. This woman doesn’t seem to know much.

Have you ever asked to be tested for type 1, adult onset, rather than type 2?

I test 2 hours after eating.

How do they test and differentiate between Type I and Type II?

I was willing to give it a try based on not doing well on my own.
I asked her tonight about it all, and I asked her if anyone else she has counseled had food cravings. She said one woman went and ate a whole box of Costco cookies. She told me the cravings would go away.

I later asked her if the woman who ate the Costco cookies stopped having the cravings. She said, no, the woman never came back to her either.

What I’ve experienced is that lower carb made my carb cravings go away. I used to eat huge bowls of pasta with an entire loaf of French bread for dinner. That was before I was diagnosed:) I was a starch junkie–pasta, rice, bread, beans.

What are your specific cravings?

GAD antibody test to measure if your pancreas is under attack & C-peptide to measure how much insulin you’re producing.