I’m not sure what to expect when people find out that my son has type 1, but just started taking metformin. He is 18, and just started seeing a new endo (his previous doctor retired). During our first visit, she told us that he was taking WAY to much insulin, but still had and A1C of ~ 8.3. At our second visit, she looked at his numbers much more closely, and realized that his basal insulin is actually set properly, but that Jonathon is quite insulin resistant. He’s been using around 100 units/day for the last 3-4 years. I’ve questioned the possibility of insulin resistance before, but his prior endo didn’t think he was. After being on metformin for 3 weeks, we’ve had to start reducing his basal, and he’s had only a handful of high numbers. So, for some of us, it’s a mixture of both!
. . . and that is a not at all unheard of pattern. Congratulations on your son’s improvement!
Marie—Maybe you should bring up again that great TED talk by a doctor about getting the cause and effect wrong…that the weight gain happens after the insulin resistance has taken hold. All I can remember is that his name started with an “A”…xx000
Exactly!..Thanks…
GREAT IDEA Judith. That video really opened our community’s eyes and hearts to our type2 brothers and sisters. I have seen it multiple times. This is truly a must see for those who blame T2s for their diabetes.
Brilliant video! Thanks for sharing!
Several questions -
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Do T1s gain weight ? I really do not know.
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Attia admitted that he does not know how to change people’s behavior. How do you motivate people ?
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When I stick insulin in my side, and it does not work quickly, or works very slowly, or not at all, is that insulin resistance ? Because if I walk around the block, it aids the insulin to work.
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My beta cells were destroyed when a GI treated me with large doses of predisone. Am I a Type 2 ? Or an LADA ? I always call what I have steroid-induced diabetes. I was thin back then. Now I have the love-handles of a sixty year old man. And I do not have any desire for chocolate cake. What am I ?
A non-chocolate cake eating adult 
Oh yeah. Eating cookies at 3 a.m. to treat a low is not a kindness.
No, I wish I did.
It’s been almost 3 years since my DX–I was hospitalized DKA and lost 25 pounds-and I still struggle to keep my weight up 4-5 pounds over my discharge weight.
Like everything else about diabetes: it depends, and everyone is different. Some can and do gain weight - even a LOT of weight at times - and some so not. Some have insulin resistance, some do not (though, there’s also scarring to consider, unless you rotate your sites well, which can also delay or prevent absorption).
I think you’d be called ‘Medication-induced Type 1’ – which is Type 1, just not autoimmune.
Good point, Thas. While the majority of cases of T1 are autoimmune, other things can do it too. Severe injury, for instance. If the pancreas has essentially ceased producing useful amounts of insulin, you are in the T1 camp regardless of how it happened, certainly from a treatment and management standpoint.
At my monthly T1D support group, one man showed up who had his pancreas removed and thus became diabetic. He also had to take some enzyme pills to replace some of the other beneficial outputs of the pancreas. We focus so much on the loss of beta cells in the pancreas that we forget that we still enjoy some automatic pancreas secretions. Yes, there are other ways to become insulin deficient beyond an autoimmune attack.
I’m in the weight-gainer T1D group. Much like most of the gluco-normal population, I need to limit my calories or I easily gain weight.
That is where I feel typing is harmful. When people put in their minds a person is one type they become blind to what could be happening. Insulin resistance should have been a consideration but because he is a T1 insulin resistance is dismissed. Im glad you were diligent.
I have accepted my D as unchangeable and a done deal. If they came up with a cure, I still wouldn’t eat chocolate cake.
Maybe not, but they the heck away from MY ice cream! 
When I saw my endocrinologist for the first time, after a diagnosis of LADA by my PCP, he said to me, “You do not have Type 2 diabetes.” I guess he wanted me to know that so that I understand why I will probably start with mealtime insulin when my honeymoon period is over and so that I understand the difference. I don’t understand the defensiveness, though. Why does it matter if someone says they don’t have Type 2? I could have been a self induced Type 2 because I ate wrong my whole life and was overweight. I have been on a low carb lifestyle for over a year and have lost 65 pounds, but that probably won’t help my LADA. Either way it sucks!!
Too many doctors and other medical professionals feel that way – that bit of the ‘blame game’ that implies that YOU did this to yourself. There is no acceptable excuse from medical professionals who promote that idea than from anyone else – less so from them, in fact. Type notwithstanding, you certainly did NOT intentionally do yourself harm, and in fact most likely are NOT at all to blame (Not speaking to you, @LHromika, but to the general population of “YOUs” that hear this regularly from he medical community.)
As I said above and elsewhere on the forum, I actively pursued a “healthy lifestyle,” based on the best medical and nutritional advice I could find at the time, for at least a dozen years before my diagnosis. I was at a healthy weight. I was exercising actively daily. I ate a diet consisting primarily of “healthy” foods. At my diagnosis, my doctor was incredulous and kept repeating “You have diabetes??” like that would help.
Could be, it’s a problem in the “environment” or in the general diet, or in the food additives many of us consume much of the time. OR, genetics, or it could be any of a thousand other things.
OR it could be that the definition of a “healthy lifestyle” that we’ve been told to follow is in fact totally wrong – perhaps there are better ways that EVERYONE should eat/exercise/sleep/live. Be it LCHF, LCHP, or any other “better” approach, I can’t say, but something other than what we’ve been told to do. If this last is in fact the case, any doctor or other medical professional that tells someone “Well, you have Type 2 diabetes” or even the reverse, as you were told, but in what seemed like a defensive way… the patient should turn to that doctor and ask, “Why did YOU and your medical experts do this to me!!?”