Lamont D
Oracle
- Messages
- 15,943
- Type of diabetes
- Reactive hypoglycemia
- Treatment type
- I do not have diabetes
Have been there, except it wasn't meds. It was my insulin and glucagon flushing giving me constant hypos, the amount of different symptoms were astonishing. No wonder you wanted to rant. Can you reduce your meds? Or do you need to eat smaller meals more regularly?
- Messages
- 11,344
- Type of diabetes
- I reversed my Type 2
- Treatment type
- Diet only
@rhiuka - I have no personal experience of either of your diabetes drugs, however, my understandi of them is that the Metformin suppresses your appetite and helps with insulin resistance, and the gliclazide stimulates your pancreas to produce more insulin. So, your drugs are maximising your insulin production and your body's resistance to it.
Based on those facts, and that you are looking to moderate your blood scores (fewer highs and lows), it would make sense to also moderate the levels of carbohydrate you are consuming. It looks to me like your body is having to cope with a roller-coaster situation. You take your drugs, eat, either go high (which appears to reinforce that you "need" the drugs), then you go low, which seems to "force" you to carb up. Micro chips? Sandwich, crisps, clementine? All of those things could be expected to push up your levels. Surely, you could be kinder in your dietary choices to minimise the highs, and possibly the drops. But, if the highs are reduced, it seems likes the stimulating drugs could be too?
I'm not expressing this too well, but I would have thought it makes sense to try to smooth out the peaks and troughs, and the most effective way of doing that is likely to be through diet. Reducing your carb intake is likely to reduce highs, which could well facilitate reducing your meds. I do appreciate that utilising medication is extremely important where the necessary scores can't be achieved by diet alone, but I would want to reduce or get off gliclazide if I could, on the basis of not over-working the old beta cells.
Do you keep a food diary, so that you have the option to review your trends, with the benefit of the background information? Measuring and reviewing is key to improvement.
I hope you manage to find a way forward that makes your life calmer.
Edit: I seem to have tried to make my point twice, but I'll leave it, just in case one explains better than the other.
Based on those facts, and that you are looking to moderate your blood scores (fewer highs and lows), it would make sense to also moderate the levels of carbohydrate you are consuming. It looks to me like your body is having to cope with a roller-coaster situation. You take your drugs, eat, either go high (which appears to reinforce that you "need" the drugs), then you go low, which seems to "force" you to carb up. Micro chips? Sandwich, crisps, clementine? All of those things could be expected to push up your levels. Surely, you could be kinder in your dietary choices to minimise the highs, and possibly the drops. But, if the highs are reduced, it seems likes the stimulating drugs could be too?
I'm not expressing this too well, but I would have thought it makes sense to try to smooth out the peaks and troughs, and the most effective way of doing that is likely to be through diet. Reducing your carb intake is likely to reduce highs, which could well facilitate reducing your meds. I do appreciate that utilising medication is extremely important where the necessary scores can't be achieved by diet alone, but I would want to reduce or get off gliclazide if I could, on the basis of not over-working the old beta cells.
Do you keep a food diary, so that you have the option to review your trends, with the benefit of the background information? Measuring and reviewing is key to improvement.
I hope you manage to find a way forward that makes your life calmer.
Edit: I seem to have tried to make my point twice, but I'll leave it, just in case one explains better than the other.
Last edited by a moderator:
- Messages
- 21,889
- Type of diabetes
- Type 2
- Treatment type
- Diet only
