DavidGrahamJones
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- Type of diabetes
- Type 2
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As an example, It is very unhealthy to cut carbs lower than 130 grams a day. Without knowing that carbs are essential in brain metabolism, energy and immunity, many have cut carbs down so much that they becomes depressed or physically ill.
Oh dear! It's not so much that I'm disagreeing, it's just that previously I was taking Gliclazide (I gained weight after I started taking it), Januvia and Atorvastatin. Plus my present GP was talking about putting me on insulin. I had been told by my previous doctor not to reduce carbs and although my present doctor wasn't convinced, she didn't object, I wanted to lose weight, so I cut out bread, potatoes, pasta and rice and by my "Weight by Date" software I had reduced my carbohydrate intake to about 80 gms.
I lost weight, my cholesterol dropped to 3 and my BG was so low I started to have hypos regularly. In other words, I was over medicated if that's the expression. I therefore avoided "progressing" on to insulin, I no longer take Gliclazide or Januvia and I finally plucked up the courage to ditch Atorvastatin. I still take Metformin.
It might just be me, but I don't have as many colds or infections that I used to, I feel much better than I have done for years and the regular bouts of depression I had experienced since my twenties can now be counted as "off" days. That of course might be that at 64 I don't give a . . . . . . . for most things.
It was the highlighted part of your message that caught my attention and I started to google "minimum carbohydrate". I'm the first to say the net is probably not the best place because there's so much ****, but you can easily sort out the wheat from the chaff and get some proper empirical evidence and even that left me with several different answers.
So, for me, it's a no brainer. I could follow the guidelines suggested by my previous doctor (I've never been on any of the courses) and my diabetes would progress in the way medics like to tell you. OR, I could keep my carbs down while still eating healthily, have a much better chance of controlling my weight, and hopefully, not allow my condition to worsen.
It's worth mentioning that I'm fortunate that my pancreas seems to working OK, I paid for my own c-peptide test. Also, because of a doctor in the US who my wife described as being "as mad as a box of frogs" I have had every heart test going and some I didn't know existed at the expense of my travel insurance. The result of those tests was that I'm as fit as a fiddle, heart wise.