Low carbs doesn't resolve all of a high hba1c for everyone. Just some and there are still people out there been diabetic without knowing. Years of untreated high bgs can not always be reversed with less carbs. Insulin will always be needed in the interim to get hba1c down and time to educate that newly diagnosed person. Posters are the lucky ones. Not all newly diagnosed are on-line or confident enough to post. I wish it was a simple as low carb and high bgs go away without medication.
I will try my hardest to go no meds after bariatric surgery on very low calories but there is no guarantees. I've been low carb for about a year now but still not on no meds or close.
Metformin is more of a benefit than just for diabetes support for me.
Diabetes isnt my only health problem.
Maybe that's what makes the difference, for me.
I understand your point completely, however no doctor, nor patient can know if diet alone "could work" unless given the chance to try. Yes its true that posters are the lucky ones - but that is because the NHS advice does NOTHING to spell out how to resolve anything.
The handbook says nothing at all about what " lifestyle changes" actually means to anyone. From reports on here its clear that for very many people lifestyle changes are either enough or a very significant contributor to resolving/ reducing the problem. If a patient reports is diagnosed with hba1C above 7.5 and the NHS says that insulin is an appropriate treatment regime day 1 (or the other less powerful drugs in less extreme cases ) - then where that regime is used, those patients never got the chance to find out . In my own case my own doctor wanted to do precisely that.
The doctor I met last week said that he would put all such patients on insulin immediately because of how critical it was to bring blood sugar down and then think later about trying to encourage lifestyle changes. Of course some people will report in with sky high actual blood sugars and maybe ketoacidosis, and in those cases of course drugs must be used. For very many of us that is not the position we are in on diagnosis.
By issuing the prescription, or injecting the insulin, the doctor is sending the message " I CAN FIX YOU " you don't need to do anything. Anything he says thereafter will be coloured by that.
On the day of diagnosis, you are in shock and probably for the first time in your life, truly fundamentally afraid that your body is going to give up on you. To me that is the day when if someone is given a very clear message - "Stop eating processed foods, sugar and starchy carbohydrates and start walking TODAY - come back in 30 days and we will look again . I will be able to tell from a new set of blood tests if you did it or not. Then we can discuss the way forward " then that is most likely to result in the patient actually trying to make the lifestyle change .
By introducing drugs as an option day 1 - we send the message that this is fixable without fundamental change. All the evidence shows its not actually fixable with drugs, just that drugs will help to varying degrees depending on the extent of the underlying damage. There are still reports showing patients who have been on insulin for years, being able to come off it with the assistance of LCHF and exercise - those patients probably never needed it in the first place.
People may have been living with it for years ( as I was - at least three) . My blood sugars came down into a more normal range within 10 days with no medication - within 30 I knew I was on the right track, as do many other new people on here.
I recognise entirely that for some people medication is fundamental for T2 diagnosis however I question completely the current treatment protocol and time line.
