I saw my consultant for the first time last week (6 months in). He said that if you have diabetes you are at higher risk of complications regardless of how well controlled it is. I am investigating to what extent that is true. All my metrics are well within the non-diabetic range, according to the QRisk calculator they use (you can check yourself with the same calculator here: https://www.qrisk.org/ ) if I was not diabetic my risk of heart attack/stroke is 3.5%. If I change that to Type 1, it becomes 11%.
I looked into this, yes diabetics have a considerably higher risk of heart disease, but when you look at why it's not so black and white. "High blood glucose from diabetes can damage your blood vessels and the nerves that control your heart and blood vessels. Over time, this damage can lead to heart disease". Same reason as neuropathy and retinopathy etc. But what if your blood sugar is not raised at all? My A1C is 36, he wants me to take statins because my cholesterol does not match the much lower diabetic targets, even though it's only a fraction (0.15) above the normal ranges. Those targets are based on mostly people in quite a different situation to me I would think, this seems like applying arbitrary targets to cover themselves and not taking individual cases into account.
I asked him if the greater risk of complications is because of the higher blood sugar causing problems, or it's greater purely because of having diabetes. He said just because of diabetes, but when I asked why he wasn't able to answer that. Does anyone know of any research or evidence one way or another?
I looked into this, yes diabetics have a considerably higher risk of heart disease, but when you look at why it's not so black and white. "High blood glucose from diabetes can damage your blood vessels and the nerves that control your heart and blood vessels. Over time, this damage can lead to heart disease". Same reason as neuropathy and retinopathy etc. But what if your blood sugar is not raised at all? My A1C is 36, he wants me to take statins because my cholesterol does not match the much lower diabetic targets, even though it's only a fraction (0.15) above the normal ranges. Those targets are based on mostly people in quite a different situation to me I would think, this seems like applying arbitrary targets to cover themselves and not taking individual cases into account.
I asked him if the greater risk of complications is because of the higher blood sugar causing problems, or it's greater purely because of having diabetes. He said just because of diabetes, but when I asked why he wasn't able to answer that. Does anyone know of any research or evidence one way or another?