More Support, less Advice for Newbies

[Boo1979]

Lamb chop in a baguette? Double whammy!

Compromise? in a Mad Max film? Now that would be a whole new direction in the narrative!

 

[Jaylee]

Brilliant, Carb Wars sounds like the plot of a Mad Max movie - I'm imagining the two camps racing round in the desert, flinging lamb chops and baguettes at each other!

I was thinking of a less "exotic" setting....

 

[lucylocket61]

I think that this is the wrong approach, and enormously negative. I am not surprised that there has been a degree of push back.
Could you not, perhaps, have asked that posters responding to "newbies":

1. Always remember to ask for details of diabetes type, any medication, any advice from their health care team before offering specific advice. Ask about their issues, what they want from the forum.
2. Always remember to include messages of support for new posters. Many come here just for emotional support initially.
3. Always be especially careful if discussing a type of diabetes different from your own; the best advice is based on your own experience.

You appear to be telling people what not to do and blaming people for giving wrong advice in a very negative way.

The message could have been "please try and give more emotional support" which is a very positive way to approach it.

You are taking me to task for the way i have expressed myself, not my content. Thanks for that, I feel so empowered and positive now.

 

[Scott-C]

I was thinking of a less "exotic" setting....

Lol, Jaylee! We were only talking about lamb chops but chucking a whole cow is the nuclear option!

 

[Jaylee]

Lol, Jaylee! We were only talking about lamb chops but chucking a whole cow is the nuclear option!

I don't do things by calves...

 

[himtoo]

I don't do things by calves...

c'mon mate -- i think you're milking this a bit now !!!

 

[Bluetit1802]

Oh ... how lovely it is to see moderators derailing a thread.

(hides under a chair)

 

[woodywhippet61]

Oh ... how lovely it is to see moderators derailing a thread.

(hides under a chair)

Now you know that you should report it.

 

[librarising]

Now you know that you should report it.

And if @Bluetit1802 doesn't report it I'm going to report her for not reporting it !
Geoff

 

[LittleGreyCat]

You are taking me to task for the way i have expressed myself, not my content. Thanks for that, I feel so empowered and positive now.

Exactly.

This is supposed to be a forum for supporting people, not having digs about them or at them.

 

[lucylocket61]

Exactly.

This is supposed to be a forum for supporting people, not having digs about them or at them.

Expressing the way I see something is not having a dig or against the ethos of the forum, or the Mods would have told me to pipe down. We should be free to discuss anything we see as a problem, or potential problem, and, in fact, the Mods encouraged me to continue with this discussion as they are interested, as a team, in the way people feel about this issue. see their comments in posts 14 and 26

Also, if the forum is not about having digs at people, why are you having a go at me because the way I have expressed myself is not to your liking?

 

[librarising]

Expressing the way I see something is not having a dig or against the ethos of the forum, or the Mods would have told me to pipe down. We should be free to discuss anything we see as a problem, or potential problem, and, in fact, the Mods encouraged me to continue with this discussion as they are interested, as a team, in the way people feel about this issue. see their comments in posts 14 and 26

Also, if the forum is not about having digs at people, why are you having a go at me because the way I have expressed myself is not to your liking?

I think @LittleGreyCat was supporting you not attacking you.
Geoff

 

[archersuz]

Also, if the forum is not about having digs at people, why are you having a go at me because the way I have expressed myself is not to your liking?

Please don't take things personally. If a controversial thread like this is started then there will be discussion and different points of view. I sincerely hope no-one intends any offence or upset.

 

[equipoise]

It seems to me that shock and fear are exactly the appropriate response to a diagnosis of diabetes – the issue surely is to find the best way of directing that anxiety towards practical solutions. Diabetes clinics are stuffed full of people suffering the consequences of not taking the condition seriously, of passively accepting bad HCP advice, of deciding they can just take a pill and not worry about it. We have all met plenty of people like that. The NHS and Diabetes UK do their best to spread a reassuring message because they are afraid that if they sound too firm they will frighten people into hiding and doing nothing at all (well, Diabetes UK also peddles shockingly ignorant advice too for reasons that we don’t need to go into here) . The initial shock and fear of the newly diagnosed is valuable and it is vital to use it while diabetes still has people’s attention – that is the time to change diet and lifestyle, I would think. Telling people what they want to hear is not necessarily wise or kind.

 

[woodywhippet61]

It seems to me that shock and fear are exactly the appropriate response to a diagnosis of diabetes – the issue surely is to find the best way of directing that anxiety towards practical solutions. Diabetes clinics are stuffed full of people suffering the consequences of not taking the condition seriously, of passively accepting bad HCP advice, of deciding they can just take a pill and not worry about it. We have all met plenty of people like that. The NHS and Diabetes UK do their best to spread a reassuring message because they are afraid that if they sound too firm they will frighten people into hiding and doing nothing at all (well, Diabetes UK also peddles shockingly ignorant advice too for reasons that we don’t need to go into here) . The initial shock and fear of the newly diagnosed is valuable and it is vital to use it while diabetes still has people’s attention – that is the time to change diet and lifestyle, I would think. Telling people what they want to hear is not necessarily wise or kind.

YES! YES! YES! YES! THANK YOU!

 

[NoCrbs4Me]

That is why daisy1's post is so good and gives the advice someone needs to start out...

Are you not concerned that daisy1's information packet provided to new forum members is potentially dangerous since it jumps right into the idea of reducing carb intake, but no warning that this could be potentially detrimental (i.e. cause hypos) if someone is on diabetes meds stronger than metformin (e.g. gliclazide). And it doesn't include much "support".

 

[lucylocket61]

Please don't take things personally. If a controversial thread like this is started then there will be discussion and different points of view. I sincerely hope no-one intends any offence or upset.

I expect discussion and different points of view. I dont expect to be told that the way I express my own views is incorrect. I was polite, reasonably grammatical, and,I think, clear. I really dont understand what is wrong with the way I used my words in my initial post. I wrote as I feel, but wasnt insulting anyone.

 

[woodywhippet61]

I expect discussion and different points of view. I dont expect to be told that the way I express my own views is incorrect. I was polite, reasonably grammatical, and,I think, clear. I really dont understand what is wrong with the way I used my words in my initial post. I wrote as I feel, but wasnt insulting anyone.

LOL that is brilliant coming from someone who has expressed their view that other forum members shouldn't be telling newcomers to test.

 

[lucylocket61]

Are you not concerned that daisy1's information packet provided to new forum members is potentially dangerous since it jumps right into the idea of reducing carb intake, but no warning that this could be potentially detrimental (i.e. cause hypos) if someone is on diabetes meds stronger than metformin (e.g. gliclazide). And it doesn't include much "support".

As I understand it, her message is the "official" message given to people and consists of words like 'may' and 'some' and uses phrases like 'Different people respond differently to different types of food. What works for one person may not work so well for another. ' rather than the type of message which I am concerned about which tells people to ditch all starchy carbs, get down to below 50g or carbs or you will not be able to control you blood sugars. Can you see its the tone and black and whiteness that is the issue? It give a starting point for the reader to explore their own threshold and what effects it.

 

[CherryAA]

You are taking me to task for the way i have expressed myself, not my content. Thanks for that, I feel so empowered and positive now.

I don't condone anyone being got at, but I think @lucylocket61, the reason people are pushing back on this so much, is that you have touched a raw nerve by suggesting delay in imparting vital information to newcomers.

The changes to health start to happen literally the very first day that one drastically reduce carbs. Blood sugars can almost be normalised for many within a week or two. Yes it will take a while for that to translate into Hba1C, but frankly if all T2 newcomers were simply told on arrival - " do not eat any food for 24 hours, then recommence eating but low carb " then many people would be well on the road to recovery within a week.

In my opinion THAT should be included in the official message which gets sent out to newcomers.

As such many of us (me included) literally feel that there is simply no time to waste in trying to get newcomers to understand this. This is probably the only disease in existence where with a few simple changes to diet, one can overcome what seems on the day of diagnosis to be what seems to be the end of life as you know it. In those few days, the newcomer will be googling diabetes like mad, and be getting all sorts of stuff about early death, limbs falling off, blindness, progressive condition. When all of this is utterly unnecessary once one knows how to control blood sugars, and given that control is so easy once you know what to do, - this is a terrible shame.

That is SO empowering to know. In my own case the change took less than 10 days to show the result ( and I didn't know how much difference not eating for a little bit makes) . Within that 10 days, newly diagnosed people are either still waiting for an appointment or already being given medications that they will come to rely on believing that those medications , which often have awful side effects, are actually making a big difference, when in many cases they simply are not necessary.

I for one would love to see a very clear official welcoming post that pointed this information out to newcomers. It makes me so sad when I see lots of posts of people struggling with problems caused by the liberal use of metformin which because its so cheap is handed out like candy on diagnosis and which they have come to believe is making an enormous difference to them, when others never found themselves in this trap.

We have such a lot of knowledge about how this all works now. we should be making absolutely clear why we have all had this success, in our very first communications with new people arriving particularly for T2, its not my place to comment on T1 issues.