just diagnosed diabetic scared as a baby

[sandysan]

hi just been diagnosed my ac1 says im diabetic , last 3 month it was boerderline today it doesn't say my levels but doc says to see nurse diabetic ,,, I just done my levels on the meter it states 7.7 but I just had a tin of beans ,,, I am a big lady 54 years of age and 17 stone ,,,, I am crying like a baby im so shocked that I am going to die ,, it sounds silly but that's how I feel ,, can anyone console me on what will happen

thanks

 

[Squire Fulwood]

I am crying like a baby im so shocked that I am going to die ,, it sounds silly but that's how I feel ,, can anyone console me on what will happen

thanks

I don't expect anything bad will happen. Your reading of 7.7 might be a bit high if you didn't wait until two hours after eating before taking it. Even if you did the recommendation is that it be below 8.5 so not much of a problem there.

From here on you will learn what things you can eat which will not spike your blood sugar. Don't panic.

 

[sandysan]

normaly my readings are 6.5 or lower , I still think im borderline , and im wondering if I diet and eat the right things , and my blood sugar goes back to normal is that then cured oh and also loose weight

im gutted I don't know what to eat what type it is , I have been a prediabeic borderline for a longwhile now and now the doc said I am a diabetic I am freaking out thinking all sorts of things that im going to die early ect

 

[carraway]

Hello


Lots of people swear by lower carbohydrates to keep numbers low. Avoid white bread, rice, potatoes etc. Test before and after meals to see what effects you.

There is a great book called 'Carbs and Cals' which I recommend as it has pictures of portion sizes, quite an eye opener.


Another thing you may want to research is the Newcastle Diet - if you are borderline perhaps a short sharp shock diet like this (meal replacement shakes) may help?

Weight loss and exercise can only help however you go about it, so that would be your first course of action


Good luck

Cara

 

[Yorksman]

Hi, No need to panic, you're only just in the diabetic range. There are plenty of feisty people on this forum in the teens and twenties. You are much lower than I was when I was diagnosed too, in the 9s and 10s but mostly I am now in the 4s and 5s.

A little care and attention to what you eat and some basic activity like walking and you'll soon see your levels back down in normal range. Many people live like this for decades. If you are determined, you can experiment with what you can and cannot eat and create a new culinary lifestyle for yourself.

To be honest, giving yourself a bit of a scare might be a good start. Too many people just ignore it and carry on as before.

 

[luceeloo]

I came here a month or so ago with the same kind of feeling that you did, and as someone here said to me "welcome to the club that no one wants to be in". The first week is very confusing, and although this disease doesn't get any less complex, with a little control it does get easier.
As someone has already said, your levels are not too drastic at the moment, so it's going to be that bit easier to get a grip on it.

A few weeks down the line, I feel that being diagnosed as diabetic has given me the biggest wake up call of my life and the biggest reason to be as healthy as I can be. It's a right kick up the bum!

Stick around in the forum, join in, and learn all you can from the wonderful people here... it is the best diabetic resource that I came across.

 

[Squire Fulwood]

and im wondering if I diet and eat the right things , and my blood sugar goes back to normal is that then cured oh and also loose weight

The NHS says that diabetes is a progressive disease and only gets worse. There are a lot of people on this board that would argue against that attitude and I am one of them. You will not be cured if your blood sugar goes back to normal but it will show that you are controlling it.

Lots of people go on for years controlling their sugar without getting worse. You have every opportunity to be one of them. Learn what to eat and exercise a bit.

Good luck.

 

[Daibell]

Hi. Welcome to the world diabetics! Your blood sugar is not too bad so don't panic as I'm sure the approach to diet the other posters have suggested will bring you into the normal range. I was in the 20s/30s mmol when diagnosed and have managed over the years to control my sugars one way or another. Your diabetes will no doubt be Type 2 arising from Insulin resistance. The resistance should be reduced or even eliminated if you can reduce your weight thru a low-carb diet. If you can reduce your weight into the normal range and hence have normal blood sugar you should have a normal life with none of the long-term bad side to diabetes; the right diet is usually the key.

 

[Mireille]

Hi, No need to panic, you're only just in the diabetic range. There are plenty of feisty people on this forum in the teens and twenties. You are much lower than I was when I was diagnosed too, in the 9s and 10s but mostly I am now in the 4s and 5s.

A little care and attention to what you eat and some basic activity like walking and you'll soon see your levels back down in normal range. Many people live like this for decades. If you are determined, you can experiment with what you can and cannot eat and create a new culinary lifestyle for yourself.

To be honest, giving yourself a bit of a scare might be a good start. Too many people just ignore it and carry on as before.

Yorksman, apparently the stats for China as stated on this site say that over 100 million Chinese are diabetic. Clearly they must be eating a different diet to the one which you advocate. This must mean that you are not really eating Chinese food or that the 'locals' are not eating Chinese food. Confused!!

 

[Yorksman]

Yorksman, apparently the stats for China as stated on this site say that over 100 million Chinese are diabetic. Clearly they must be eating a different diet to the one which you advocate. This must mean that you are not really eating Chinese food or that the 'locals' are not eating Chinese food. Confused!!

In 1980, diabetes in China was less than 1%. Today it is nearly 10%. Rapid urbanisation, physical inactivity and food abundance are some of the causes. Same in Nauru which had a healthy diet, until they became rich because of potassium mining. Out went the fish and vegetables and in came the ready meals as people shopped from their arm chairs.

Most of the cooking in fast food outlets or cheaper restaurants, whether indian or chinese, bulk out their meals with fats or sugar. The french used to do it with brandy, butter, wine and cream. These are all very easy ways of making a meal taste good, but they are not the healthiest. OK now and again, but not every day. Sadly, it often takes time to make tasty meals from simple ingredients and people don't have time.

I don't advocate chinese food, I just like the cooking styles and they can be applied to many healthy dishes.

Have a look at this article:

Top 10 tips for healthy Chinese cooking
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/ ... se-cooking

If yuo are referring to the carbohydrate content, see tip no. 10:

"Choose rice noodles or mung bean noodles if you want to watch the amount of carbohydrates you consume and opt for fibre-rich brown rice over white refined rice."

I even found some brown rice noodles so will look forward to testing them.

Nutritionally, there isn't much difference between a chinese soup like this:

or a scotch broth like this:

They are both good meals for diabetics.

 

[Mireille]

Yorksman, apparently the stats for China as stated on this site say that over 100 million Chinese are diabetic. Clearly they must be eating a different diet to the one which you advocate. This must mean that you are not really eating Chinese food or that the 'locals' are not eating Chinese food. Confused!!

In 1980, diabetes in China was less than 1%. Today it is nearly 10%. Rapid urbanisation, physical inactivity and food abundance are some of the causes. Same in Nauru which had a healthy diet, until they became rich because of potassium mining. Out went the fish and vegetables and in came the ready meals as people shopped from their arm chairs.

Most of the cooking in fast food outlets or cheaper restaurants, whether indian or chinese, bulk out their meals with fats or sugar. The french used to do it with brandy, butter, wine and cream. These are all very easy ways of making a meal taste good, but they are not the healthiest. OK now and again, but not every day. Sadly, it often takes time to make tasty meals from simple ingredients and people don't have time.

I don't advocate chinese food, I just like the cooking styles and they can be applied to many healthy dishes.

Have a look at this article:

Top 10 tips for healthy Chinese cooking
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/ ... se-cooking

If yuo are referring to the carbohydrate content, see tip no. 10:

"Choose rice noodles or mung bean noodles if you want to watch the amount of carbohydrates you consume and opt for fibre-rich brown rice over white refined rice."

I even found some brown rice noodles so will look forward to testing them.

Nutritionally, there isn't much difference between a chinese soup like this:

or a scotch broth like this:

They are both good meals for diabetics.

Thanks for a very balanced response.

 

[sandysan]

scotch broth looks yummy

thankyou

 

[Yorksman]

scotch broth looks yummy

thankyou

The recipe for this Lamb stew with pearl barley is here:

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle ... ley-recipe

Pearl barley is low GI because it uses the whole grain. More of an autumnal or winter dish though. Good for freezing too if you make up a big pot.

 

[EllisB]

sandysan,

most of the the complications of type 2 diabetes, particularly the ones you should be concerned about, happen in the long-term (read years). You are at the start of a (hopefully) long journey of bringing you blood glucose levels under control and keeping them under control to reduce the likelihood of your developing any complications. It is a journey that you must take, mostly alone, but with the help and encouragement of friends, family and your medical team.

Weight, diet and exercise are all important factors that, when combined can have substantial effects, even reversing diabetes. By reversing I mean that if someone who was previously diagnosed with DB and has reversed their DM were to have an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), they would have a blood glucose level below the diagnostic level of 11 at 2 hours. It is not a cure, if they were to put the weight back on and returning to their previous lifestyle, diabetes will come back!

I will discuss each:

Weight
Many type 2 diabetics are overweight or obese. A reduction in weight in such patients often results in a reduction in insulin resistance. There is some evidence that visceral fat around the pancreas and liver can lead to an increase in insulin resistance and it is thought (i.e. not enough research to be evidence) that fat cells make a hormone that contributes to insulin resistance.

Diet
The glucose in your bloodstream has to come from somewhere. Some is released by your liver when insulin levels are low. This can go wrong when your liver is less sensitive to insulin, resulting in impaired fasting glucose. But the majority comes from the food you eat. Reducing your carbohydrate intake will have a direct effect on your average BG. Eating more slowly digested carbs will have the effect of reducing the height of any peaks in your BG.

In a Type 1 diabetic, their pancreas produces less, or no insulin, but in a Type 2 diabetic (at least in the early years), the pancreas is actually producing more insulin to overcome insulin resistance. This increased insulin level has a side effect of making the body lay down fat. This is one reason why many newly-diagnosed Type 2s are overweight or obese. Over time, the high BG levels and high insulin production rate damage the insulin producing cells.

This is why diets like the Newcastle diet or a low carb diet work well. You don't need to go to extremes, but reducing your carb intake moderately and looking at the type of what carbs you do eat can go a long way to normalising BG (and insulin) levels and can actually help you to lose weight as well. GI is a good indicator of the speed at which a food will be absorbed.

Exercise
Fit muscle needs more energy than fat cells when resting and more mitochondria, allowing them to burn glucose more quickly. Fit muscles have more blood vessels to carry blood (and glucose) to the muscle cells.

That means that they are more efficient at taking glucose out of the bloodstream, even in the presence of insulin resistance.

Exercise also increases your calorie requirements, making weight loss easier.

Combine all three and you can reduce your insulin resistance, thereby bringing you BG control closer to 'normal' and if you keep exercising and maintain a healthy weight, it could be many years before you progress back to diabetes (if at all).

I am coming up on 12 months since the blood test that triggered my OGTT and my diagnosis. I took it as a kick up the **** and did resolved to something about it. What I have written above is the result of many hours research. I have most over 20% of my weight and I am almost down to a healthy weight (~1kg to go). My last HbA1c was 37, just above the 'normal' range and my cholesterol has fallen from 7.1 to 4.5. My GP changed her approach from "let's try diet & lifestyle and review the need for medication" to "there is no need for medication".

I have bought a meter and I do test sometimes. I now struggle to find foods that raise my BG much out of the 'normal' range. Without another OGTT, there is no proof that I have reversed my diabetes, but all other indications are that if I have not reversed it, I have made a significant impact on my body's ability to regulate its blood glucose level.

In summary, with enough resolve, the right support and information someone who has been diagnosed early can significantly improve their outlook in less than a year.

Your diabetes is in your hands - it's up to you.

 

[mikey mike]

Speaking for myself I can say that with a little application and a lot of willpower things can get better pretty quickly.
I'm four months in now and my HbA1c tests have gone down from 12 point something or other to 4.7. In fact after my last set of test results my doctor didn't want me to have another test for three months.
How have I done it? Simple really, I've cut out completely cakes, sweets, chocolate and biscuits, looked carefully at all processed foods and avoided anything with more than five grams of sugar per hundred grams of product. In fact the lower the better!
For example look carefully at things like yoghurt, many of the "low fat" slimmer's yoghurts have high levels of sugar in them!

Plenty of veg, but not too much fruit, eat oranges rather than satsumas, as satsumas have a much higher sugar content, and avoid grapes and all dried fruit like the plague

If you're overweight do your best to lose some, I was about two stones overweight and am now six pounds off my target weight by taking plenty of exercise. I walk four miles a day on average, but I must say at this point that's it's important to have good well fitting walking footwear if you're going to follow my example; cheap supermarket trainers are a pain (Literally!)

You WILL get depressed from time to time; I know I do, you'll wonder what the hells the point of it all, as all us diabetics have a life sentence with no hope of remission for good behaviour.
Personally I've given up on the idea of holidays, unless they're self catering and in this country, as having had a stroke that left me unable to walk for a while, dangerously high blood pressure and now this diabetes thing, have left me a very bad risk for any travel insurance company for foreign travel!! But what the hell, I suppose we all have to play the cards we've been dealt in life...

 

[sandysan]

HI ALL
WENT TO SEE THE DIABETIC NURSE YESTERDAY , WHICH BOUGHT ME DOWN IN MYSELF A LITTLE , AS U KNOW I HAVE BEEN DIAGNOSED A WEEK TODAY , AND I THOUGHT I WAS DOING FINE BY TAKING MY BLOOD SUGAR LEVEL ON MONITOR BEFORE FOOD AND 2 HOURS AFTER FOOD ,, I STARTED TO NOTICE WHAT FOOD I WAS EATING WAS TAKING ITS TIME TO CONVERT WHICH WAS WHOLEMEAL BROWN BREAD , BUT I WAS LEARNING AND MY READINGS WERE WITHIN RANGE,,
I TOOK MY READINGS TO THE NURSE ON MY FIRST VISIST , SHE DIDNT LOOK AT ANY OF THE READINGS AS SHE SAID THEY DONT USE THE BS MONITOR ANYMORE , JUST HBAC1 EVERY THREE MONTHS ?
I FELT AS THO I WASTED MY TIME , SHE GAVE ME A DIABETIC MAGAZINE SHE SAID I COULD EAT ANYTHING SMALL IN PORTIONS AND EVEN CHOCOLATE ,, WELL IM 17 ST AND IM TRYING NOT TO EAT ALL THE BAD FOOD , SO I DONT WANT TO BE TEMPTED WITH CHOCOLATE.
I DONT AGREE THAT NEW DIABETICS SHOULD NOT HAVE A BS METRE, AT LEAST WITH ONE THEY CAN MONITOR AND GET A GOOD IDEA HOW TO KEEP THE BLOOD DOWN , ,,,,,THEY SHOULD GIVE THE MONITORS BACK ,, WHAT DO I DO NOW HAVE TO WAIT AND EAT AND GO ALL HAYWIRE TO BE TOLD IN 3 MONTHS THAT MY HBAC1 IS HIGHER ????
NOT HAPPY BUNNY TODAY ,,,, DONT KNOW WHAT TO EAT ,,, THE FOOD IM EATING IS BORING HAAHHA