Hi newly diagnosed on with T2.
Saw my practise nurse today and she was very helpful and gave me a load of material to read. Have appointment with dietician on Friday.
I asked her about a meter to let me see what's going on. She told me that the advice given out in the Glasgow NHS area is not to get one. She added that as I'm not using any drugs, just diet, there's no point in me knowing what my blood glucose level is as I can't do anything to change it.
Any thoughts? I'm wondering if it's got more to do with budgets than medical reasons?
I see on here that some folk use one to see what diet/meal plans works for them.
I'm happy to buy one and pay for the tests etc. would it do more harm than good?
Any experiences would be very useful.
Thanks in advance.
I haven't read every response, so all I can so is speak for myself - I'm a serious needle phobic (to such an extent I have high levels of oral sedation for even minor treatments involving needles and have given talks to teams of NHS staff (incl consultants) on the matter (I've had more than a few doctors refuse to treat me !!)
I've been diagnosed just over a fortnight and if anyone tried to take my testing meter off me - I'd rip their arms off. - I was told to test twice a week unless I noticed my sugars climbing.
I've learnt so much since joining this forum - I do a fasting sugar daily (for now) and have quickly realised that (for me) testing an hour earlier than normal can make quite a difference - so ideally I need to narrow down my testing window to get realistic comparisons.
It's also useful for before / after testing for a food you don't know how it will affect you - I've weirdly found that anything involving beef seems to put my levels up by 3.6 whatever I started from (weird).
I also joined Weight-Watchers last night which was very interesting - Fruit is "free" on their points scale - there were two diabetics at the meeting - one acted like fruits were a poison chalice to be avoided at all costs - the other one eats a humungus bowl of mixed berries and fruits every night -
The latter lady has lost 5 stone and looks and feels the picture of health - admittedly her sugar levels are slightly higher than I'd like mine to be - but at the same time, I also wouldn't eat fruit to the level she does - but so far - the ones I've tried haven't had a major negative impact on me, whilst a lot of them also have related and unrelated health properties to diabetes including heart protection and bad cholesterol reduction - two very important areas for those with Type II diabetes. I know it's off topic - but I have a surprisingly low total cholesterol (below 5) - but the overall type mix isn't good - I'm seriously praying I can re-adjust those levels through diet before they catch and "statin" me - I take enough tablets as it is and heard enough about statins to know it's somewhere I really don't want to go unless I have to.
And I guess it really isn't off topic - because I couldn't do any of this without my testing meter and the info I'm picking up from other members and offline diabetics.