Although I do eat a lowish carb diet, I am happy and ok with an a1c of around 6.7 to 7.1% and have no intention of jeopardising my ability to recognise the hypo feeling by aiming to have an a1c of just 5%.......way too dodgy for me
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In a way, making your choice of your target A1C and BG levels is the beauty of having to manage the chronic disease diabetes in comparison to other chronic disease.
A year ago I would have laughed you off if you said I would be following Dr. Bernstein's protocol like I am now - especially regarding the fat in take.
My strategy is to do everything medically safe as possible to keep my sugars as normal as possible without large post meal spikes.
The goal is to prevent future diabetes induced complications and try and reverse the damage I've already done and to stop or slow done the diabetic progression in my body.
After reading and following Dr. Bernstein and studying the research of Judy Rhul. I am r'ight now' convinced that the target goals for H1ACs are too high to prevent complications in many of us.
There are risks on each side of this puzzling equation and each one of us must figure out our own level of risk aversion - that coupled with the fact that the disease presents itself differently in each individual.
For me right now, the key for minimizing the risk of hypos is Dr. Bernstein's law of small numbers - the smaller the number of carbs the smaller the units of insulin the smaller the errors.
I am amazed that I can follow this restricted diet and be happy and mostly satisfied and for the first time I believe it is possible to have a BMI at the low end of the scale.
I owe a lot of this to the people on this forum who convinced me that increasing my intake of saturated fats was a good thing - an idea I scoffed at only a few months ago.
I think no mater where we are the key is to be vigilant to the changes to the disease, test and test and more test and refine and make small changes in our lifestyles that we can maintain over a life time, keep an open mind to other peoples protocols and ideas and share our experiences.
On a side note, maybe the reason I am so positive is that I tested drinking a stout american craft beer 'Old Rasputin' with 9.6% alcohol and it had a reducing affect on my BG - this was not the case 6-months ago - it wasn't a full pint but enough to lighten my mood.
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