A little help please!

My thoughts.Have a read of this link which describes one possible scenario as to why his BS is high in the morning.

http://www.diabetic-talk.org/dp.htm

It's possible that he is not eating enough at night and that the liver is compensating by 'dumping'glucose ,causing the rise in the morning.Have you kept a food diary? Sometimes this,in conjuction with his testing,will highlight a particular food that makes his BS shot up.I like Weetabix with cinnamon in the morning while others suggest a cooked breakfast with few carbs.The exercise of walking the dogs could also put up BS,again because of the liver compensating.I'm sure there will be others along presently with other suggestions.

Sorry ! Cannot be of help! Diagnosed on Friday by practice nurse. reading 14.4 which she says is definately diabetes. Got a tester! Sat and Sun prefood 11ish it read 9.3 and 12.6. Currently very hungry but can't get to the bottom of what I might eat. Have had two cups of tea so far with semi skinned milk and sweeteners.Any chance that bacon and eggs is okay? Wife has double chop lamb planned for dinner with good covering of fat with peas, cabbage and gravy. Can;t wait (unless it's going to kill me!) Sorry about tone - slightly hysterical.

Hi csf1s,welcome to the forum.I guess you will have had dinner by now! Lamb chop good was it? Lamb chops will be fine and the veg,watch out for the carbs in the gravy.bacon and eggs are also OK unless you are also trying to loss weight! There are some good links about carbs in the 'general links for diabetes' thread in this bit of the forum.They can help you begin to understand about counting carbs and how keeping carbs down can help keep your BS down.

Hello csf1s - may I calll you c?

Diabetes diagnosis can be a panic situation - it was for me. It needs managing by sensible diet & lifestyle, helped by medication as/if prescribed.

Basically low sugar/fat/salt, avoid refined carbohydrates, plenty of fruit & veg & lean meat. Multigrain bread, wholemeal pasta & brown basmati rice are OK in moderation.

Diabetes takes time to cause complications & long before it does, you will have all the information you need to advise others

The basic rule is a diabetes diet is the sort of healthy diet recommended for everybody.

Thanks for that everyone. I see the Doc for the first time tomorrow and expect them to jump around and get me organised with the inevitable lifestyle change i.e. eating like a pig, (15st at 5'10''), doing as little exercise as possible (walking from carpark to pub twice a week) and drinking 2-3 pints of beer when I get in. I suspect this time is now going to be confined to the general term as 'happy days'. I'm still quite frightened and am going to have to report tingling in hand and foot on left side. Just hope I'm not straight onto jabs.
Thanks sugar-free Sue for the direction to carb types. Can't wait to get dieticians instructions so that I can, at least eat something without feeling that I'm dicing with death. Thanks Ian for comforting words. I'm expecting to 'get a grip' once I've seen the Doctor. On the upside I should, I think, actually feel better than I have done for years when I adopt exercise and sensible diet routine.I'm mostly concerned about my life being shortened as I only just got it how I wanted it two weeks ago i.e. retired, enough money, nice house etc. Those comments about not being able to buy your health used to fly straight over the top of my head.It's a great comfort to know that there are fellow sufferers out there who know what they're talking about. Sorry to be such a moaner! Chris XX

HI
also keep in mind (its hard, i struggle with it too) is that the monitor is not a perfect instrument and while it is useful for showing you a trend, its not perfect. The after breakfast readings may not be so different if one was a bit higher than reality and one a bit lower. I also eat the exact same breakfast every day with often bizarrely different results, the doctor explained to me that there are also factors of how fast your digestion is working that day, if and when you've been to the toilet etc etc.
I had blood taken this week and the precise laboratory reading was 2.4 mmol lower than my monitor, which apparently is a common variation. I need to repeat the test at the next round of testing to see if the variation is consistent... meanwhile will start investigating which monitors are the MOST accurate! Good luck with getting everything on track

Hi Chris,

Glad to see that you are gaining an understanding of carbs and their effect on your blood sugar. When you see the practice dietician you may well find that the dietary information you will be given is directly at odds with what seems sensible from your understanding of carbs. This is because for years the UK health authorities have maintained that a "healthy" diet is one that contains around 60% carbs. If your dietician and doctor follow rigidly the government health guidelines (which were not formulated for diabetics), and you follow their advice, then it is very possible that you will see an increase rather than a reduction in your blood sugars.

I am not suggesting that you completely ignore whatever advice you are given, but I am saying that you need to become very aware of the effect that different food types have on your own metabolism (and we are all different in this respect) so that you can adopt what appears to work for you and to make adjustments to allow for things that don't work for you. The key to finding out what works is regular testing so that you can see what effect, for example, a rice pr pasta based meal has in comparison with a meal where nearly all the carbs comes from vegetables.

Thanks for the info everyone. The Doc said that I could go on a two half day course. Said I could get info from this website but still may go. No offer of dietician. Had to phone later to remind him that he hadn't prescribed any lances or strips. Didn't know if skimmed milk contained more calcium than semi-skimmed! (I take it skimmed is best and I don't have a problem with it in terms of taste etc?). The Doctor reckons that no treatment other than diet is necessary or desirable as I have fasting morning readings of lowest 9.3 highest 11.4. he seems to think that in three months time on new regime I may be ducking back under the 7 mark. Anybody else think that?

Need to understand the following. I am looking at foods which, on the label, say carbohydrates of which sugars..... You will all know what this means but is the part of sugars relevant or is all carbohydrate turned into glucose anyway? I have turned to a high fibre wholemeal bread malted wheat (very tasty) which has, per 100 grams, 45.6 carbohydrates of which sugars are .3 grams. Is this, as far as bread goes, the best it gets? In other foods that contain carbs I am obviously looking for those that contain low carbs but also of which contain low sugars (below 3g). Is this a good plan or am I missing the point? I am eating a slice of bread a day (protein 4g carbs 20,2 of which sugars .3g 70.5 kcal a slice) and spuds weighing at a guess about 90 grams if I have any).The rest is fish meat fruit (pears because of low sugar) much less cheese, shredded wheat with drained tinned or fresh rasberries, lots of green veg. Is this OK? Am I loosely correct in thinking that if I cut out all sweets, biscuits and the other stuff that obviously contains sugar or some other 'ose' ending material then apart from the general weight problem (3 stone too heavy) I can eat pretty much what I like. In other words if I was the perfect height to weight ratio then I could eat anything which is not sugar or turns to sugar which (I think) is mainly carbs? Am I right or not? I understand that every body reacts differently to different foods but the basic principles must, I hope, be the same. Very grateful for some simple principles with particular reference to the 'carb of which sugars' question. Rgds Chris

This was a good explaination from Dennis about the carb to sugar .

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2556&p=6639&hilit=carbs#p6639