After Metformin and before Insulin

Hello Martyn and Welcome.

I'm not sure what your Doctor may have had in mind as an alternative before insulin.. there may be several possible drugs to try... and I understand your motivation to avoid injecting insulin to safeguard your Bus Licence.

I wonder how far you have tried changing what you eat to minimise your Blood Glucose spikes? Have you gone as far as you can, or are there still options such as avoiding all refined/concentrated sugars and starches? You might like to read around the low carb sub-forum, check out the recipes and see if any of this makes sense to you.

http://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes-forum/viewforum.php?f=18

Please stay around, read, share and ask questions. Good luck

MartynH - welcome to the forum
I am type 2 and don't have a great deal of experience in regards to medication. I used to take Metformin, Gliclazide and Avandia all at maximum dosage. The medication made me very sick, still ended up with high bg levels.
I started low carbing in earnest and have never looked back.

Normally moderator Daisy is here to welcome newbies, she gives out this link viewtopic.php?f=20&t=17088#p155405 it is a very good starting point.
You will find there are various ways of dealing with the beast, from more or different medication to low carb and low GI, anything is possible.
You need a blood glucose monitor and test strips and keep a food diary, at least for a month, with testing you will find out which foods cause you to spike, next time try to reduce or you might have to cut it out altogether.

Google blood sugar 101, look through all the pages, there is very good information in there, including all the medication available to treat diabetes.

Martyn, can you tell us what you eat, what are your meals like? Maybe we can advise you on how to adjust your diet to help you bring down your bg levels? Only a thought.

I see you have received good advice from pianoman already.

I wish you all the best.

MartynH - yes do look at low carb, in the forum, should also test, you don't know how many carbs your body can handle, you might not have to go as low as some of us.

What kind of meals do you have, we can help you with suggestions to make it a bit better.

MartynH said:

My doctor has said there is an alternative before insulin. Does anyone know what this might be? how successful it is and what my chances are of keeping off insulin with those figures?

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Gliclazide/Glipizide? From how I understand it, it's a pill that helps to stimulate the beta cells in your pancreas to produce insulin. It's a common offering made to T2s when the Metformin alone doesn't help.