Ah ah moment

Realising that intermittent fasting/OMAD would not trigger migraines and infact sped up weight loss, improved BG no end, ultimately curing the migraines.

One of my "ah ah"s was the first few days I was wearing libre.

Was wandering around town on holiday, scanning away, just because I could, noticed it trending down, thought, ok, that's going to be a hypo in about 20 mins, so let's have a few grams to tail it off. And it worked - on strips alone, that would probably have been a hypo but it wasn't, because I could see in advance how it was panning out.

After sooo many years of trying to manage a constantly moving target with just strip snapshots and often getting it wrong because of how little the strips told me, I now had a little piece of plastic stuck on my arm which could give me a long heads up on drops so I could sort them.

That was an ah ah moment, because I thought here, at last, after all these years, is a bit of kit which puts me on a level playing field.

PS: jeesh, I'm really disappointed in you guys! - no-one has yet posted a pic in honour of Alan Partridge, the master of ah hah, so I'll do that now to save us all being cursed for disrespecting the king of local radio!

HR-Guy said:

What is OMAD? Phasing in the exercise is my next step in my journey. I am think about the static bike for the days I cannot get outdoors. How long do you work out on the bike?

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OMAD - One Meal A Day.

My first eureka moment was realising my previous attempts at low carb were foiled by eating too much protein.
My second was realising that statins were linked to high BG readings and type 2 diabetes diagnosis... and that's just in a couple of weeks of reading the forum and then following links to evidence based research! Deeply, deeply grateful for this forum.

I’m another one for whom the Libre has been Ah Hah!

In my case, I had been tweaking with my way of eating, phaffing with lifestyle stuff, reading about nutrition, self testing, yada, yada... really trying. And I felt better. Definitely better...

But i always had niggling doubts. Was I missing the highs? What horrible things were happening to my blood glucose at night when I woke up from sweat soaked nightmares? Is chocolate really that bad?

And the Libre just eased all that. A single sensor, and I had my peaks pegged after every favourite meal (and yes, I had been missing the peaks), knew the nightmares were hypo related, and what’s more, how my dawn phenomenon worked, and no, choc isn’t that bad in the right portion sizes. Plus 50 other things that I hadn’t known I didn’t know.

Such a relief! It made me realise that yes, I CAN do this, and what’s more I’m doing a lot of it already.

Antje77 said:

Do you wake up that high or is it after brushing your teeth, making breakfast and feeding the guinea-pigs or whatever it is you do after waking up? I wake up with fine(ish) numbers, but if I don't take insulin before getting out of bed it shoots up like a rocket within the next hour. If you're already high when waking up it could be a problem with your basal (timing or amount) or you could be having dawn phenomenon where your bg suddenly goes up during sleep.

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I waken up high and I have adjusted my basal insulin but it does not seem to make a blind bit of difference. You would think that after nearly 30 years the “dawn effect” would have stopped!

Ann1982 said:

I waken up high and I have adjusted my basal insulin but it does not seem to make a blind bit of difference. You would think that after nearly 30 years the “dawn effect” would have stopped!

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If that happens around the same time every night you could set an alarm to take an extra injection. Or you could try for a pump so you won't have to wake up for it. Either way, it's a hassle.

Ann1982 said:

You would think that after nearly 30 years the “dawn effect” would have stopped!

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The dawn effect never stops and never will. Everyone experiences it, diabetics and non-diabetics. The difference is that non-diabetics have fully working insulin, so the glucose from the liver dumps is pushed into the cells almost immediately. When our insulin doesn't work effectively, it cannot clear the glucose. Hence high levels.

For me finding this very active forum was my Ah ah moment. With just the prescription for metformin and no other advice from my doctor, this forum has helped me to understand how to manage my condition with a low carb diet and timings of monitoring my glucose levels.