Blood sugar hard to stabilise

[carilina]

Hi Steve

The reason I feel happier is simply because I really thought that I was seriously ill and that's how it was going to be. The weakness in my legs, and having to use a walking stick, was really depressing - but since adjusting my diet the strength is coming back into my legs and it's given me hope. I'd been on medication for nearly 3 months and nothing was having any effect til I cut the carbs, especially the sugary carbs. I now know that underneath these symptoms, I'm still pretty much ok and that gives me encouragement to get back to 'normal'.

I'd never had a sweet tooth before but last year I literally craved it and would eat toffees and jelly babies etc, sometimes instead of having a proper meal. It's hardly surprising my blood glucose was 24 when diagnosed....but I never realised the damage I was doing, especially as I was losing weight.

After the 3.7 low last night and a couple of jelly babies to bring the level back up before bedtime (which was 6.0), I woke up with a reading of 11.9 (feeling very weak and achey again) which just goes to show, I guess, that I need to find another way of getting the levels up instead of using jelly babies. But I had strawberries and a Benecol yogurt drink (plus meds including 1/2 glic) for breakfast and the reading came down to 6.2 and I feel fine again now...no weakness, no aches and pains.

Just tested again, 2 hours after breakfast, and BG is now 4.2 and I'm feeling cold - so I wonder if that's cos of not having enough carbs?

I think I might try cutting 1/2 a glic into half again and try having 1/4 glic twice a day to help me wean off it.

I've made a note to ask about Januvia when I see my doc next week.

Your diet seems very strict, why is that?

 

[angieG]

Carilina,

If you get a lowish figure again, why not scrub the Jelly Babies and try just having a plain biscuit instead?
I know on Glic the levels can fall fairly fast but not so fast as someone on insulin usually so something like a Rich Tea biscuit would help to stabilize your levels probably and not cause the spike due to the sugar hopefully. Your liver would hopefully kick in before you got too low if things got too low before the biscuit worked.

Keep up the good work
Angie

 

[Anonymous]

hi Carilina

You say you ate a couple of jelly babies when you were low.... my question is did you test 15 mins later?? and then did you eat a low carb food?? If you only ate the jelly babies, no wonder why you woke up with a high reading and feeling aweful. What would have happened is you would have raised your level to 6 with the jelly babies and then you would have had a sudden crash again so your liver would have had to dump to save your life... hence the high sugar reading in the morning. If you have a hypo during the night and it's untreated (eg. just the liver dumps), you tend to wake up with a hypo hangover. Another sure sign is your BGL reading is too high.

My endocrinologist has always advised me since I've been on medications and then insulin to never go to bed on less than 7, and preferably around 8. His tip seems to work well for me most of the time.

Never just have a high GI food to treat a hypo only... always follow up with a low GI carb food (eg. not high GI biscuits, breads, etc). Your body needs sustained energy. You don't need a sudden rise and a sudden crash.... I bet when you went to bed on 6 your BGLs then dropped pretty quick (without low GI food) considering you're on Glic.

 

[xyzzy]

Your diet seems very strict, why is that?

Mostly because I wanted to control my levels with as minimum amount of medication as possible. So I just take Metformin and nothing else. Also T2 is usually a combination of two things. Firstly a thing called insulin resistance which makes it difficult for any insulin your pancreas produces to actually work. You can usually make this somewhat better by losing weight as its the fat that somehow makes you resistant so lose weight and lose resistance. Secondly T2 will effect how much insulin you produce in the first place. In my case even though I've lost a shed load of weight I still cannot eat many carbs in one go as I don't seem to produce a lot of insulin anyway. So my tolerances even with Metformin are low compared to most. One slice of Burgen, a couple of level table spoons of rice or pasta and about one and a half spuds. Anything more than that in anyone meal and my meter tells me not to be stupid.

So all in all I average around 50 to 60g of carbs a day, sometimes I do less and sometimes I do a bit more. My max seems to be around 80g per day anything more than that and my levels start an upward permanent trend. That low carb level doesn't bother me though. It did for a few weeks at the start then it was just like when I gave up smoking the cravings for "starch" just went. I never did eat a lot of sweet sugary stuff so that wasn't a problem anyway. Like yourself I now feel loads better so why bother changing what works.

Regards

Steve