Blood Sugar Level - Very Worried

hi paul,

i find that if my sugars r high then i feel sick, tried and have a headache. what i tend to do then is drink loads of water to try and flush it out and embark on some exercise (usually zumba on my wii).i also find that bread sends my sugars sky high, not to mention potatoes. it couldbe what youve eaten (probably trying to teach you to suck eggs here. lol).

hope this helps anyway

She might have been wrong, but my Diabetes Nurse advised me that it is dangerous to exercise when sugars are at the 14 level.

oh forgive me, i wasnt really clear.. if my sugars hit 10 then i feel ill. i dont get highs of 14 now. no idea if its bad to exercise when sugars are that high. no ones ever mentioned it before.

perhaps you need to find out for sure. but thats just my way of dealing with it.

wendle said:

oh forgive me, i wasnt really clear.. if my sugars hit 10 then i feel ill. i dont get highs of 14 now. no idea if its bad to exercise when sugars are that high. no ones ever mentioned it before.

perhaps you need to find out for sure. but thats just my way of dealing with it.

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Mine too, but to be fair I have never had a 14 ever. I down a couple of liters of water and hit the treadmill, I can get my figures right down in around 45 minutes doing that.

defren,

im no natural runner. lol. walking yes, pillocking round my livingroom to zumba, yes. the water thing always seems to help and just lately ive taken to putting a slice of lemon or lime in it.

im going to ask my nurse on friday about the exercising when ur blood hits 14. see wot she says, as im very curious to know now, just incase i do go that high. but when my sugars are up i can usually tell without testing and all i wanna do is burn it off somehow, hence the zumba.

Hello Paul and welcome to the forum.

Yes I'm afraid 14 is too high but don't worry it's straightforward enough to get your levels under control and lose some weight you just need to know what works for most of us. Here's what I did. I was diagnosed in December last year and using the advice I found on the forum I got my blood sugar levels back to normal within around a couple of months or so and I have also normalised my cholesterol levels and blood pressure as well. I have now lost over 3 stone in weight too. My doctor is very pleased how I am getting on and has advised me to keep doing what I have been doing since it's obviously working really well. I have normalised everything and just take Metformin to help a bit. Not a cure as I still have to be very careful what I eat but I feel loads better than I did.

Diet wise its really easy. Just drastically cut down or better cut out all things with plain sugar, so biscuits, cakes, sugar in tea and coffee, pure fruit juices, non diet versions of soft drinks. Next and really importantly try halving starchy foods like rice, pasta, potatoes, bread, cereals and any other flour based products. Replace what's now missing with extra meat, fish, eggs, cheese and especially vegetables. Vegetables that grow above ground are best although most of us find carrots fine. Things like yoghurt are fine as is a small amount of fresh fruit. I find the ones that end in "berry" are the best. If you don't mind artificial sweeteners things like Diet Coke are fine to drink. On the starchy foods that are left swap try brown basmati rice instead of white and brown or tri-colour pasta. The bread that most recommend is actually Bergen soya bread but some do ok with wholemeal as well.

The above diet is close to one you would be one recommended to try by the Swedish Health service. It was introduced in that country last year and the American health service and several other countries health services recommend something very similar for Type 2 diabetics. In the UK the diet guidelines are now over 30 years old and are only gradually being updated. As the UK is lagging behind you may find what I and other forum members recommend is different to what your are told is a good diet for you follow.

I take it you have a meter and strips which is great as most of us would recommend you test your own levels. Did your doctor prescribe it? If so you are one of the lucky ones so keep in your doctors good books!

The reason testing is important is you should try and keep your blood sugars below 8ish two hours after eating any meal. Above the 8 value is where the dangers of complications do begin to occur according to diabetic experts. So if you can't test how will you now if what you are eating is keeping you safe? The problem is every diabetic is different so my earlier advice to halve starchy foods is just a rough guide. You may find you need to eat less than half (like me) or that you can eat more than half like others.

As you get into it all and read around the forum you may see people talking about carb counting. If you want to understand what that is just ask. It is a powerful weapon that a diabetic can use to control their condition and one that many of us use to great effect.

Good luck and keep asking questions.

Regards

Steve

PS Here's two good links about what's good to eat.

First is the lady doctor who's low carb / low GI recommendations seem to form the basis of what's recommended in Sweden

http://blogg.passagen.se/dahlqvistannika/?anchor=my_lowcarb_dietary_programe_in

Second is a good beginners guide to low carb regimes that are excellent for reducing blood sugar levels and losing weight.

http://www.dietdoctor.com/lchf

Hi. Yes, 14.1 is far too high. Are you having a low-carb diet? Are you yet on any medication; also how old are you? What was your last HBa1c result? If you can let us have a bit more info we may be able to provide more advice, but 14.1 does need some action to reduce it soon.

wendle said:

defren,

im no natural runner. lol. walking yes, pillocking round my livingroom to zumba, yes. the water thing always seems to help and just lately ive taken to putting a slice of lemon or lime in it.

im going to ask my nurse on friday about the exercising when ur blood hits 14. see wot she says, as im very curious to know now, just incase i do go that high. but when my sugars are up i can usually tell without testing and all i wanna do is burn it off somehow, hence the zumba.

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I had to chuckle. It may be called a treadmill, but believe me I walk. I do walk outside as well, and can get a pretty good rate of knots going now, but never on the treadmill.

I only drink bottled water, funnily enough when in a panic with a high spike I can down a full 2 liter bottle as it comes, yet while drinking water through the day, have to put some no added sugar squash in it otherwise the water is 'orrible. I suspect that is more a problem with me than the water though. Swimming is also good, and last week we went bowling, that also helped. For me, it seems any kind of exercise that keeps me off my ass and on my feet moving does help. Gentle walking can't harm, even with a BG of 14 can it? I have never heard anyone with high BG's to sit still and not move, so I would assume gentle walking would help. I am guessing the problem is, get the heart rate going to fast and the metabolism shifting, and it would cause an additional liver dump? Gentle walking won't cause that.

ditchy76 said:

Hi
Thanks to you all for getting back to me. I am type 2 and I am currently on no medication, they did start me off on metformin but I was constantly suffering from a bad stomach with them so they took me off.
I am overweight at the moment although I am desperate to lose some weight to help me with this as I am very scared at the moment as to be honest my previous gp didn't really give me all the answers I needed, I have now joined a new practice and i have my diabetic review next week and see a diet nurse in a couple of weeks.
I do eat a lot of pasta but to be honest my diet is not the best as I have been fine up until now so I guess I have taken my eye off the ball.
I would normally have cereal and toast on a morning then a sandwich for lunch with crisps then a meal on a night time. I know it's not the best but I have never had any advice on diet. I have three kids including a 3 month old baby so getting the time to exercise is tough although I do try and get out for a walk with the kids.
I hope this helps.
Paul

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You know the saying about being cruel to be kind? Well you're just about to get a taste of it. There is no easy way to say this but your diet as it stands right now will kill you!!

You eat lots of pasta - Do you have any idea of the amount of carbs in an average bowl of pasta? No? Well enough to put your BG's sky high and keep them there for hours! More bread at lunch time AND potato crisps - ouch!! You will be lucky to find any blood circulating in your sugar.

Cut out or at least vastly reduce the carbs in your diet. The main ones are white poison, bread, pasta, potato's, rice, flour, processed foods and ready meals.

Eat meat, dairy, poultry, fish, game, veg that grows above the ground, root veg tends to be high in carbs. Fruit is a dicey one, most of us can't tolerate banana's, melons or grapes, but anything ending in berry 'strawberry, raspberry, blueberry' etc are usually fine. Cut out low fat - light - diet varieties and go for full fat, they are lower in sugar usually.

Test +2 hours after a meal, you are aiming to be under 7.8. Higher than that, leads to complications, and the longer you are high, the more chance you have of losing sight, limbs, heart attack, stroke - you get the picture?

With a wee one, sorry I had to be so brutal, but you need to get this under control and NOW! Diabetes complications kill!!

To be honest Paul your diet is full of stuff (pasta, cereal, bread and crisps) that if you want to control by diet or diet and Metformin then most of us find we can only eat in the smallest quantities. If you want to keep eating those kinds of things you will need to be taking a lot stronger medication that will probably lead you to progress to insulin sooner or later or even consider going on insulin now. In my opinion eating those things is exactly why you are seeing readings in the teens which are too high. The UK guidelines say you need you levels under 8.5 two hours after eating and at all other times they should be between 4 and 7. Lots of studies show that you put yourself at high risk of things like blindness and amputations if you regularly exceed that 8ish blood level. Likewise being overweight gives you a much higher chance of heart attacks and strokes. These things do happen. To be very blunt Paul a modern 13 year study of T2 diabetics who were badly controlled showed half of them dead within the thirteen years and a good proportion of the survivors were blind or were amputees. As for exercise then do the best you can I simply walk my dogs for around an hour most days. Like I said in my earlier post swapping to the correct diet will both get your levels sorted and will help you lose the weight. It's not just your life is it?

ditchy76 said:

Ok, so what kind of diets do you guys follow? By that I mean for breakfast, lunch and dinner?
I have never had any guidance on diet so I appreciate all your comments.
Cheers
Paul

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The easiest diet is Atkins induction, some of us follow a slightly more rigid paleo diet, but you do what's best for you, minus the carbohydrates!

I can give you some idea's and as time goes along it will become easier and second nature.

Breakfasts: bacon, eggs and mushrooms, omelette with cheese or mushrooms or cold meat or peppers or a mix of all of them. Greek full fat yogurt with berries (my absolute favourite meal). Continental breakfast cold meats and cheese, boiled eggs, scrambled eggs with butter and cream, poached eggs (I just bought a new poacher). Cold boiled eggs from the night before with cold sausages, ham cheese, mix and match all these things, breakfast should be filling and fun. Use full fat butter, lard, olive oil or my favourite avocado oil to fry in. All these fats are healthy fats that will help keep you cholesterol down.

Lunch/Dinner: I will do these together as you can mix and match as much as you like. A piece of protein (today I had lamb steak) have it with a huge mixed salad, or loads of veg. Tomorrow for dinner I have a well marbled piece of ribeye steak that I will have with savoy cabbage, cauli (I make cauli mash with double cream and butter) sprouts, green beans and spinach. Lunch could be a piece of fish, I eat lots of fish, I love it. Chicken is great, you can make so many things. You can also have foods that are 'almost' normal. Examples being crustless quiches, have a look at the recipe's in the low carb food forum.

Snacks, sugar free jelly with cream, I think just about all of us eat those. Nuts, another favourite, slices of ham with Philly cheese in the middle wrapped up.

Some of us can tolerate a little bit of bread, the one that seems the best is Burgen soya and linseed bread, you can get it from Tesco, Sainsbury's and I believe Iceland sell it.

Beware of things like sausages and burgers, only eat them if they are well over 90% and possibly nearer 95% meat. Tesco do a brand called Debbie and Andrew sausages, they are 97% meat and are fine, just the cheaper ones are full of high carb fillers.

My last bit of advice tonight - ask questions, when you have the answer ask more questions, get a meter and test, test, test.

Good luck!

ditchy76 said:

Ok, so what kind of diets do you guys follow? By that I mean for breakfast, lunch and dinner?
I have never had any guidance on diet so I appreciate all your comments.
Cheers
Paul

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Breakfast - Ham Omlette, plain yoghurt with some "berries" mixed in, bacon egg and mushrooms
Lunch - Wholemeal or better Burgen Soya bread sandwich cheese or prawn or meat based, yoghurt
Dinner - I started by basing a lot of main meals around 250g of mixed veg then half a jar of curry or dolmino sauce. Add to that chicken or mince etc. If you have to have rice or pasta with it limit those to around 2 or 3 level tablespoons of stuff.
Snacks - Cheese and celery, nuts, small amount of 85% dark chocolate, max of around 8 Ritz crackers

Treat - India takeaway. By a dry curry or chicken tikka mossalla is ok, add an extra chicken tikka starter then a couple of small onion bhajis, mushroom bhaji, spinach bhaji. Again if you must have rice buy plain pilau rice as its fried rice which is best for levels and limit to a couple of level tablespoons. No Nan bread, maybe one or two potatoes out of a Bombay potatoes

Chinese takeaway - Chicken Green Pepper and Black Bean sauce, beanshoots, maybe a small amount of chow mein but the noodles are not too good for you. Chinese is very hard to do safely.

Pub Meal - Do the classic steak and chips but say "no chips" and ask for a bacon and fried egg topping instead. Mushrooms, peas and a few onion rings are fine.

Drinks - Tea, coffee (no sugar but sweetners ok). Any diet drink so diet coke etc. Pure fruit juices are out as they are full of sugar.

Other people will advise some more but as you can see what I've listed has cut out sugar and drastically cut down on starchy foods such as rice, pasta, potatoes, bread, cereals and flour based products. Like I say eating this stuff has given me the blood levels of a non diabetic, normalised my cholesterol and I've lost well over 3 stone since diagnosis

As you get used to it you find there are some really nice things to eat. This forum has 100's of recipes.

Use your meter to determine what is safe for you as the quantities of starchy things people can tolerate varies.

How to resist temptation -

Write you blood level readings down and watch how they progress. Get competitive with them
When you are tempted to go off the rails imagine the bad thing you are about to eat will send you instantly blind for the next hour . The trouble is T2's consequences are down the line so you need to get your head in gear to believe its hurting you NOW (which it is)
Think about imposing all the grief of being blind, being an amputee or having a heart attack and needing your families support. Do you really want to put them through all of that?

im an ex-carboholic like most on here paul. i found giving up all the lovely things like mashed potato and cutting right down on bread (i eat seeded stuff now and only an odd slice now and again) quite tough at first. when i first got diagnosed 5 yrs ago i wasnt given any sound dietry advice so i kind of ignored it and carried on. i started exercising more but wasnt losing any significant amount of weight (im a 5ft 6 female and weighed 14 n a half stone). so i bought a book about low g.i foods. i still didnt really lose weight and then i started coming on here and read about low carbing.
so i bought a book called The Brilliant Carb Counter. it lists absolutely every food you can think of and tells you all the nutritional values. its my bible now.
with my diet i try to keep my carb intake below 150g a day. i measure my milk out for hot drinks, allowing 200ml a day. and i still exercise, though none of that running malarky. :lolno: i have lost over 2 stone since april.
i check all carb contents of foods i wish to eat and if its too high then i have something else. i also test after meals to see how it affects my sugars. yesterday i discovered that black pudding sends em up.
my other half is also trying to be a low carber but he says its cos im doing it, not cos he wants to. :lolno: but i get to have lovely things like steak and mashed cauliflower (thats the best invention ever).
also portion control is very important. i went out and bought a smaller plate just for me to use cos i was a sod for filling my plate right up and eating the lot.

hope this helps you in some way, i hate to think that your sugars are so high. defren and xyzzy are right, it will kill you in the end if you dont rein it in now.

goodluck with it and theres loads of fantastic advice and recipes on here. i reccomend the chocolate fudge (tastes like cheesecake).

wendle x

What did you have for breakfast Paul?

Mary x

Give it another half an hour and test again if you can spare another strip. Sometimes MH's levels are only down by the two hour mark - mind you that's after two small thin slices of homemade bread & half sugar marmalade ( I do wish he'd give it up, but I know it's one of his only pleasures...)

Be prepared to come away confused from your appt with your DSN......they will routinely tell you the opposite to the very sensible advice given on this forum. But 38,000+ diabetics aren't often wrong.....

Ju