I've only been diagnosed about 4 weeks now and I'm on 1000mg Metformin Slow Release. As well as that I began taking Chromium 200mg per day for help with insulin support and L-Tyrosine 500mg per day for depression, mood and carb cravings.
I'm feeling a definite lack of cravings for carbs and sweet things which is a great help in controlling my carb and sugar intake and also gives my poor digestive tract the rest it deserves and needs! I was never a big carb eater but didn't eat enough protein, but now I'm eating more protein and fruit and veg fibre and less carbs and finding my digestion a lot better than it has been for years and I feel my energy returning, albeit very slowly.
My morning fasting readings have come down from 11 to 6.2 - whether that's down to the Metformin or the supplements or a combination of both, I don't know, but I do know I had the motivation and the energy to get up and strip my bed and put a load of washing in the machine today and still had energy left over to hang it out to dry.
Diabetes is a horrible condition in that it robs us of energy and I think also for some of us, self esteem. For years I've berated myself for being 'lazy' and I've forced myself until I dropped, believing that because doctors found nothing abnormal in my blood tests, that I must be imagining things or not driving myself hard enough. The other aspect is the weight issue and diabetes. It's often said that being overweight is a contributing factor towards developing diabetes but I think it's a SYMPTOM of UNDETECTED diabetes, not a cause of it. And I think that comes from the fact that if diabetes is undetected, our body is not converting food to energy and therefore, the body signals the brain to tell us we're still hungry and so we eat more, this extra food doesn't convert to energy so we eat more and so the vicious circle leads to obesity not the other way round.
I resembled a stick insect when I first began over 20 years ago complaining of weight loss, exhaustion, digestive problems, thirst, passing excessive urine - yet diabetes wasn't detected and I was treated for everything else under the sun BUT diabetes! Since then I gradually gained weight because I didn't have the energy to walk most days, never mind do any exercise for pleasure. And I can still remember the looks and the comments from people about the fact that if I lost weight I'd feel better about myself. The problem wasn't overeating as such, it was lack of insulin or lack of insulin metabolisation.
Perhaps when DOCTORS themselves understand diabetes a bit more, they'll think about reducing the pass/fail level of the tests they perform for it so that it IS detected earlier, before it does a lot more damage than it needs to before it's detected. Maybe I'm a bit thick, but it seems to me that if the Department of Health can advise us that there are 850,000 people walking around with undetected diabetes, then they MUST KNOW that they HAVE diabetes in the first place - so WHY ARE THEY NOT DETECTING IT? Is it for financial reasons? Or has it just not dawned on them that maybe they're setting the bar a bit high where BG levels are concerned?
I'd welcome others views on this please.
