Confused

Welcome to the forum Andy.can you give us some idea of what you eat during the day.Your blood sugars (BS) are very high and this could be because of what you are eating.If you read around the forum it will give you some idea of the kind of diets some of the members are on .

Hi Andy,
I'm a Type 2 too and understand very well how frustrating it is to get conflicting advice. If I can give you one piece of advice myself, it would be to stay on this forum and read as much as you can on here.You will read some conflicting advice,even here but you will also learn so much and more importantly,feel supported. Everyone on the forum is so friendly and if you have any questions, there will always be someone who can give an informed reply.
Best Wishes, Chocoholic.

I'm a 61 year old type 2. I keep my sugars very stable( between 4.7 and 5.8) on a lower carb diet. I was taking gliclazide, but don't need to any more. I found I couldn't lose weight until got off the gliclazide. I'm happy to take metformin, because it just enables the body's own insulin to work properly. I have lost weight and kept stable for a while now without the Gliclazide.
Since reducing your carb intake cannot hurt you. You DON'T need it. It is a good starting point. Start with No sugar( or anything containing sugar),severely reduce starches, especially anything that comes from grains. Whole grains are NOT good for diabetics, or anyone else actually. Cut back on potatoes and other starchy roots. Remember pasta comes from wheat, as do all baked goods. Give them a miss. Try this out for a week or two and see if things improve. It's quite likely your care team won't like what you do, but if it helps you get where you need, stick to it.

Hi AndyJ,

I'm glad you've joined our forum, and I can promise you one thing. Spend one month with us and you will never look at diabetes the same way again.

Tell us what you eat. Pretty heavy on the carbs I'm guessing, which is probably what you have been advised to eat and exactly what is driving your blood sugar levels so high.

Gliclizide is driving your blood sugars low, and flogging your pancreas to death at the same time.

Not a moment to lose, tell us more.

All the best,

fergus

Andy,

Cut out the carbs - they are NOT good for diabetics. I'm Type 1 and have felt 100% since ditching carbs from my diet. Remember, stress also plays a major role in high blood sugar. You could refrain from eating, still take your medication, have a truly stressful day, and find your numbers are 20+.

As other people have said, diet is probably the root of your problem. If you cut your carbohydrate intake dramatically, then your BG will probably stabilize at a healthy level. This can be easier said than done - because it is easy to eat a lot accidentally (especially in pre-packged food). Have a look at this thread - you might find it helpful. Also, please post what sort of food you typically eat in a day - plenty of people here will be able to give you tips.

Smart move, AndyJ.

One suggestion is to keep a food diary while you make your adjustments to your diet. Record what you eat, and bs figures before and after.

No matter what we tell you about which foods most adversely influence your blood sugars, your responses to foods are uniquely yours and you need to understand them.

Ditching the carbs will be one of the smartest things you'll ever do.

All the best, and keep us posted.

fergus

greenmonkey said:

Andy,

Remember, stress also plays a major role in high blood sugar. You could refrain from eating, still take your medication, have a truly stressful day, and find your numbers are 20+.

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That's me well and truly up the paddle-less creek, then ;-)

Steve

Oh yes ,me too!!

I am afraid that this does look like you are currently on a very high carb diet - if you make some fairly drastic changes to that then you will probably be able to get your BG down a lot. You might even be able to reduce (or even completely get off) your medication.

redcat said:

Yesterday - the BS 30 day - I had sandwiches for lunch (Whole grain bread) and then more sandwiches (Hovis Best of Both) for tea.

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Bread is always going to be quite high in carbs. Whole grain bread is damage limited in the sense that it is low GI, but there are still a lot of carbs there. I just looked up the nutritional information for Hovis Best of Both - it is actually white bread with added wheatgerm, from a diabetics point of view it is just white bread, and that is about as bad as you can get. Some diabetics manage to get away with eating modest quantities of wholemeal bread without too much problem, but I have found that it sends my BG sky high - and you might be similar. I suggest that you try to give up bread as much as possible (there are many alternatives, if you use a bit of imagination). If you must eat bread then make sure that it is wholemeal - and absolutely don't touch anything like the Best of Both which is made with white flour.

redcat said:

Today, I had a packet of crisps and a packet of ham for lunch instead of my usual packet of crisps and a sandwich.

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Ham is good, but crisps are really bad I am afraid - they are made out of potatoes - that are extremely carbohydrate rich. I am afraid that I really can't think of any real substitute for crisps, but you will help yourself a lot if you can wean yourself off them (or at least make them an occasional treat).

redcat said:

I then had sausages and chips of dinner

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Chips, I am afraid, are just as bad as crisps (worse, in fact, because it is easier to eat a lot of them. Sausages might be OK - it depends how much meat there is in them. Really high quality sausages (the sort you get from an old-fashioned butcher) mostly just contain meat, and that is very good. Likewise, cured sausages (things like salamis) are usually OK, but the sort of sausages you get in supermarkets (or indeed canteens) are terrible - they use a lot of carbohydrate rich filler and, believe it or not, they frequently contain significant quantities of sugar.

redcat said:

I was on a ferry at 5.30 and that was the lesser of many evils.

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I am afraid it can be a real challenge to eat low-carb things when you are out and about. Where I work there is quite a large and well stocked shop, a canteen and a coffee bar. Before I was diagnosed with diabetes, I almost always used to eat at one of these, but now I am on a moderately low carb diet I have found that there is virtually nothing that I can eat in them - everything either contains bread, pastry, sugar, potatoes or something as bad. Literally, all that I have found that has a low carb content in the shop is Babybell cheese and Peperami sausages. All that I can suggest is that you get into the habit of packing your own meals and taking them with you (ham with a green salad is easy and really good for keeping the carbs down). If you are in the sort of cafe at 5.30am that does traditional breakfasts, then bacon and eggs is pretty good (just avoid the toast and baked beans!).

redcat said:

Anyway, I'll certainly hang around here and take a look at what's happening. It certainly seems like a friendly bunch

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This forum is generally a very civilized place - a lot less posturing and back-biting than you will find on many corners of the Internet. There are also some seriously knowledgeable people here - mostly very well read diabetics, but you might also come across the occasional medic and dietitian. It is a great place to get non-judgmental advice.

Last thing, with all that talk about food don't forget exercise. This is at least as important as diet, and you should aim to be doing something moderately strenuous for at least 45 minutes per day.

Redcat ,start with what you are comfortable with.It's no good dropping carbs right down immediately if you find you can't stick with it.Small steps at a time!

How low is low - always a good question!

20g per day is extreme. This is the level of the Atkins induction phase, but for a start remember that is a weight loss diet, not a diabetes management diet. Secondly, it is only the induction phase (i.e. the first two weeks to get you started loosing weight). The idea of Atkins is that you then gradually add carbs back, monitoring your weight loss and cut back again if you stop loosing weight. So, even on Atkins in the long term most people will be eating far more than 20g per day.

Bernstein recommends 40g per day in his Diabetes Solution. This certainly works very well and some people certainly swear by it. However, many other people also find that they can quite effectively control diabetes with a much more modest carb restriction. Anything under about 100g is low-ish and will probably help. I personally don't like counting (if I get to an arbitrary "budget" then I would feel deprived) so I find it easier just to avoid certain foods. However, I do occasionally do a carb audit and usually find that I am around about the 60g mark and that works quite well for me.

redcat said:

Today I had a bowl of Cheerios for breakfast (Total: 30g of carb)

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That's quite a lot. I tend to avoid cereals for breakfast, because I have found from monitoring that they send my BG so high that it then has a cumulative affect throughout the day (i.e. it hasn't come down by lunch time, so it then ends up even higher). For me, bacon and eggs are the way to go (eggs have about 0.6g carbohydrate each, and bacon - so long as it isn't sugar cured - has none at all).

redcat said:

Lunch is 4 Crackerbreads (Total: 14.2g of carb, 0.4g of which sugars)
60g of wafer thin chicken (Total: 1g carb, 0.9g of which sugars)
50g of primula cheese (Total: 1.4g carb, 0.6g of which sugars)
So that's 16.6g of carbs in total for lunch.

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This looks pretty good. Make sure that you take note of which foods are "good value" for carbs. With this sort of meal then if you are feeling hungry eat more cheese or chicken rather than crackerbread. Also, be careful when you are buying prepared meat. Always check the nutritional label - sometimes it has a surprising amount of sugar added (especially if it has been prepared with some sort of marinade).

Yes the trigger is carbs, its an eye opener really isnt it when you find out about the connection between bg and carbs, well done so far and for having the courage to deal with this issue.

Re Mr Kipling cakes and Viennese whirls for the kids and your wife, they have very little nutritional value, are high sugar and probably contain transfats too, you could try and get them to eat a bit healthier things, sort of do it as a family thing, but of course dont go low carb with kids. Our 4 year old is having fruit and fromage frais and fruit crumbles made with oats and nuts; cakes and biscuits and crisps as treats only, about once a week or so and even then biscuits and cakes are home made, she enjoys helping with the baking and cookie cutters and all that and oh the mess afterwards :-( Just a thought, this way you might not feel so left out and you also know that the whole family is getting healthier too?

You might find it all a bit difficult at the moment, its all trial and error at first, also you might not need to be quite so low carb forever, maybe in future you can go a little bit higher, though never as high as you was before. Also try adding cinnamon to your diet or take a supplement and give good oil/flaxseed oil a thought too (I am expecting to be hung, drawn and quartered for this, but it worked for me and I know others have benefitted too)

All the best

Karen

redcat said:

Fruit scones, malt loaf, Mr Kipling's Country Slices, Viennese Whirls, all contain similar amounts of carbs per serving. As you can see, I was looking for something for pudding!

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I am afraid that you will find it quite hard to get prepared sweet foods that are low carb. Your choices are to either buy things from a specialist supplier (such as the Low Carb Megastore) or cook them yourself. I wouldn't worry too much about fat, so that means there is lots of scope for making low carb deserts providing you use an artificial sweetener instead of sugar. If you have an ice cream maker (or if you don't mind a lot of stirring) it is possible to make extremely good low carb ice cream.

Good for you ,Andy ,sounds like you're on track there.Take it a step at a time and if you do get tempted...don't over do it! :lol: :lol: