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Denial

Glink

Well-Known Member
Messages
252
Type of diabetes
Prediabetes
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
Anyone else here struggle with bouts of denial? And/or wondering if you're just a hypochondriac?

Everyone including my doctor is surprised when they find out I have diabetes (currently pre, officially, but I'm on metformin and without it it's not pre). I'm thin, no family history, etc., etc. Never much of a sweet tooth, always a super healthy eater and exerciser. Like many here I have had dramatic improvement in my sugars with low carb eating.

But sometimes I wonder if I'm just crazy. Am I just needlessly making myself eat a restricted diet? Is it some kind of weird eating disorder? I used to be vegan; am I just an extreme person? (<--BTW, the answer to that is most definitely no when I'm thinking rationally!)

Then I do something like I did yesterday: eat a whole piece of matzo. Yeah, that's like 23 g of white flour and no fibre or fat. And then, predictably, despite metformin, my sugars go up and up. Not scary high; just like 9 postprandial reading, but not where they "should" be if I weren't diabetic.

I know there's no "why"--it's just bad luck to have diabetes. But I still struggle occasionally with believing it's real, as such a "marginal" case.

Anyone else here have these feelings?
 
Hi i expect a lot of people on here and those not on here have been in denial sadly no one wants to be diabetic but when we are we have to grit our teeth and carry on i expect a lot of us have eaten something then felt guilty i know i have so don't beat yourself up as long as your sugars don't go sky high you'll be fine as you know all folks on here are willing to give advice and support i just wish the forum had been here 44yrs ago when i first found out so i hope you can start feeling more positive soon so thinking of you good luck
 
Everyone must have doubts in their minds at times. For me, it's not any kind of doubt that I'm diabetic because my various testing shows that I quite obviously am. I am not marginal like you, I'm 'very' or at least I was.

For me the doubts in the last few days have been ' can I really eat this way'? Since I started I've been enthusiastic and have seen results. Even so in the last few days had started to think I can't really continue to eat this way and do I really need to. I can, I'd just fallen into a bad few days where I'd not got enough variety available in my new WoE.

So I'd say, real or not, it's got to be worth treating it seriously and changing what and how you eat. In the end it won't feel like being ill!
 
I have doubts about the diet, too! Can it really be healthy to eat so few fruits and no grains? To have to even limit veggies and sub in fat? It feels so contrary to how I've always eaten (which used to be heavy on whole grains, and as many veggies as I wanted)! Now that you mention it, this radical 180* probably contributes to me occasional wondering if I'm just "making it up."
 
I have some other "invisible" (autoimmune and neurological) conditions and I get the same feelings about them, though. Like, no one can see this stuff; how do I know it's real? I know it is, but sometimes I feel a bit crazy with all the restrictions.
 
Well you realise that you have a condition where grains and fruits are unhelpful to your blood sugar levels so it is very obviously logical to avoid consuming them. Therefore you have to eat something - fats and proteins are left with a few lower carb vegetables and salad leaves. You will find over time that you can easily survive on that and maybe as your condition improves you may be able to introduce a few more carbs back. However remember that there are no essential carbohydrates and it is perfectly possible to survive without any at all. In my case I think it is far healthier to not have the excess 7 stone I was carrying around and if that means eating more meat and fat then I'm all for it. It helps of course that I love what I eat.
 
no not really, but of cause it is mostly my brain that can try so see the full extent of this disease if I don´t take it seriously right now and steadily over many many years well like forever...

my feelings cant understand this fully, and of cause I haven´t experienced what I have to believe... so I have to continuingly convince myself I need to keep my eye on that narrow track diabetes leaves to me... and find ways to make it broader though not in conflict with my diabetes logic..

well but on this I try to rely on my knowledge and not what my former experiences tells me cause they are of no use in this my life as it is now untill a cure for type 2 is found... maybe not in my lifetime but also maybe it will be found.. why shouldn´t it be found..? so many giant steps for mankind has already been taken in the last 100 years...
 
Did someone tell you that you have to eat meat and dairy for good diabetes control? If they did, they were lying. There are so many healthy proteins and fats in the plant kingdom. Most vegetables and some fruits are also good. Non-D, Pre-D, T2, whatever, we just have to get on with it and not overthink it I reckon.
 
Glink said:
Anyone else here struggle with bouts of denial? And/or wondering if you're just a hypochondriac?
Click to expand...

Over 6 years I have also struggled with periods of denial especially with normalish HBA1C levels that does not raise flags with my surgery. I had to insist on a review this year as my surgery were not concerned.

Spending time on here and also researching prediabetes has really helped me through those times.
 
Hi Glink, its completely normal to be confused when you are first given the news that you are or diabetic or pre diabetic and thousands of slim people are diagnosed with T2 its not just the fat lazy couch potatoes that the national press would have everyone believe all T2's are, in fact nothing could be further from the truth.

The fact is that 80% of T2's diagnosed are overweight at diagnosis but that means that 20% are not, you are just in that percentage. Being slim is no guaranty that you do not have visceral fat around your organs and it is this that causes insulin resistance and with that high blood glucose (bg) levels.

If you can lose that visceral fat it may be that you can reverse your pre diabetes as many have done, however it could prove to be that you are not T2 but LADA, that is Latent Autoimmune Diabetes of Adulthood which is a form of T1 diabetes and can be usually diagnosed by having a blood test done to see if you have the antibodies to GAD - glutamic acid decarboxylase in your blood. http://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes_lada.html

As for diet not everyone excludes all carbohydrates, all fruit and all grains, I ate a 60g carb a day diet for 12 months following my T2 diagnosis and adding no extra fat to my diet what so ever and still managed to eat small amounts of fruits and grains. The key is to test every meal you eat and use the results of those tests to adjust the percentages and portion sizes of the carbohydrates in your diet.

Test before you eat and then again 2 hours after finishing your meal, and if your levels are over 2 mmol/L higher after eating that tells you you need to reduce the carb portions of that meal, cut them by 50% the next time you eat that meal again and again test before and after eating and if your postprandial (after meal) levels are still more than 2 mmol/L higher than your pre meal levels then reduce the carb portion again.

It will take time but after a while you will discover exactly what you can and can't eat and in what portion sizes, it is worth the effort and by keeping a food diary of every meal and your pre ad postprandial bg levels you will soon see what you can safely eat and and keep your bg levels in the safe zone and you wont have to stop eating every carb known to man you just have to find out what works for you.

Good luck
 
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It's been almost 2 yrs now since I was diagnosed. My HbA1c's have always been pretty good but not my fasting #'s and not always postprandial. I read up and immediately went very low carb, like 25 g/day, and things got almost normal (all normal except fasting, which I cannot seem to budge down to "normal" no matter what). Then they got gradually worse, and I got frozen shoulder, so I got metformin. After a year or so I had lost almost too much weight (was never "overweight" to begin with) and was having trouble getting through substantial exercise without fatigue so I increased to around 75g carb a day for several months. For a while that seemed lovely (and my weight stabilized) but then my #s started going high again. I've been testing and checking on & off for a couple years now and have a pretty good idea of how different foods affect me--to the extent that this is possible, since the same exact thing on 2 different days can cause different reactions, but the major baddies for me are fairly clear (and sadly include pretty much all grains; I don't have much sweet tooth but I did love my grains). I have a lot of food allergies that precede the diabetes situation, so it's a pretty restrictive diet in some ways (no dairy, limited legumes, no shellfish, etc.).

I guess what I'm saying is that I didn't have immediate post-diagnosis denial, because I was feeling terrible (this is why I was tested to begin with) and bringing my sugars down with a LC diet and metformin helped me feel immensely better. I should try to remember that difference, because it was striking. Although they don't do GAD testing in my Canadian province and don't really recognize LADA, my GP acknowledges that this is likely my eventual pathway (he just can't order me the test, but since yes means yes and no means maybe I'm not sure it matters anyway). The slow apparent-worsening of my blood sugar control despite my LC diet and regular exercise (which makes my sugars rise in the short term; joke's on me!) is part of what makes this such a mind bender, I guess. I am always asking myself if I am just not hardcore *enough* to fix things, or if I'm being *too* hardcore and somehow going overboard/making things worse with this diabetes management stuff, since I am a fairly marginal case still.

Anyway, no more matzo for me!
 
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I was diagnosed as pre-diabetic in March 2015 and didn't really take it too seriously, maybe a little bit of denial. Then in November 2015 I got the diagnosis of diabetic, this was a shock like it is to many others. I have always been active, had an active job, not had many symptoms. The only diabetes in my family was my maternal grandmother who was diagnosed in her sixties.
I was put straight on metformin as I had just been diagnosed with angina, so that it would help to protect my heart, rather than try diet alone.
I now have adjusted to the diabetic way of life, with a few slip ups. It takes time to adjust, as it does with any life style change.
One of my wife's friends husband was recently diagnosed as diabetic and went into depression. I am here to help him and if he needs to talk I listen and talk about my experience.
You may find a friend or someone you know who is diabetic that you can talk too, after all night-one knows how a diabetic feels, like another diabetic.
Hope you manage to beat it and you get your levels down
 

did he felt better? It's nice to have someone to talk to when you feel doomed over a sad news..
 
Hi Glink... you really need to test for GAD as the treatment for type 2 can be detrimental to LADA patients as the drugs used can deplete beta cells more quickly. Is there a way you could get tested privately? Btw ..i too am in denial at the moment. Id been GAD positive for 4 years, insulin resistant for 3 with normal glucose levels. Have reduced carbs over the last three years. Yet now the LADA diagnosis has arrived with my Hba1c trending upwards, I've been hopeless with my diet, worse than before! I am sick at present with a horrible flu bug and living in fear of going into Addisonian crisis and keep thinking how awful it would be having to worry about blood sugars and insulin aswell as feeling like utter sh*t. And when i am sick i only feel like eating certain things, generally canned tomato soup and fruit which dont fit with a low carb diet. So i have made a pact with myself that when i finally get rid of this bug i am going to start looking after myself properly and treat this disease with the seriousness it requires.
 
@Lesleywo Thanks for your response. And I hope you feel better soon and can get back on track with diet! After someone above tagged you, I went and read some of your posts and your situation is a bit reminiscent of mine. I do get symptoms when I don't stick to low carb, so that helps remind me to stay mostly on track, but it's just so unreal sometimes--especially with all these "marginal" test results and clinicians telling me I'm just an unusual case.

I will ask again about GAD testing next time I'm back in for my review, but there's this weird situation where even for private pay I need a referral to get the test and my GP thinks he can't order it but the endo doesn't want to see me back until my #s get markedly worse. And then added to that, it might not even show anything, and if it doesn't that doesn't really mean anything. I have been resisting any medication except metformin due to the LADA probability, though.
 
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