Hello.
I am looking for testimonies and advice.
I'm 45 years old, after my former doctor retired I was not followed up for 5 years. Now I have a new doctor and at the beginning of the week I had a complete check-up and as I expected it was a disaster! Fasting blood sugar, 2.8g and glycated hemoglobin at 11 !
I have an appointment with a diabetic at the end of next week, in the meantime I am on metformin 1000 twice a day.
I don't know where I stand anymore, especially since I have a phobia of the medical environment. My doctor doesn't want me to check my blood sugar every day, what do you think? What should I do in terms of sports and diet? He just told me to try to walk a little more and to reduce the sugars.
Hi Arthur D and welcome to the forums.
I'm assuming from your info that you're being tested by the French healthcare system - which I know very little about in terms of how it normally deals with T2 diabetes. With the NHS I can be fairly sure about what it should do - even if the reality sometimes doesn't match.
As T2 diabetics by definition we have problems dealing with levels of glucose in the body. This is because (usually) we are insulin resistant - we have plenty of it but it's not doing the job it should be, which is to get glucose into the muscle cells for energy. Instead the glucose hangs around in the bloodstream and is eventually converted to bodyfat.
Carbohydrate when digested is converted to glucose. Fats and proteins aren't. It follows therefore that if you want to reduce glucose in your system the first thing to do is to cut it off at source - stop eating (so many) carbohydrates. For me this means no potatoes or other root vegetables, no bread or other flour based items like pastry or pasta, no rice, no sugar, very little fruit (a few berries from time to time), no beer. Instead I go for meats, fish, dairy (cheese, cream and butter) , green veg, wine and spirits. All of these are zero or very low carb. I have found through testing that I can cope pretty well with beans - cannellini, haricot, that sort of thing, despite their carb content. I aim for around 20g carb a day which mainly comes from veg.
It works for me - BGs normal very quickly, weight loss followed, diabetes symptoms vanished, feel so much fitter. In remission now and haven't had a "diabetic" HbA1c since January 2020. Started playing football again last year, really enjoying exercise now rather than dreading the next injury from trying to cope with the additional weight carried.
I would strongly recommend testing using a finger prick glucometer before and two hours after eating. That shows you clearly the impact of the food eaten on your system. Everyone who eats carb will experience a BG rise - that's the carb being digested glucose and passed into the bloodstream. For T2's the rise will be higher and stay around longer than for people with normal insulin sensitivity - basically their insulin deals with the glucose more quickly and effectively. It's high glucose levels over time that can cause damage to nerves and to capilliaries - best avoided. The meter will show you which foods do what, and you can make an informed decision about whether and how much of them to eat.
best of luck. This forum is a great resource and helps me enormously.