Do I need to change meds?

Metformin won't bring your numbers down diet will. Are you eating low carb?

xfieldok said:

Metformin won't bring your numbers down diet will. Are you eating low carb?

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I see this mentioned a few times on the forums and it confuses me. I was on metformin for a long time and it did lower my blood levels and I didn’t change my diet. It’s also described as a drug to lower blood levels so why do people say it won’t?

I also wonder whether my experience with the NHS has been different to others. My levels increased to 78 and the nurse immediately added Dapagliflozin and said if there wasn’t an improvement in 4 months further action would be taken (I.e. insulin) and I would never have been allowed to stay on the high levels the poster mentioned without intervention. Is it that bad now?

I do agree about changing diet and such. I am doing that myself, I just don’t seem to have had the medical experience so many here are posting

Most of the information on this forum comes from personal experience and exactly the oposite of mdical advice. Getting the NHS to change is like getting a supertanker to turn on a sixpence.

Do you use a glucose meter to test your levels?

xfieldok said:

Most of the information on this forum comes from personal experience and exactly the oposite of mdical advice. Getting the NHS to change is like getting a supertanker to turn on a sixpence.

Do you use a glucose meter to test your levels?

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I understand totally what you are saying. I think I have been really lucky, and not lucky too. Lucky in that there has been regular intervention and putting me into drugs that at the time were very new and probably not cheap to the NHS (exenetide) all to keep my levels low. It worked for a long time but I was holding off the inevitable and being told it was progressive etc...

So, unlucky in that I was given the wrong advice, as in no one ever talked about low carbs. But better late then never

Josie66 said:

Been trying low carb high protein

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Tell us what you ate today and maybe we can help with some suggestions to help improve your BG

Josie66 said:

Been trying low carb high protein

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Good choice, but be aware that proteins also turn into blood glucose, but at a slower rate than carbs. Many here use LCHF diet, which uses some protein. but also uses fat as well. Fat does not convert into glucose, so helps reduce that pesky meter as well as giving satiety which helps stop the snacking.

Josie66 said:

I've tried to do high protein
Had bacon egg mushroom for breakfast
I did eat crisps this afternoon, ( no.point lying!)
Tuna salad
Chicken oven chips and veg for tea

I know im having too many carbs. I find it hard because I'm a fan of pasta and rice..which I've been able to have on slimming World

I'm struggling to be honest

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I would imagine that you are feeling hungry. You may need to add a bit of butter to your vegetables and cut out the potatoes. What was you BG before and after tea?

you said that you want to lose weight. I don’t think that Slimming world is doing you any favours if you are still eating pasta and potatoes on the program.
If your BG is in range it will make it easier to lose weight.

Josie66 said:

I've tried to do high protein
Had bacon egg mushroom for breakfast
I did eat crisps this afternoon, ( no.point lying!)
Tuna salad
Chicken oven chips and veg for tea

I know im having too many carbs. I find it hard because I'm a fan of pasta and rice..which I've been able to have on slimming World

I'm struggling to be honest

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Well done. You would only be lying to yourself so better to admit things then move on. The oven chips are the only one I would aim to cu out in future. Obviously being potato they are high carb for a strt. Oven chips such as frozen supermart ones tend to be manufactured from mashed potato extruded into chips and this increases the GI load so making the sugar response worse than home made chips with the real thing. Also beware that these frozen ones tend to be doctored by having added sugar to please the kids. It will not be shown as sugar, but will be listed as Malitol or Sorbitol or Maltose, or Dextrose. Certain supermarket brands are worse thsn others, and I find anything where the packet design has cartoon characters, or the chips have funny shapes or alphabet are the absolute worst thing on this earth for sugars.

You have had a good start, and your levels should start to drop. As regards te Metformin, the trials data showed that even at 2 g dose, the effect on bgl is only about 2 mmol/l You may need a second med to help but hopefully LC diet changes and snack reduction will make that less likely, The Metformin is mainly there to help protect your heart and arteries

Keep a daily log of meal details, and meter readings. I test just before a meal, then at 2 hrs and then again at 4 hrs to see how my body responds to the food. 2 hrs is the one to see how the carb content affected me, and the 4 hr one shows how the protein did. The other thing I did was to go to only 2 meals a day. Breakfast and evening meal. With the fat in my full English breakfsst, I do not snack in the day ,and my sugars are nicely in control. You may see OMAD mentioned which is one meal a day, but I found that too much of an imposition.


It is confusing to start off with, but the food log should allow you to identify and build up a repertoire of meals you know are good for you, and conversely those meals to be avoided or kept for special treats.

Josie66 said:

I go from slimming world to weight watchers .I do bits of them all. No wonder I'm confused

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Keep in mind that those diets are for people with a properly working metabolism. Yours is impaired, you can't process what their target audience can. Try and forget about other diets and just focus on a single one (LCHF, Keto, Carnivore are all low carb options). No frankenstein-dieting, because that won't work and will just muddy the waters.

Andydragon said:

I see this mentioned a few times on the forums and it confuses me. I was on metformin for a long time and it did lower my blood levels and I didn’t change my diet. It’s also described as a drug to lower blood levels so why do people say it won’t?

I also wonder whether my experience with the NHS has been different to others. My levels increased to 78 and the nurse immediately added Dapagliflozin and said if there wasn’t an improvement in 4 months further action would be taken (I.e. insulin) and I would never have been allowed to stay on the high levels the poster mentioned without intervention. Is it that bad now?

I do agree about changing diet and such. I am doing that myself, I just don’t seem to have had the medical experience so many here are posting

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It's a lot of hit-and-miss with medical help... Some are completely up to date and enthusiastic about helping people, quite a few are not, alas... And some just have given up on their patients because they see so very many of them, and so little improvement. Which I think is understandable... I have a lot of different conditions, and diabetes is the first one where I encountered some hopelessness or indifference from the endo, nurses etc. I had a rheumatologist cheering about a swollen pinky finger's joint once. ("Verifiable! You do have rheumatism!" Yeah... Like my body wasn't telling me that for years already....). Never had an endo cheering at me about anything. Not even getting blood sugars back down on my own, or fixing my non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. I actually got told off cut cutting carbs, I should let the gliclazide do the work. Sure. So maybe you just got lucky to get someone who's actually involved in your case.! Cherish them, and put them on your Christmas card list! (It's what i do.)

Metformin, this is how it works: It suppresses appetite, so you eat less. (Less food, less carbs, less of a spike). That's point one. And it reduces the glucose your liver dumps by about 75%. So that is the impact it does actually have on your blood sugars. It might make you a little more sensitive to your own insulin, but might not. It doesn't, however, do anything about the carbs (and thus, glucose) you ingest. There are other medications to tackle that with. So while certain aspects of what could raise blood sugars are indeed handled by metformin, the main and biggest one, is not: The food you do ingest. So while it's not a completely useless bit of medication, it doesn't make much more of a dent for the bulk of us. Hope that explained that a bit.

Have a great weekend,
Jo

Hi. I would ignore both SW and WW as they don't really understand diet. You need low carbs and as much fat and protein as you need to keep you feeling full. When was you last HBA1C? At your levels you should have one every 3 months. Insist the surgery do that. Metformin will do very little and there are further meds that can be added but the right diet is essential