Does RH lead to T2?

Hi Resurgam, With RH your best eating more fat and very low carbs and your blood glucose should be stable throughout the day. Try some coconut fat, almonds and walnuts at lunch time. However, by eating carbs you will need carbs again by mid afternoon. regards D.

lindisfel said:

Hi Resurgam, With RH your best eating more fat and very low carbs and your blood glucose should be stable throughout the day. Try some coconut fat, almonds and walnuts at lunch time. However, by eating carbs you will need carbs again by mid afternoon. regards D.

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Doesn't work for me - if I eat a bacon and egg type breakfast then by 3 pm I am sinking - physically and mentaly, just want to go to sleep. I know I should be able to exist without carbs, but I have a low resistance to weightloss according to Atkins - I lost 7lb in 3 days trying to eat 20 gm of carb a day. The diabetes has progressed since then, but I used to eat 60 to 80 gm of carb per day and lost 2 kg a week. I have been eating gewer and fewwer carbs, with little result, but more fats seem to be what was required.

Resurgam said:

Now that I have dropped my BG levels and been normal for a few months I often feel my energy levels drop in the mid to late afternoon, something which always used to happen when I was younger - I hated Wednesday afternoon games - we'd had games in the morning during earlier years, and I'd been fine, but changing to the afternoon made it like struggling through treacle. In my twenties I found it difficult to be as alert as I ought to have been for the last two hours of the working day.
Now I am in my mid 60s and there are days when I get the same feeling, and my BG can drop quite low. I need to eat some carbs with my first meal in order to counter it, but too many is as bad as none.

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Snap!! I get the afternoon slump if I eat more than a few nuts for lunch. When I was at school I used to struggle not to nod off in class and quickly found that skipping lunch or having just a light salad made me more alert.

GrantGam said:

RH; does that go hand in hand with T2 or not?

(post moved by mod from the 'Improving Sleep' thread, because the discussion got so interesting it deserved its own thread )

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I was diagnosed with RH 5 years ago and now diagnosed with type 2. If I'd known RH would lead to diabetes I would have taken better care of myself.

I am wondering if we are not confusing RH with hyperinsulinaemia.

I had 10 years of hypo hell symptoms before being diagnosed with prediabetes. I recognised the symptoms from type 1 relatives but I did not understand the role of injected insulin.

Too many carbs, insulin resistance, too much insulin and exercise would leave me shaky and unsteady.

Reducing carbs worked very quickly. I no longer see sub 4 on my meter although still sensitive to exercise.

Chellez said:

I was diagnosed with RH 5 years ago and now diagnosed with type 2. If I'd known RH would lead to diabetes I would have taken better care of myself.

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Yep, that's where I would have ended up eventually!
I think I caught mine before my glucose levels and hyperinsulinaemia along with my increased insulin resistance, got me into T2. I might end up there!

I think that the dietary advice could have done more harm than good even if was unintentionally given. I know mine was!

If @Brunneria can get really great control, there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to.
It's not the end, it's a new start!
You never know, if you get your Hba1c back to normal levels the diabetes will respond in kind!

Alison Campbell said:

I am wondering if we are not confusing RH with hyperinsulinaemia.

I had 10 years of hypo hell symptoms before being diagnosed with prediabetes. I recognised the symptoms from type 1 relatives but I did not understand the role of injected insulin.

Too many carbs, insulin resistance, too much insulin and exercise would leave me shaky and unsteady.

Reducing carbs worked very quickly. I no longer see sub 4 on my meter although still sensitive to exercise.

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That's a really valid point!
You can have symptoms of both, without actually having the condition.
Hyperinsulinaemia can cause some serious health problems.
It is one of the precursors to T2! But never checked or tested.
Due to my RH, which was undiagnosed at the time, not one doctor or dsn, and including a specialist endocrinologist never put two and two together with the symptoms I was showing about weight gain, even though I was dieting (wrongly!)
Insulin resistance causes both hyperglycaemia and hyperinsulinaemia, or it can be the other way around, it's definitely a viscous circle!

Lamont D said:

Yep, that's where I would have ended up eventually!
I think I caught mine before my glucose levels and hyperinsulinaemia along with my increased insulin resistance, got me into T2. I might end up there!

I think that the dietary advice could have done more harm than good even if was unintentionally given. I know mine was!

If @Brunneria can get really great control, there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to.
It's not the end, it's a new start!
You never know, if you get your Hba1c back to normal levels the diabetes will respond in kind!

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Thanks, my hba1c is 6.6 so getting there slowly. I just would have started this kind of eating sooner if I knew about the long term consequences. We live and learn eh.

Chellez said:

Thanks, my hba1c is 6.6 so getting there slowly. I just would have started this kind of eating sooner if I knew about the long term consequences. We live and learn eh.

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Hi @Chellez and welcome.

I was diagnosed (wrongly) about 8 years ago because of my high hba1c and all the symptoms of T2. It wasn't until I was over seventeen stone and continually having hypos that a GP thought that something was a tad not right! (Ha!)
I got a referral and met the guy who literally saved my life.
But in my opinion I'm still getting resistance about my diet!
The complex carbs thing and eating every three hours! (I have found I don't need to do either!)
The necessity to stay away from what makes you feel awful, makes you feel better.
That's how I look at the condition.
Intermittent fasting and eating very low carb is so healthy for me. I haven't eaten since 7pm last night, and am having my breakfast about 4pm today! A fry up in natural fats! (Woo hoo!)
Wether it can get your Hba1c back to normal levels is what you have to find out by experimenting and testing.
Can you give us some idea of how you approach your diet?
As I said in my last post, it can be controlled.

RH is a rare condition that needs a unique approach and defies the logic of having certain foods that most doctors wouldn't or won't understand!

By my experience, the amount of food that we are intolerant to is so unusual that not enough research has gone into it!

We are weird and we need a weird approach to it!

Best wishes and welcome to our forum.

Thank you for comments. I try to eat low carb, salads for lunch, meat and veggies for dinner, staying away from the usual suspects, bread, pasta, rice, potatoes. I am getting there slowly but the issue I have is I don't want to lose weight, if anything I need to put some on. It's so hard to find the right balance. I appreciate the time you've taken to comment. I'm new to the forum.

Alison Campbell said:

I am wondering if we are not confusing RH with hyperinsulinaemia.

I had 10 years of hypo hell symptoms before being diagnosed with prediabetes. I recognised the symptoms from type 1 relatives but I did not understand the role of injected insulin.

Too many carbs, insulin resistance, too much insulin and exercise would leave me shaky and unsteady.

Reducing carbs worked very quickly. I no longer see sub 4 on my meter although still sensitive to exercise.

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I see where you are coming from, but hyperinsulinaemia doesn't necessarily mean hypos.
(I'm talking about T2, rather than T1s, because T2s are still producing their own insulin)
If there is a lot of insulin floating around and there is insulin resistance too, then the person may never experience a hypo - and the majority of T2s don't go hypo unless they start taking the stronger drugs like Gliclazide or Insulin. So the majority of T2s have hyperinsulinaemia.

Someone with RH has hyperinsulinaemia because they produce a lot of insulin. This makes it likely that they have insulin resistance too. And risk burning out beta cells. But they also have a problem in halting or getting rid of the insulin when it has done its job (via glucagon, which is released to prevent pushing blood glucose to low). There can be many reasons for this, because there are different forms of RH (with various different names). But basically, RH seems to be when excess insulin pushes blood glucose too low, and the body (for whatever reason) fails to halt the process before a hypo develops.

Edited to add the last four words.

Chellez said:

Thank you for comments. I try to eat low carb, salads for lunch, meat and veggies for dinner, staying away from the usual suspects, bread, pasta, rice, potatoes. I am getting there slowly but the issue I have is I don't want to lose weight, if anything I need to put some on. It's so hard to find the right balance. I appreciate the time you've taken to comment. I'm new to the forum.

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It's all about finding the right balance for you! I know that doesn't help. But tweaking your food intake, a little more fats, like nuts, more dairy, more protein and protein fats could give you something to try. Even something as simple as portion size will make a difference. The mistake most make is having unnecessary carbs that won't put weight on but increase your risk of first hypers then hypos, stable blood levels is more important.
Increasing muscle tone can help but you would have to find out if weight resistance is beneficial or not, as your liver may give you unnecessary liver dumps during the exercise, walking and swimming and even cycling is brilliant.
There is not one definitive answer, it is a conglomeration of little things that make the whole, to find your balance, that will make your health better.

I'm still learning and tweaking!