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Ever more confusing.....

K

KK123

Well-Known Member
Messages
3,966
Location
Solihull
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
Hi, I was diagnosed as having diabetes 6 months ago, suspected to be type 1, on small dose of insulin to begin with. C Peptide - low side of normal, islet antibody test - negative, was waiting for the gad test results and eagerly anticipating a definitive diagnosis....just came back and nurse said 'GAD is 75'.

So, a positive result and I said type 1 confirmed then and she said, no, it's lower than we expected so it is still inconclusive!!! I have no idea what 75 means or how to calculate it (forgot to ask her on phone). They have told me to stop the insulin altogether to see how things go. I have and for the last 3 days my readings have been lower than ever (constantly into the 2 and 3 ranges).

Have no idea what is going on and neither do they. I thought that ANY presence of the GAD antibodies meant you were type 1. (I'm 56, bmi 22, typical diet is 60 ish carbs per day), all the symptoms of type 1 when diagnosed including ketones.

Any thoughts?
 
I was always told if your type 1 you have never produced insulin from the day you were born . Type two you do not produce enough insulin so you could end up using an insulin pen but you will always be type 2
 
kencom said:
I was always told if your type 1 you have never produced insulin from the day you were born . Type two you do not produce enough insulin so you could end up using an insulin pen but you will always be type 2
Click to expand...
Sadly you have been very misinformed.
 
Sadly I have to agree with "therower" here above, but welcome to this forum @kencom
Wander around on this forum, and you will soon find many truths - some of which can be a bit surprising...

And to @KK123
Sorry to say but not a clue. I suppose it will turn out to be Type 1 after all, but who knows? Sending some hugs over to you.

Edited to keep on track
 
Last edited:
@KK123 I'd give it a week or so and see where your BG goes. I'm 2 years into a honeymoon period and can have weeks where if I don't drop my insulin doses quickly enough I spend my days inhaling haribos. Sometimes my pancreas wakes up without warning.

Can't remember my GAD results - let me go and have a look
 
Ok my GAD on diagnosis was 1363 - but I did think any positive result indicated T1
 
Yes and he is still a regular poster here and had his T1 diagnosis some time ago if his profile page is anything to go by.
 
Hello and welcome to the forum @kencom

Can you advise where this information came from ?

There are many misconceptions with diabetes sadly, hopefully the forum will help you become better informed so please take a look round and feel free to ask questions
 
Hi everyone, I'm a SHE first of all (!) but yes, all this was 2 years ago, many thanks anyway for your replies, I'm still going strong!! x
 
So if I take insulin does this make me type 1 or type 2 .

The Info comes from researching the web and various forums it seems everyone has a different view. .

To many so-called diabetic nurses at the surgeries have no idea there just a nurse with diabetic in front of there name.

I changed my survey because my so called diabetic nurse could not understand why I was not on statins . I asked her to look at my blood test
She said I have and you should be on statins .

My cholesterol was normal so statins were not required.

I changed surgery and now just see the diabetic multidisciplinary team and they know what there talking about.

I read something on here someone said don't let diabetes control you . You control it .

To many people on here think there diabetic specialist and all they do is confuse people .

So back to the original question.

I use insulin so does that make me type 1 or type 2 ... Can't want to see replies
 
Tipetoo said:
A friend of mine is T2 and is using insulin...
Click to expand...
So your friend is type2 but uses insulin .okay. so what's the difference between type 1 And type 2
 
Type 1 is an autoimmmune disease whereby the pancreas fails to produce insulin. Exogenous insulin is an absolute requirement. It was always believed to occur in childhood (not the day you were born) it has more recently been recognised as beginning in adults of all ages, sometimes more slowly than in the young. (LADA).

Type 2 typically starts as insulin resistance building through prediabetic to full blown often undetected at that stage. The cells in the body fail to respond to insulin and require ever increasing amounts of it to utilise the glucose in blood. So insulin is high, not low or absent. Some (many) drs treat this resistance by attempting to reduce resistance eg losing weight, being more active, drugs such as metformin. Sadly not enough remove the antagonist-glucose in the form of carbs. If this is not sufficient then they use drugs to increase the amount of insulin in the body in order to be greater than the resistance. Either by forcing your pancreas to'produce more or adding it in the from of insulin injections etc. Again sadly high levels of insulin also has the side effect of making you more resistance and creating complications thus why type 2 has historically been seen as progressive. In some cases the pancreas can ultimately be unable to manage the huge amounts of production required and begins to fail and stop producing insulin thereby necessitating insulin injections instead.

So taking or not taking insulin does not define whether you are type 1 or 2. It is merely the same form of treatment that is used in both types but for differing reasons and causes.

If want further evidence there are many many sources that can explain it in different words and I’ve no doubt a little research of your own will turn many up quickly.
 
Well, broadly, and this is very broad because I believe a recent report decided there were more like seven types of diabetes, and some people never fit into any of the pigeonholes currently available.

So, about to make some wild generalisations.

T1s occur when their insulin producing cells get destroyed by a faulty auto-immune reaction. No one's exactly sure why, since there seem to be a number of possible triggers, though it's thought that it can be a reaction to a virus. Anyway, this is more common in younger people, and for them it's a pretty fast progression to insulin, while adults often get T1/LADA, where a honeymoon period can allow some to stave off insulin injections for years. But no one starts out at birth at T1, and though there is a genetic element, it seems far less strong than for T2s. Anyway, the common factor for T1 is that their bodies stop producing insulin. Treatment is a question of balancing insulin injections to activity and diet. Everyone needs some insulin, even when asleep at night, so all T1s eventually inject.

T2s occur when people are genetically disposed to poor processing of carbohydrates. (It can also be caused by other factors, eg some steroid treatments). Typically, they produce plenty of insulin, but that insulin can't process the carbs properly (insulin resistance), so their blood sugars levels go up and their bodies produce more insulin in response. Treatment can be by diet (reduce the number of carbs consumed so that your body can cope) or by pills that reduce the amount of carbs released by the liver or increase the amount of insulin produced by the pancreas. Losing weight and taking more exercise also help, because they reduce the T2 issue of insulin resistance. Now the problem for T2s who continue to eat lots of carbs, as recommended by the NHS, is that their bodies have to keep pumping out insulin to process those carbs, and eventually, either because their insulin producing cells get worn out by overuse or because the insulin resistance has gone up so much that they need more insulin than the body can produce, they have to supplement with external insulin.

There are two tests typically used to differentiate T1/T2. The GAD test is for antibodies, which generally show up in new T1s, though some T1s don't have them. The c-peptide test looks at how much insulin is produced - generally a new T1 will produce very little and a new T2 will produce lots. But some people have high blood sugars with no conclusive diagnosis of T1 versus T2, they end up on whatever treatment works to get their levels down.
 
Still interested to hear where you got your originally stated views from (below) as they are far more misleading than many I’ve read on here thus meaning your statement that people here mistakenly think they are specialists and mislead people is actually self directed.
kencom said:
I was always told if your type 1 you have never produced insulin from the day you were born . Type two you do not produce enough insulin so you could end up using an insulin pen but you will always be type 2
Click to expand...
 
kencom said:
I use insulin so does that make me type 1 or type 2 ... Can't want to see replies
Click to expand...

It is common to assume that you had been prescribed insulin because it was determined that you are no longer producing sufficient insulin...

But here in lies the subtleties...

Typically T2 are still able to produce plenty of insulin even when we may have lost up to half our beta cells mass. In fact we have chronically elevated insulin. Hence we have difficulty losing weight. However, we are not producing sufficient insulin to match our dietary lifestyle, because our varying degree of insulin resistance means we need more insulin to do the same amount of work compared to metabolically healthy individuals.

So a healthy insulin sensitive individual may require 1 unit of insulin for 1 unit of carbs. But we would need to produce 3 units of insulin to process the same among of carbs.

So to solve the problem of overflowing glucose, we can
1) reduce the amount of carbs, or
2) build muscles to help soak up more carbs.
3) Or inject ever more insulin to force it into our cells, or
4) take medication to pee it out etc.

Many of us here find that a carbs lite, fats friendly, insulin sparing lifestyle keeps our glucose levels within a healthy range without the need for additional medications. The time may come where eventually we may need extra insulin... but by then we would have clearly understood why...
 
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