Got the good news today

Hi Krazus and welcome

Here's what I did after taking the advice of forum members when I was diagnosed in December last year. Within six months I had normalized by sugar levels, cholesterol, blood pressure and lost a load of weight (4 stone). It won't cure you as you will need to strictly monitor what you eat from now on but if you're anything like me it will make you feel loads healthier and put you back in control of your life.

Eating wise then first cut out all forms of natural sugar so the obvious cakes, biscuits, sugar in tea and coffee, non diet sodas and even pure fruit juices as they have loads of sugar. Next and just as importantly at least halve your intake of rice, pasta, bread, potatoes, cereals and other flour based products. Replace with extra meat, fish, cheese, eggs and especially green veg. Things like yoghurt are generally fine. If you want a small amount of fruit then "berries" are best and I find they won't raise your levels as high if you eat them as a pudding after your main meal. On the rice, pasta and bread you have left in your diet swap to brown basmati rice, brown or tri-colour pasta and the best bread by far is Burgen Soya bread that you can get from most supermarkets.

Next get yourself a blood levels meter. If the gp won't give you one (some are really really anti and will give you a load of rubbish why you shouldn't use one) then get one called an SD CodeFree from the healthcare.co.uk shop on eBay. They also sell on Amazon. It will cost less than £20 with test strips at around £5 for 50. This is by far the cheapest meter and loads of members have them.

Start testing 2 hours after you eat. You need to aim to be under 8 as regularly exceeding 8 is where you start to risk complications such as blindness and amputations. The NICE guidelines say under 8 two hours after eating and between 4 and 7 at all other times.
At the beginning you may find getting under 8 to be really difficult. If it is then also test before you eat and aim for the two hour after eating reading to be back at roughly the level of the before eating reading. If you do that then you should see a gradual day by day improvement until all your two hour readings come out safe.

If you can't stop the readings spiking high after two hours then you have a choice. Either reduce the rice, pasta, bread, potatoes, cereals and other flour based products some more until your levels respond or if you really can't change your diet further then go back to the gp and ask for stronger drugs but the important thing is to recognize that you need safe blood levels as that will protect you from diabetic complications down the line. Those complications caused by not controlling levels are real, do happen and include blindness, amputations and death. Also recognise that many believe stronger diabetic drugs may only work for a while and that at some point you will need insulin. The advantage of the diet only approach where you cut out sugar and starchy foods is that many members who have adopted that lifestyle take no medication and have not seen the disease progress further for years.

Good luck and keep asking questions

Hi Chris

I have posted some useful information for you on your other thread.

Chris, I know that feeling, I think I even shed a tear or two embarrassingly in front of the doctor. Take your time, read and research and make changes slowly, whatever you feel you can manage. Don't panic, every little change will help and over time those small changes will build up into a big benefit!

I'm sorry to hear that you have had so much sadness lately Chris, I am sure the stress and grief that you have been through will have contributed to your diagnosis. I agree that the reaction to such big news like this diagnosis is like grief; anger, denial, acceptance, integration. But you are very fortunate, it sounds like your wife is supportive and understanding.

Tell your doctor how you are feeling, its very common to have these feelings and I am sure she will have some good suggestions - remember we are all here for you too. I have found this forum to have made an incredible difference to how I manage my diabetes and I completely value people's opinions on here.

Don't let those demons into your head. You can master this disease, don't let it get the better of you.

Welcome Krazus. You might find this Swedish website helpful: http://www.dietdoctor.com/lchf.

Hi Etty - and everyone,

I'm wondering if somebody can help me with my confusion about the high fat thing? I only found this forum a couple of weeks ago and have been trying the LCHF - which does seem to have brought my sugar levels back into line quite a bit more . BUT I have been eating fat and butter and yoghurt and cheese and cream and so on which is very tasty but surely can't be helping with my 'apple belly' and all that fat stashed around my liver, pancreas etc. I haven't actually put any weight on - but I haven't lost any either. I looked at the info about the Newcastle diet - and that seemed to say NO FAT in order to drain off all the fat that is clogging up the pancreas - so now I'm confused !!

I'm sorry if I've crashed your thread with my confusion Krazus - but, hopefully, it will help you too if someone can help on this?

cheers

Hi Cultivator -as far as I understand it ... fat doesn't make you fat, sugar does ... you are replacing the carbs in your diet with fat and protein otherwise you will go hungry. I recommend you read Gary Taubes - Why we get fat ... I read it while on holiday and it was incredibly revalatory. It changed my life.

Cultivator said:

Hi Etty - and everyone,

I'm wondering if somebody can help me with my confusion about the high fat thing? I only found this forum a couple of weeks ago and have been trying the LCHF - which does seem to have brought my sugar levels back into line quite a bit more . BUT I have been eating fat and butter and yoghurt and cheese and cream and so on which is very tasty but surely can't be helping with my 'apple belly' and all that fat stashed around my liver, pancreas etc. I haven't actually put any weight on - but I haven't lost any either. I looked at the info about the Newcastle diet - and that seemed to say NO FAT in order to drain off all the fat that is clogging up the pancreas - so now I'm confused !!

I'm sorry if I've crashed your thread with my confusion Krazus - but, hopefully, it will help you too if someone can help on this?

cheers

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Hi Cultivator. Saturated fat raises your blood cholesterol more than anything else in your diet.

Fat is a nutrient that helps our body function properly like supplying us with energy. It also helps other nutrients work. Remember that our body needs only small amounts of fat, and too much of the saturated type will increase cholesterol in the blood.There are different types of fat, and they have different effects on cholesterol and heart disease risk.

Saturated fat is found in greatest amounts in tasty foods from animals, such as fatty meat, poultry with the skin, whole-milk & dairy products, and lard, as well as in some vegetable oils, including coconut and palm oils.

You need to reduce the amount of saturated fat in your diet because it will effectively lower LDL "bad" cholesterol.

Unsaturated fat is found in vegetable oils, most nuts, olives, avocados, and fatty fish, such as salmon. This is the kind that you need.

Omega-3 fats is a type of polyunsaturated fat that are found in some fatty fish and in some plant sources, like walnuts, canola and soybean oils. They do not affect LDL "bad" cholesterol levels but may help protect your heart.

In some studies, people who ate fish had a reduced death rate from heart disease. It is possible that this is related to the effects of omega-3 fats, which may help prevent blood clots from forming and inflammation from affecting artery walls. Omega-3 fats also may reduce the risk for heart rhythm problems and, at high doses, reduce triglyceride levels.

Studies have suggested that omega-3 fats reduce the risk for heart attack and death from heart disease for those who already have heart disease like CHF. I hope this helps.

Take Care.

chalcedony said:

Hi Cultivator. Saturated fat raises your blood cholesterol more than anything else in your diet.

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I'm afraid I would have to disagree with you there simply from experience.

When I was diagnosed T2 last December with an hBA1c of 11.3% or 100 mmol in the new measurements I had followed a classic low fat 5 a day diet where everything was cooked from fresh for most of my life. At that point I had been on statins for two years and despite that my cholesterol level was in the high 5's.

After diagnosis and finding this forum I swapped to a low carb high fat diet similar to that recommended by the Swedish Health care system. My diet is now roughly 15% carbohydrates 65% fat and 20% protein. Of that 15% carbohydrate the vast majority of it is in the form of vegetables. The result after 6 months was an hBA1c reduced to 4.9% (yes FOUR point nine) or 30 mmol and a total cholesterol level of 3.9 with an Tot/HDL Ratio of 3.33. My blood pressure has reduced from 160/95 to 115/75. I've also lost just over 4 stone in weight and rarely feel hungry. I now have a BMI of 23.2 and am still losing weight at roughly a couple of pounds a month. I exercise by walking my dogs for around an hour a day exactly the same amount as I did prior to diagnosis.

I have my gp's and DSN's full support as they can see what I am doing obviously works. I've even come off the statins on my high fat diet at my gp's suggestion as I no longer need them in his opinion. My doctor says my diabetes is "in remission" but like me fully accepts I am not cured. For example if I eat more than around 50g (two level tablespoons) of rice or pasta my levels still spike well into double digits.

I consciously consume saturated fat. I eat cheese, eggs, leave the fat on meat, have bacon and eggs fried in a small amount of olive oil twice a week, eat a fruit salad with sugar free jelly with a good amount of double cream most days in fact yesterday I had a low carb very rich home made chocolate pudding with double cream. I eat roast potatoes when I eat any potatoes at all and put knobs of real butter on the piles of green veg I eat and when I occasionally eat a slice of Burgen bread I make sure it's covered in real butter too as that way it doesn't raise my levels that much. I never buy anything labelled low fat anymore so use full fat yoghurts etc. The only low fat product I still use is semi skimmed milk that I put in my tea and coffee simply because I don't like the taste of full fat milk. I have an Indian takeaway minus the Nan bread and minus most of the rice most weeks but up the calories and quantity by buying extra meat starters and vegetable based bhaji's

I avoid highly processed high carbohydrate foods and trans fats and have never felt healthier. Why do I eat saturated fat? Simply as a source of calories. My current diet works out around 2000 calories a day. If I didn't eat the saturated fat I would be on a starvation diet because I have dropped all the sugar and the vast majority of starchy foods from my diet.

For my diabetes I simply take Metformin and nothing else. My gp says I don't really need the Metformin but recommends I continue it for the health benefits it gives to your heart and not for any diabetic blood levels reducing reasons.

While you can undoubtedly lose weight on a low fat diet that's hardly the point when its carbs that raise your blood levels so adopting a low fat high carb diet may well make you slim but can quite easily lead you to end up as a thin but blind amputee on insulin. Adopting a low carb high fat diet is also scientifically proven countless times to just as successfully promote weight loss and has the benefit that you end up thin and able to see and use all your extremities. What will definitely kill you is a high fat high carb diet.

Many others on this site follow a very similar regime to myself and have done for years with identical results.

Well on chalcedony profile it says 'healthcare professional, says it all really. And not diabetic.

krazus said:

Oi!
however xyzzy, its been highjacked in the best possible way. thanks for your informed info.

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:lol: Yes sorry but we do like to protect our new members when the NHS line gets sprouted at them. I expect chalcedony means well but to many of us its the NHS dogma that got us to where we are now. In my own case I got diagnosed pre diabetic in Dec 2010 and took all the diet leaflets and adopted the standard NHS low fat starchy carbs with every meal advice and followed it conscientiously. The result was by March 2011 I had an hBA1c of 8.3% and by December 2011 it was 11.3%. Did you know that no distinction is drawn between the diet recommended for non diabetics and the one for T2's in this country and that the last time the advise was really updated was back in 1991. Other countries at least recommend a range of diets for T2's. Most are carb restricted and are based on evidence from the 21st century. Even the Americans recommend half the amount of carbs we do!

I read the leaflets I was given by the doctors and dieticians and was shocked, I threw them in the bin, mind you I use one of them as a bookmark in Bersteins book - what a contrast. I'm not stupid enough to follow the party line, anyone who knows a bit of science knows what carbohydrate turns into, if not you can find out much more quickly these days.
I said on another threead that in the 'Food Hospital' program a women was told to eat a high carb meal before bed to aid sleep, what a surprise!!!!

etty

have to disagree with chalcedony. As this link says saturated fats have kept people healthy for a long time. Not so-called 'healthy' fats.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... clnk&gl=uk

Confused About Fats? The following nutrient-rich traditional fats have nourished healthy population groups for thousands of years:

For Cooking

Butter
Tallow and suet from beef and lamb
Lard from pigs
Chicken, goose and duck fat
Coconut, palm and palm kernel oils
For Salads

Extra virgin olive oil (also OK for cooking)
Expeller-expressed sesame and peanut oils
Expeller-expressed flax oil (in small amounts)
For Fat-Soluble Vitamins

Fish liver oils such as cod liver oil (preferable to fish oils, which do not provide fat-soluble vitamins, can cause an overdose of unsaturated fatty acids and usually come from farmed fish.)

The following newfangled fats can cause cancer, heart disease, immune system dysfunction, sterility, learning disabilities, growth problems and osteoporosis:

All hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils
Industrially processed liquid oils such as soy, corn, safflower, cottonseed and canola
Fats and oils (especially vegetable oils) heated to very high temperatures in processing and frying.

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Since saturated fat was demonised some 50-60 years ago, and 'healthy' fats introduced, public health had deteriorated.
People who say saturated fat is bad and raises cholesterol are only repeating old 'science.' It was bad science. Just because nearly every HCP believes it doesn't make it true. Much research over the last 10-20 years ago offers a rebuttal if you have an open mind to hear it.

What you may initially find with a LCHF diet is that your cholesterol level doesn't go down. It may even go up.
But what it should do is improve your lipid profile - increase HDL, decrease triglycerides, and change LDL from small, dense particles to large, fluffy ones. This change is all good.
As far as I'm concerned total cholesterol is a fairly meaningless figure, more so for women, who seem to do better on a higher level. Check out The Great Cholesterol Con by Dr Malcolm Kendrick.

I can link to you plenty of websites about this, if you need.

Geoff

I agree with xyzzy and others. I cut down on my carbs and increased my fats to make it up because I had to eat something! Lots more cheese, cream etc. as well as massively improving my blood sugar levels, my cholesterol went from 5.5 to 3.8, I lost four inches of my waist and my BMI went to 22.5. I say ditch the things you KNOW are bad for you like the starchy carbs, don't worry about the things that some people say MAY be bad for you.