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has low carb 'cured' me?

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the_anticarb

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I have been low carbing around six weeks now. Today I thought I would do a little experiment. I did not take my insulin, having only my 500mg metformin this morning. I have tested throughout the day and not gone above 7, I have even been around 6 after meals.

I am going to continue to test and not take my insulin until I reach a point where my levels require it.

Has anyone drastically reduced their medication on low carb like this?
 
I don't use insulin, but i did use gliclazide and I've dropped it completely. Read David Mendosa's website. He no longer takes any medication.
You are still diabetifc though, but now differently controlled. THERE IS NO CURE AS YET FOR T2
 
Thanks Hanadr - I know there is no cure as such, as the minute I go back to my old eating habits my bgs will rise. I was being hyperbolic! Tested this morning after a full 24 hours without insulin and my bg was 5.1! I'm just going to stop taking it now until or unless it rises above 10 and see how long I can go. I'm seeing the diabetes nurse next week and it will be interesting to see how she reacts! My mum had a go at me for changing my medication without medical advice, but if my bgs are within normal range then what's the issue?
 
Yes, lots of people. The major improvement comes from reducing insulin resistance (metformin, exercise and running low BG) which means your naturally produced or injected insulin goes much further, you may well continue to produce enough to cover anatomically correct levels of carbs.

However if you are actually LADA this may only be a temporary situation, if your pancreas disintegrates further over time your production will continue to decrease.

With Type 2 it's very plausible to reduce or stop the rate of pancreatic damage.
 
36 hours and counting and it's still in the fives - and this is after my dinner. Does this mean I am essentially producing my own background insulin which is enough to meet my body's needs?

I am astounded that I have been able to drop the insulin completely so fast!

By the way trink, I'm not type one, type two or LADA. I'm an undiagnosable MODY, as I don't fall in to any of the currently recognised MODYs, which means that no one really knows exactly what kind of diabetes I have got.
 
the_anticarb said:
36 hours and counting and it's still in the fives - and this is after my dinner. Does this mean I am essentially producing my own background insulin which is enough to meet my body's needs?

I am astounded that I have been able to drop the insulin completely so fast!

By the way trink, I'm not type one, type two or LADA. I'm an undiagnosable MODY, as I don't fall in to any of the currently recognised MODYs, which means that no one really knows exactly what kind of diabetes I have got.
Click to expand...

Yes that's a bit of a b*gger!

As a skinny person with (in retrospect) glucose intolerance and reactive hypoglycemia going back to childhood, I pricked up my ears when I first heard of the MODYs but in practice my characteristics are otherwise completely opposite, humungous insulin resistance (familial) without overweight. My trigs/HDL ratio went from nearly 7 to under 0.5 which makes my insulin stretch a lot further. MODYs generally don't have IR.

The secondary defect again probably going back to childhood is a relative lack of Phase 1 (the diabetes proper only occurs in certain family members) my Phase 2 is delayed but can actually be excessive hence the RH rebound lows.

It took quite a lot of testing to work out how best to deal with it, especially considering the circular argument that the high BG seems to drive my IR up, even on a short term basis, plus there's still a diurnal variation, but I now have most of my BG numbers in the 4 - 5 region and seldom go over 6 postprandial, and almost never over 7. So it CAN be done, once you work out your carb limits at different times of day and sort out your own specific best balance of protein and fats. Also I found Alpha Lipoic Acid helps the regulatory system.

Post your lipids if you have them, there might be a clue there. We might even be related! <G>
 
Hi Trink, well if Modys don't have IR then I don't know what I have because I must have IR to have responded so well to the metformin? I've always felt my diabetes doesn't really fit in any of the boxes!

I have been overweight most of my life, but not massively so - and until recently had a bit of a problem with what I would now call a carbohydrate addiction of sorts... I couldn't go more than a couple of hours without eating them and always craved starchy carbs, the starchier the better! It was like I couldn't get enough of them. Needless to say I was not very well controlled at all.

I was put on tablets when I was first diagnosed, then after 8 years insulin but always been very reactive to the fast acting, hypoing loads if I tried to tighten up too much (and generally zig zaggig up and down) which is why low carb is such a blessing for me because I can drop the fast acting completely and not have to worry about it at all.

My brother and mother both have diabetes so it seems certain that it is the 'single gene' type (my other brother must have got the non diabetic gene from my dad - lucky sod!)

I got tested for HN alpha 1 and 4 Mody's but tests came back negative so they have drawn a blank now!

Very frustrating as I am sure my diabetes is different to a lot of people's but can't get a diagnosis.

So do you reckon I am still a MODY?

Don't have lipid levels by the way, they only took the HBa1c last time!

Thanks

AC
 
http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2009/ ... drome.html

The whole field of genetics is much more complicated than was first thought, some genes switch others etc. There are a whole bunch of genes associated with Type 2, metabolic syndrome, obesity etc. and quite a lot of overlap - one of the MODY genes is also associated with other forms of Type 2. MODYs themselves generally don't involve IR.

The there's been a lot of research into newly discovered things like leptin and leptin resistance to complicate the picture further.

Thanks to my late aunt's genealogical research I can see that most people in one specific line of the family have *some* but seldom *all* symptoms of metabolic syndrome, which is an indicator of IR. The distribution of symptoms within individuals is weird though, for example my mother is tiny, fit and active (relatively at 93) but had had high blood pressure for 40 - 50 years, and no other symptoms except her BG goes up reliably on steroids and comes down equally reliably afterwards. My skinny fit active cousin has reached his sixties and is now showing distinct signs, high BP and dyslipidemia, suggestive of IR. His skinny even fitter even more active daughter is showing worse symptoms in her thirties. My relatively plump aunt had the BP of a thirty year old aged 80. Her skinnier fitter sister had gallstones and high BP years ago like me. The nearest full diabetic was my mother's uncle. Everyone dies of cardiovascular disease but the survivors go on into their eighties and nineties with medication. Also a high number of children died before or soon after birth.

So when you look at the whole family there's a clear pattern but the individual variation is quite wide. To me this suggests a cluster of genes and some environmental influence on their expression.

See if anyone has done any similar work on your family, it might be enlightening!
 
All I can say is, whatever was wrong with me, cutting the carbs really seems to have sorted it out. The best thing is not feeling compelled to eat rubbish all day long, I used to get so hungry but now I get hungry in a different, less urgent way and I stay fuller for longer . Hba1c on the way down too, used to be in the 12s but now in the 8s, I know that's still too high but it's still early days for me. :D
 
the_anticarb said:
All I can say is, whatever was wrong with me, cutting the carbs really seems to have sorted it out. The best thing is not feeling compelled to eat rubbish all day long, I used to get so hungry but now I get hungry in a different, less urgent way and I stay fuller for longer . Hba1c on the way down too, used to be in the 12s but now in the 8s, I know that's still too high but it's still early days for me. :D
Click to expand...

Perzackerly!

At the end of the day whatever name they give it is less important than finding a way to control it. There are a lot of feedback and feedforward loops involved too so controlling one factor will probably improve others. Keep on tweaking and testing!
 
Anticarb
You're unique and you'll give your nurse apoplexy.
Read David Mendosa's Websitee. He too is off all medication and doing well
 
Sadly, the no insulin experiment had to come to an end. My bg's did begin to rise slightly after a while, going up to the 9s. I have now decided to inject a reduced dose of 12 u per day. It's still a lot better than before when I was injecting 28u, but I have lost nearly a stone and had no bread, potatoes, pasta etc etc for nearly 7 weeks now. For me the big thing was getting of the hypo-causing novorapid, if I have to inject a bit of basal every morning that's ok with me, I rarely go hypo now so don't have to constantly worry about 'going shaky' in meetings, when I'm driving etc.

Thanks for your responses, everyone :)
PS saw the nurse yesterday and I think she was more suprised that I'd gone from a position of no control to total control in such a short space of time. I told her I didn't really do middle grounds!
 
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