Welcome to the forum
@Kezza21 , just being on here you are on your way to lowering your blood sugars. You will learn a lot from folks who have had T2 diabetes for years. Many of them have driven down their blood sugars and have come off their blood lowering meds, through diet adjustments, exercise and weight loss.
Your Dr may or may not have told you that you don’t need to test we will take care of your blood sugars, smile and say thank you, go home and do your own testing with a blood sugar meter or CGM. Only you know how high your blood sugars are. It’s your body, your health and managing your blood sugars is very important if you want to avoid diabetic complications. Diabetes is a serious chronic condition, but it most definitely can be managed, you can even put it in remission with the right diet and stop the meds.
Forget all the social media nonsense you hear on-line stating it’s your fault you have eaten all the wrong things, too many sweets , crisps, deserts and pastas that is not why you have T2 diabetes. What the Drs don‘t tell you is it’s genetic In most cases. They will tell you to change your diet, give you some blood lowering meds like Metformin and send you on your way see you whenever in so many words. Don’t be fooled by this,T2 Diabetes is serious.
Why do you have Diabetes?
There are a couple of things you should be aware of:
You will hear about Insulin Resistance or IR. In most cases Insulin Resistance is the driver of T2 diabetes. As a T2 diabetic you will have Insulin Resistance. What is Insulin Resistance ? Insulin Resistance Is your body’s inability to utilize your insulin effectively. Insulin is a hormone secreted from your pancreas. The cells in pancreas (Beta cells) are extremely sensitive to the food you eat. The Beta cells in your pancreas regulate your blood sugars by secreting insulin when you eat carbs. Unfortunately, with Insulin Resistance, for reasons that are not fully understood, your insulin cannot unlock the cells in your body and allow the carbs (all carbs are converted into sugars /glucose) you eat to enter your cells and be converted into energy. Insulin has the key to allow sugars/glucose into your cells. So what happens to the sugars that cannot enter your cells? Your muscles use 70% of all carbs you consume. So these ‘homeless’ blood sugars float around in your blood stream with nowhere to go. Too much blood sugar is toxic to your body, so your body has to get these sugars out of your blood. What does your body do? It converts the blood sugar into fat and distributes it around your body as fat, but some of this excess blood sugar stays in your blood stream.
The other contributor to Type 2 diabetes is your pancreas. Your pancreas cannot produce enough insulin to cope with the carbs you consume and overcome the Insulin Resistance. None diabetics’ pancreas’ can produce an abundance of insulin. They can eat pasta, potatoes, sweet deserts, crisps , in short they can eat whatever they want because their pancreas‘ can produce enough insulin regardless of the amount of carbs, which means their blood sugars stay within a healthy range. Your pancreas cannot. It’s limited In how much insulin it can produce.
So you have Insulin Resistance AND your pancreas cannot produce enough insulin to bring your blood sugars down. Your blood sugars gradually keep rising, you put on weight. And on and on it goes.
This is why you can have two obese individuals, one has diabetes the other doesn’t. It’s because the none diabetic‘s pancreas can produce an abundance of insulin, even when they to have Insulin Resistance. Their pancreas can churn out massive amounts of insulin to force the blood sugars into their muscle cells, and as a result their blood sugars remains perfectly normal. As a diabetic your pancreas cannot produce enough insulin to counter the Insulin Resistance and the carbs you are consuming.
This is why you have to reduce the carbs you consume so that your pancreas can cope. How many carbs your pancreas can handle varies from individual to individual.
I have boiled this right down to two basic components, Insulin Resistance and your pancreas that cannot produce enough insulin. D2 is a complex disease and there is much more to it, but, hopefully this simple explanation makes some sense. So whenever you read on social media that it’s to do with over eating and the consumption of too much junk food, know that is utter nonsense
. You have a pancreas that cannot produce enough insulin.
I went on a bit and if you got to the end, well done you!