Hi.....I guess I'm joining the Type 2 club

[adm]

Hi,

Just a short note to introduce myself, I'm a 43 year old male, carrying a bit of extra weight (maybe 10kg or so), leading a pretty sedentary lifestyle. A few months ago, I visited the GP with some chest pain and had a bunch of tests. The good news is it apparently wasn't heart related.....but my BP was elevated, so the GP put me on BP reducing meds (4mg Perindopril) and got me to quit smoking (20 a day for 25 years)

Anyway....at a checkup last week, the good news was that my BP is getting lower (typically 135/90 now), but I have as of yesterday been told i have Type 2 diabetes that will need to be treated at this time with exercise and diet. No requirement for meds yet.

I don't have an appointment with the "Diabetes Nurse" until May 8th, so I'm still shooting in the dark here, but it seems sensible to get cracking on the diet and excercise part now. I've started cycling and swimming and I think those should be beneficial to my fitness and weight levels, but now I am thinking about diet.

About 10 years ago, I followed the Montognac Diet - which is basically a low glycaemic index diet plan. No processed carbs, no sugar etc, etc....It's a good diet that gave me spectacular results, however over the last 10 years I have slipped and slided away from this. I think this should be a good basic regime for control of Type 2, but wondered if anybody had any thoughts. I also understand that the current NHS advice is to tell you to eat certain amounts of carbs, but this just seems counterintuitive to me if what we are actually trying to do is control our glucose. Anyway...

My other big issue is that I am a Brewer......and good quality beer is one of my favourite things. I can see that I will need to cut down on my beer intake, but there is no way I will cut it out entirely, so I was also wondering if anybody has any good information as to the effects of beer in moderation.

Finally, I have a science and engineering background. For the Blood Pressure issue, i bought a home tester and have been over-anally measuring and recording my results to see what factors effect it and what the underlying trends are. I intend to do the same with this T2 thing - really understand it in depth so that I can begin to control it. I just ordered a Bayer Contour USB blood glucose meter and will start testing prior to my first appointment. I also wondered if anybody can comment on the best testing regime for this early discovery phase....

Well, that's about it. If you've read this far...thanks! If you have any advice for me at the beginning of this journey, I'd appreciate it.

Cheers,

Alasdair

 

[sugarless sue]

You sound like you are going to be very proactive in your treatment of your diabetes !

Here is the advice we usually give to newly diagnosed type 2 diabetics.This forum doesn't always follow the recommended dietary advice, you have to work out what works for you as we are all different .

It's not just 'sugars' you need to avoid, diabetes is an inability to process glucose properly. Carbohydrate converts, in the body, to glucose. So it makes sense to reduce the amount of carbohydrate that you eat which includes sugars.

The main carbs to avoid or reduce are the complex or starchy carbohydrates such a bread, potatoes, pasta and rice also any flour based products. The starchy carbs all convert 100% to glucose in the body and raise the blood sugar levels significantly.

The way to find out how different foods affect you is to do regular daily testing and keep a food diary for a couple of weeks. If you test just before eating then two hours after eating you will see the effect of certain foods on your blood glucose levels.

Buy yourself a carb counter book (you can get these on-line) and you will be able to work out how much carbs you are eating, when you test, the reading two hours after should be roughly the same as the before eating reading, if it is then that meal was fine, if it isn’t then you need to check what you have eaten and think about reducing the portion size of carbs.

When you are buying products check the total carbohydrate content, this includes the sugar content. Do not just go by the amount of sugar on the packaging as this is misleading to a diabetic.

As for a tester, try asking the nurse/doctor and explain that you want to be proactive in managing your own diabetes and therefore need to test so that you can see just how foods affect your blood sugar levels. Hopefully this will work ! Sometimes they are not keen to give Type 2’s the strips on prescription, (in the UK) but you can but try !!

As a Type 2 the latest 2010 NICE guidelines for Bg levels are as follows:
Fasting (waking).......between 4 - 7 mmol/l.
2 hrs after meals......no more than 8.5 mmol/l.
If you are able to keep the post meal numbers lower, so much the better.

It also helps if you can do 30 minutes moderate exercise a day. It doesn't have to be strenuous.

As for beer drinkers, I think we have a few who will give you the benefit of their experiences. :lol:

The diet that you were on may work but probably would need tweeking as to the amount of carbs that you can eat. As in the advice above the best way is to test, test, and test again till you find what works for you.

 

[Synonym]

Hello Alasdair and welcome to the forum!

 

[Mother Bear]

Hello, hope you find this forum as helpful as I do!

 

[hanadr]

Hi Alastair
My T1 husband used to be a brewer, but has been a civil servant for about the last 20 years. There's not much in beer which is good for a diabetic diet.
If you read the scientific principles behind the Montignac diet, you'll see it makes sense.
The objective is to reduce the amount of circulating glucose. As a brewer, you'll inderstand the molecular structure and probably the metabolic pathways of sugars and starches.
Use that knowledge combined with knowing what is in particular foods.
Some of us avoid digestible carbs.Me among them. however you must make your own choice.
It's not easy to stick to a controlled carb diet, but it becomes more so with time.
In effect it's simpler to take the usual medical intervention route.
If low carb is where you're looking, hunt up the Lowcarb diabetes forum.
Hana

 

[adm]

Yeah....I know beer is all empty carbs....."liquid bread" as they call it in Bavaria. So not good at all. I'm just going to have to hope that I can still enjoy it in moderation without too much effect. I guess it will be a trade off between diet and exercise and beer and hopefully I can find some middle ground!

Brewing takes the starches in grain and turns them into sugars (mainly maltose amongst others) and then the yeast takes most of those and turns them into alcohol. Then there's the unfermented sugars left in the beer that the yeast can't convert, and that basically just gets absorbed as processed carbs I would guess.

But - I read that alcohol has the side effect of preventing the release of glucose into the blood stream....which could be a good thing if you are trying to keep glucose levels under control. I guess that the carb content outweighs the glucose suppression factor though. Maybe I should brew a highly attenuated beer with minimum residual sugar, and maximum alcohol content... 8) (Oh. Wait a mo' - that's called Vodka....)

On the Montignac diet, when I did it before, I got quite deeply into the science - and as you say, it makes sense. I should really have kept it up - if I had, I'd probably not have just been diagnosed as T2. Once I got going on it, I actually found it very easy to do. It was more of a "lifestyle choice" thing than a denial - and I'm not really that fond of high GI carbs or sugars anyway.

Still - live and learn eh? I'm hoping I've been diagnosed early enough that I can get it under control succesfully and don't have to progress to medication for a long time.

 

[justfoundout]

Welcome Alasdair
I was welcomed into the T2 club earlier this year so like you I am on an unexpected and unwelcomed voyage of discovery. Still don't want to be on the journey but trying to make the most of it.
The great thing is since my diagnosis and changing to a low carb diet the symptoms that I crawled into the gp's surgery with back in December have almost diappeared. I am better health wise and the depression has lifted and the pains gone. The LC route is working for me supplemented with exercise but a different approach may suit you - one size does not fit all I have learnt.
I am fortunate so far that my gp prescribes test strips and meter. Have you asked at your gp? Even if they won't let you have strips the drugs reps are only too happy to let the nurses have free meters to hand out (so my practise nursed told me). Testing lets me take control instead of feeling that the diabetes is controlling me.
I have been on a steep learning curve and there is a wealth of info here and elsewhere on the web. If you can't find what you need someone here generally has the answer.
One positive is that I have started cooking and baking again and my cupboards and fridge are full of diabetic (read healthy) friendly food.
Can't comment on beer - fortunately my tipple of choice was and still is red wine which works positively on my bs levels.
Well done on quitting smoking - hard but the best gift you will give yourself. I quit nearly 10 months ago (when ignorant of being a diabetic) and know it is hard but SO worth it. There are quite a lot of ex-smokers around here only too happy to offer support if you ever need it.
So not the journey (I mean the T2 one) we would like to have booked but if you are on it (as we are) so much better with the good folk around here looking out for us. M

 

[Synonym]

Hello again ADM

I think that if you can figure out how to make beer suitable for diabetics you will make an absolute fortune – never mind how many other guys out there who will be exceedingly happy!! 8)

Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone should hold their breath. ( :lol: )

It sounds as if you will fathom this new diabetes path fairly quickly, hope all goes well for you.

 

[adm]

Well done on quitting smoking - hard but the best gift you will give yourself. I quit nearly 10 months ago (when ignorant of being a diabetic) and know it is hard but SO worth it. There are quite a lot of ex-smokers around here only too happy to offer support if you ever need it.

Surprisingly enough, quitting smoking was extremely easy. I used a product called Swedish Snus to stop the cigs dead - this was back in November and I haven't has a single one since - or even a craving for one. This is basically a "moist oral snuff", but due to the way it's processed, the cancer risk is pretty much eliminated. It's different to American "chewing tobacco", but is packaged in little "teabag" type things that you just pop behind your gum.

So that gave me the nicotine that I craved and at the same time stopped all the COPD and Cancer type risks that I was getting from smoking.

The downside is that of course, the Snus still gives you nicotine, and nicotine elevates your blood pressure....so now I've got to stop the Snus!

However, that's proving really easy. It seems to be much easier to stop than cigarettes....and right now I'm just having one or two Snus a day, more to use up my supply than anything else....

 

[justfoundout]

Try cold turkey - in 3 days the nicotine will be gone from your body. Good luck! M

 

[adm]

Try cold turkey - in 3 days the nicotine will be gone from your body. Good luck! M

I'm thinking about doing just that starting tomorrow morning.

I have started to monitor and test for my snus use, and it appears to me that nicotine actually increases BG levels. I just tested my BG 1 hour after a roast dinner (no carbs) at 7.4 then had a portion of snus, and an hour later, it's at 8.7. I've also been drinking red wine though, so I don't know if the BG rise is down to the nicotine, the wine (probably not?) or the slow release from the food.....