Hi New and unsure

Welcome Philip,

I am not the official welcoming committee - that should be along in a minute, but in the meantime welcome (albeit unexpectedly) to the club. There's lots of help and advice on here, as I'm sure you'll find out.

S

Hi Matey! :wink:

Hi and welcome

I was devastated when I got my diagnosis in March 2010. I was diagnosed with an underactive thyroid at the same time and I had gone because underactive thyroid is in my family and they were on at me to get checked because they could see I had it.


Alison

hi phillip

i was diagnosed gestational diabetes in 1999 and then got diagnosed properly in 2004 with type 1 there is lots of help and very useful advice on here i only joined here tonight and its really helped me xxx

Hi Philip and welcome.............lots of really helpful and supportive people on here

Hi ph!l!p

Welcome to the forum. Daisy should be along in a bit with her welcoming post full of lots of really useful information.

Hi ph!!!p and welcome to the forum.

Daisy should be with you soon but in the meantime here's some info I've found useful to give new members. If you want to read where I get the info I recommend then look here http://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes-forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=28402 basically this will lead you to some official diabetic guideline docs for Sweden and America. Both countries have recently changed their dietary guidance for diabetics based on the latest studies available in the last few years. The information I provide to you below reflects that change so may be different to that provided in the UK by the NHS which still uses much older (40 year old) recommendations.

What worked for me and many other people on the forum is finding out that reducing carbohydrates is what really helps with blood sugar levels and controlling diabetes. So just to get things a bit clearer in your head that means drastically reducing or stopping eating anything with plain sugar in it like cakes and biscuits, sugar in tea and coffee and even pure fruit juices contain a lot of sugar. Importantly also try and at least halve starchy foods like rice, pasta, bread, potatoes, cereals and anything else made with flour. Replace those things with extra meat, fish, cheese, eggs and especially vegetables. Vegetables that grow above ground are best but most of us find carrots ok too. A small amount of fresh fruit is fine and I personally find fruits that end in "berry" to be the best. If you're ok with artificial sweeteners then things like diet coke are fine but obviously the non diet versions of drinks are definitely out.

You may or may not have been given guidance on testing your own blood sugar levels. Some GP practices are pro providing Type 2's with a meter and test strips and some are anti. I will warn you the anti ones can be very anti. Whether you get a meter or not is somewhat of a post code lottery I'm afraid at the moment. Most forum members would recommend you get a meter to test your levels as how else will you know you aren't eating things that can hurt you. If you don't know how to go about getting a meter just ask. Do not underestimate the damage diabetes will do to you if you ignore it and regularly exceed safe blood sugar levels.

There are long standing NHS (NICE) guidelines regarding safe blood sugar levels which state to be under 8.5 mmol/l two hours after eating any meal. Many of us see that as a bit out of date nowadays with 7.8 mmol/l being a better target to aim for. 7.8 is what the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) recommends as a lot of modern research shows that 7.8 is the number where if regularly exceeded bad things will start to happen with your body. Depending on how much risk you want to take some of us aim for even lower targets of around 6.5 as that would be the maximum that 19 out of 20 average non diabetics would reach. It will take you a while to get your levels down to those, it took me around 2 months but day by day and week by week it got better.

One thing I found worked really well is a thing called carb counting. This just means that you work out from the backs of packets how many grams of carbohydrates you eat in a day. If you want to do that but are unclear how then ask. The main rule is to include the total carbohydrate count not just the "of which sugars" value. A good target that most people would recommend is to aim between 120 and 150g of carbs a day. This is called a moderately restricted carbohydrate regime and would be one of the dietary options you would be recommended to eat by your doctor if you were American, Swedish or German as it's become standard practice within their health systems.

A benefit of carb counting is it will allow you to fine tune the amount and types of carbohydrate you can eat safely when combined with your meter as no two people are the same. You may find you have to adjust your initial grams per day down (like me) or you might find you can eat more. Some people on the forum cut their carbs to a very low figure of less than 30g / day called VLC or very low carbing. Again while this may seem extreme it is not necessarily a bad thing and other countries don't actively discourage people from doing it so for example the Swedes just say a person doing that kind of diet should just be helped out by their doctor to ensure they are still getting enough vitamins and calories and stuff like that. At those kind of levels AND if you are still producing enough insulin quite a few members discover they can give up all their medication if they want to. If you are wondering I still quite like carbs so eat around 65g / day on average, I'd love to eat a few more but then I wouldn't be able to keep my levels safe which to me is the most important thing.

Here in the UK you may find your local doctor and nurse will also have no problem with a moderate carb regime but some very much still do and may well recommend you eat all the starchy foods I listed above in quantity with every meal. Again the choice is entirely yours. If you want to eat at that higher carbohydrate level then most diabetics have to accept sooner or later they will be on stronger diabetic drugs rather than diet only or on safe drugs like Metformin as otherwise they find they cannot keep in those safe blood sugar ranges.

Losing weight is important if you need to. The extra weight is a major cause of what's called insulin resistance. What that means is that the insulin you produce is being stopped from working properly by excess weight. If you lose weight your insulin resistance will begin to get better and of course losing weight is good for other things like your heart. Unfortunately don't think by losing weight you will be "cured" If you are very lucky you might find that with a reduction in insulin resistance your ability to eat carbohydrates may get somewhat better but how much better is really determined by how long you were running at high blood sugar levels as those high levels can and do destroy the very cells in the body that produce insulin.

Finally an idea of how long it takes to get your blood sugars under control. In me on a low carb and Metformin regime it took around 8 weeks. Each week I saw a gradual improvement. In some people it happens in days. We have had a couple of new members recently who cut their carbohydrates really low and got back to near normal non diabetic blood sugar levels in just about a week. From this take it that everyone is different!

Just keep asking questions it's what the forum is all about.

Hi Philip and welcome to the forum To help you to get started, here is the information we give to new members and I hope you will find it useful. Ask as many questions as you like as there is usually someone here to help.

BASIC INFORMATION FOR NEWLY DIAGNOSED DIABETICS


Diabetes is the general term to describe people who have blood that is sweeter than normal. A number of different types of diabetes exist.

A diagnosis of diabetes tends to be a big shock for most of us. It’s far from the end of the world though and on this forum you’ll find well over 30,000 people who are demonstrating this.

On the forum we have found that with the number of new people being diagnosed with diabetes each day, sometimes the NHS is not being able to give all the advice it would perhaps like to deliver - particularly with regards to people with type 2 diabetes.

The role of carbohydrate

Carbohydrates are a factor in diabetes because they ultimately break down into sugar (glucose) within our blood. We then need enough insulin to either convert the blood sugar into energy for our body, or to store the blood sugar as body fat.

If the amount of carbohydrate we take in is more than our body’s own (or injected) insulin can cope with, then our blood sugar will rise.

The bad news

Research indicates that raised blood sugar levels over a period of years can lead to organ damage, commonly referred to as diabetic complications.

The good news

People on the forum here have shown that there is plenty of opportunity to keep blood sugar levels from going too high. It’s a daily task but it’s within our reach and it’s well worth the effort.

Controlling your carbs

The info below is primarily aimed at people with type 2 diabetes, however, it may also be of benefit for other types of diabetes as well.
There are two approaches to controlling your carbs:

• Reduce your carbohydrate intake
• Choose ‘better’ carbohydrates

Reduce your carbohydrates

A large number of people on this forum have chosen to reduce the amount of carbohydrates they eat as they have found this to be an effective way of improving (lowering) their blood sugar levels.

The carbohydrates which tend to have the most pronounced effect on blood sugar levels tend to be starchy carbohydrates such as rice, pasta, bread, potatoes and similar root vegetables, flour based products (pastry, cakes, biscuits, battered food etc) and certain fruits.

Choosing better carbohydrates

Another option is to replace ‘white carbohydrates’ (such as white bread, white rice, white flour etc) with whole grain varieties. The idea behind having whole grain varieties is that the carbohydrates get broken down slower than the white varieties –and these are said to have a lower glycaemic index.
http://www.diabetes.co.uk/food/diabetes ... rains.html

The low glycaemic index diet is often favoured by healthcare professionals but some people with diabetes find that low GI does not help their blood sugar enough and may wish to cut out these foods altogether.

Read more on carbohydrates and diabetes

Eating what works for you

Different people respond differently to different types of food. What works for one person may not work so well for another. The best way to see which foods are working for you is to test your blood sugar with a glucose meter.

To be able to see what effect a particular type of food or meal has on your blood sugar is to do a test before the meal and then test after the meal. A test 2 hours after the meal gives a good idea of how your body has reacted to the meal.

The blood sugar ranges recommended by NICE are as follows:

Blood glucose ranges for type 2 diabetes

• Before meals: 4 to 7 mmol/l
• 2 hours after meals: under 8.5 mmol/l

Blood glucose ranges for type 1 diabetes (adults)

• Before meals: 4 to 7 mmol/l
• 2 hours after meals: under 9 mmol/l

Blood glucose ranges for type 1 diabetes (children)

• Before meals: 4 to 8 mmol/l
• 2 hours after meals: under 10 mmol/l

However, those that are able to, may wish to keep blood sugar levels below the NICE after meal targets.

Access to blood glucose test strips
The NICE guidelines suggest that people newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes should be offered:

• structured education to every person and/or their carer at and around the time of diagnosis, with annual reinforcement and review
• self-monitoring of plasma glucose to a person newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes only as an integral part of his or her self-management education

Therefore both structured education and self-monitoring of blood glucose should be offered to people with type 2 diabetes. Read more on getting access to blood glucose testing supplies.

You may also be interested to read questions to ask at a diabetic clinic

Note: This post has been edited from Sue/Ken's post to include up to date information.
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Please sign our e-petition for free testing for all type 2's; here's the link:
http://www.diabetes.co.uk/petition/

Do get your friends and colleagues to sign as well.

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