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Type 2 High Hba1c result with good exercise/diet

T

timbo_dolman

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Hi everyone, just had my annual blood/urine tests back - all good and normal but my Hba1C has risen to 62%. I am fit (cycle 200 km a week) and eat a very healthy diet with no alcohol. I've never had the reading that high. So, I'm a little confused ahead of my diabetic nurse review next week. One issue I've read about that I believe could have caused this is that I've been under intense stress over the last 2 months at work, do you think that could be the cause of the increase based on experience? One good thing is that I'm due to retire next month anyway but I'm wondering this stress has impacted my results?
 
Its all about blood glucose levels and the first thing that effects them is carbs.......do you eat carbs, especially with the active lifestyle.....?

Stress can increase levels, yes.....due to the increased resistance to insulin brought on by the associated stress hormones..

are you monitoring your levels...?
 
Whilst stress can raise bloodsugars, with T2's is more than likely your diet, if you could give an example of what you eat in a day people may be able to help - I say this because what many get told is a healthy diet just does not suit T2's
 
A healthy diet is something entirely different for someone with a metabolic condition... It's probably the carbs. Stress wouldn't help, but I doubt it'd put you that deep into the diabetic range on its own. What are you eating? Bread, spuds, rice, fruit, pasta, cereal? You know, the things a diabetic can't process? (Not kidding you. That stuff's bad for people like us!)
https://josekalsbeek.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-nutritional-thingy.html <-- have a read here and see where you can make some changes in your diet, bring your numbers back down into the non-diabetic range.

After all, it'd be nice if you can enjoy a loooong retirement in good health eh.
 
So my typical diet = 2 rounds whole grain toast for breakfast, small glass of low sugar cranberry juice, a fruit based lunch - apple, 2 oranges, bananas and for evening meal - chicken fajita wraps with vegetables, protein bar and fruit smoothie drinks. I drink 1.5 l water a day and 4 coffees. No alcohol but occasionally 2 x alcohol free beer at the weekend.

On a typical exercise I burn 1000 calories and have lost 2 stone in weight since November 2019. I've been feeling so well I haven't suspected any issues or monitored levels - I.e. no evidence of increased thirst or frequent urination/tiredness. The blood test I had was a fasting blood test which I fasted for 11 hours.
 
Unfortunately most of those foods are loaded with carbs and I'm afraid that's what causing the raise in blood sugars, its not just sugar, its the carbs
If you read the link @JoKalsbeek linked this may help you understand which foods will be good for you.
Noting that some T2's can deal with more carbs than others, you will need to test to find out though.

timbo_dolman said:
The blood test I had was a fasting blood test which I fasted for 11 hours.
Click to expand...
The HbA1c is an average over 3 months so fasting for the 11 hours before won't have made a difference (they may have asked you to fast for the cholesterol test if they were doing that as well, but not for the HbA1c)
 

Unfortunately, your diet is very likely to be your problem. Allot of those foods are very high in Carbs, some high in fructose and sugars. Some diabetics can eat those things and get away with it, however if your more sensitive because you have heavy insulin resistance or reduced insulin production you cannot process it even if you did exercise all day.

The main thing you should do in my view, is get a blood glucose meter – they are cheap and easy to use – you will see loads of guides and details on the forum and elsewhere. But test your blood before, and 2 hours after each meal – keep a log of what your eating and see what increases your blood glucose.

For allot of people, bread, fruits (especially things like bananas), wraps, rice, (even whole wheat, the protein bars are often cut with carbs (I haven’t seen many that are not very high in carbs). All these things can send your bloods well out of range, even with exercise.

Most of your diet while healthy for a normal person, is full of carbs which can raise your blood sugars as a diabetic. To what degree you will only find by testing.

I am very active myself; I do 4 or more long session in the gym a week, along with additional sports and cycling on the weekend. I can’t eat like I used to and I have had to cut loads of what I used to rely on.

The main thing is, get a meter – all the advice you will get on this post about what and will not raise your blood is speculation – every one is different and you need to be armed with the facts. Test before and after your meals – read up on when and how to test. You may be sadly surprised about what is causing your high HBA1C and need to make some changes.

If you don’t, ultimately the NHS just follow the standard guides and will just keep increasing your meds which is a downward spiral.

If you change your diet and test, still get very high results – get tested for other types of diabetes, as its rare but possible to develop Type 1 in later life.
 
So basically, your diet is all carbs, all the time. The bad news: you're basically poisoning yourself every day. The good news: You can easily get yourself back to the non-diabetic range, because you can make a LOT of changes. Ditch the grain based products (all of them, wraps, bread and all), all fruits save for berries, and please, please step away from smoothies... Fruit is loaded with sugar, and whatever bit of fibre's in there that can slow a peak down, gets destroyed in the smoothy maker. The sugars in there are hitting your bloodstream hard and peaking you fast. Alcohol free beer doesn't matter, you want to know the carb content of a beer. (They don't call it liquid bread for nothing). https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/alcohol should help you pick an alternative. And you might want to check the carb content of that protein bar. So...

In case you haven't read the Thingy yet, which I guess a lot of people don't actually bother with: Start your day with eggs, bacon, maybe a tomato, some high meat content sausages. Lunch? A salad with something fatty, as leafy greens alone don't fill you up. So that could be tuna, salmon, warmed over goats cheese, avocado, that sort of thing. In the evening, meat, fish, poultry with above ground veggies/leafy greens. Just have more of that to replace the missing carbs. Or go for a replacement like celeriac or cauliflower rice.

One more thing about fruit. Most T2's have something called Metabolic Syndrome. It's a combination of different conditions that usually are found together. Did they happen to check your liver function? MS includes non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity and diabetes. (Not all the boxes have to be ticked). The thing about fruit in relation to this? Fructose. It's a sugar. And it happens to be a sugar the liver identifies as toxic. That makes non-alcoholic fatty liver disease a whole lot worse. So another reason to stay away from the stuff. It's a sugary food that tries to kill you in multiple ways.

Get a meter. I know I'm asking a whole lot of you in terms of tossing decades of dietary advice overboard, but don't take the word of an internet stranger for it. Get a meter, and it will tell you whether your body responds to food the way you want it to, or not. What you're aiming for is a rise of no more than 2.0 mmol/l between a measurement before a meal, and 2 hours after the first bite. If it's worse than that... You need to adjust or scrap the meal.

Hope this helps. Again... You have a lot to gain here! There's hope yet.
Jo
 
Thank you for the advice, I've just read the article - looks like its the fruit is not helping. I eat a lot of it, and smoothies its helped my weight loss when I exercise but I never made the connection to high carbs. Fasting was for cholesterol and the results were perfect in that regard.
 
The meter is important as if you're active you will become naturally more sensitive to your own insulin, which means that you can strike a balance between the carbs in your diet.......a better balance than someone who inst as active.....

so the meter should allow you to fine tune it all so you can still eat some of the things you want to....
 
Your cholesterol should come down on a low carb / high fat diet too. I know mine did, no statins here anymore.
 
Thanks Jo, liver function was checked too and was perfect along with cholesterol, kidneys etc.. . I can sort this and will get a meter as you suggest - I actually have been T2 for 9 years, the spike has only come with this diet I'm sure of it now. 3 months of it has obviously impacted. Previously I was pre-diabetic. Great advice thank you so much!
 
I have a feeling you're going to turn this around right-quick.
 
One good thing about eating low carb is the ability to deal with stress is much improved - plus I found that people took me a lot more seriously - maybe the pheromones from a protein and fat diet are detectable on a subconscious level?
I was astonished to read what you have been eating - you must be yet another person who was never told the simple fact that type two diabetics cannot deal with starches and sugars - I really do not understand why that should be the case, but I see it so often.
 
I am now, thank goodness for this forum and some kind people with advice.

I’ve done so well losing two stone and getting physically fit but the diet advice here has changed everything. Hopefully can get this sorted out in a couple of months with the help of a monitor too as everything else blood/urine test wise is spot on.

I’m so glad I asked the question
 

So I read your reply about what you eat... NOOOOOO!
Toast - out
Low sugar cranberry juice - not sure, how many carbs
Apple - probably not so good
Oranges - for me they are very bad
Banana - depends on ripeness, closer to green is better
Protein bars - most are far too high in carbs, I only eat one when I’m exercising.
Smoothies - Noooooo!
Wraps - probably has too many carbs in them (I couldn’t eat them).

You need to reduce your carbs, drastically.
I’m type 2 on insulin and I try to eat low carb as much as possible, look to intake more fat and protein. Look at product labels and specifically carbs (this includes sugar) to identify good or better products. Fir a diabetic there is no ‘good’ source of sugar, natural sugar as in fruit and honey is still sugar and therefore bad for us. For toast I use Hovis protein bread (sold in Asda stores) as it has half the carbs of regular bread (but only a couple of slices, and not every day). Smoothies and fruit juice are out, far too many carbs and liquid carbs very quickly turn into glucose in your blood.
I hope my comments are helpful. I wish you all the best, and a long and healthy retirement.
 
I was on a high stodge diet which was supposed to be cholesterol lowering, for almost two years. On diagnosis I switched back to low carb and - I hesitate to say this - but I lost 20 percent of my body weight with no effort whatsoever. I wasn't even trying.
These days I eat meat at breakfast time, often with mushrooms, sweet pepper, chopped celery, courgette or aubergine, maybe beansprouts as a stirfry, in the warm weather I was having salads with fish or cheese and eggs. I drink coffee with cream, and added a tiny pinch of salt and a small amount of cinnamon each morning. That keeps me going until the evening, so I don't need to find lunch if I am out of the house.
All the vegetables and fruits I eat are 10 percent carbs or less, as that makes it easy to have enough to eat without overdoing the carbs.
 
@masonap Hi timbo_dolman I agree with masonap your diet is terrible . Search the web for low carb advice. You can make low carb bread. Drink only water , coffee, tea. Fruit? be very careful, you can look up the carb content on the USDA food central websites , get a blood meter , experiment , and a kitchen scales e.g a banana with no skin is about 80 grams, so you can calculate how many carbs that is. Look up the correct units. HbA1c of 62% is impossible. good luck hooha
 
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