How do i know what type I am?

[bolders]

Hi there. I was diagnosed about 18 months ago and was given the normal advice. In other words not very much at all! I have been told that I do not need to test allthough I am now sure that this an econonomical measure by my surgery based on the reaction of my doctor to having to prescribe Erythromycin rather than pennecillin for a foot infection which was apparently caused by my sugar being constantly too high! (got hold of a few strips and tested - 16.6 this morning).
Am i possibly type 1 or maybe even a little of both types? Can i find out without the doctors help?
I know I need to change surgerys as the ony real advice I've had is how to cut my toenails and how I can lose limbs if it stays this high!
I am on max doses of metformin and gliclazide.
Thanks.

 

[Synonym]

Hi bolders and welcome to the forum.

How can you know what is happening in your body if you don’t test? This is a decision related only to the cost of providing testing strips and not to your health. :evil: If you can't get testing strips from your HPs you will need to purchase them yourself. The DN will normally have meters available and although you may not get a prescription for the strips you can purchase them.

You need to test before meals and 2 hours afterwards in order to understand how your food is affecting you BG levels and to know what foods to cut out of your diet.

What are you eating? Tell us what you ate yesterday, please.

 

[totsy]

hya ,
as already said ,if u let us know what u eat daily ,we might be able to help, if we cant then see your g.p and tell them you need help

 

[hanadr]

In general, they don't bother to investigate what type of diabetes you have, They diagnose backwards by out come and treatment and make assumptions based on how it presents and your age. Truthfully what kind? matters less than successful control.
If you are young( child or teen) and the symptoms came on fast and you've lost a lot of weight, they will guess T1( and mostly they will be right)they'll treat for T1 and if things go well. They'll assume they were right.
If you are Adult, the symptoms came on slowly and you are still overweight, they will guess T2 (mostly they will be right) treat for T2 with orals and if it works, they were right. There are tests for discriminating between T1, T2 and some other variants, but they are not totally cut and dried.
In the end, it matters more that the treatment works than that they got an exact diagnosis.
However, 16.? isn't a sign of treatment working on maximum doses of 2 kinds of medication.
First some advice for your safety.
Get yourself some Ketostix from the pharmacy, they're cheap.
Then use your Blood test strips wisely and record everything you get. Cut your carb intake back HARD.
If your numbers don't go down, Check urine for ketones Particularly dangerous if you also feel ill. High BG plus ketones is a medical emergency. That means A&E IMMEDIATELY.
If numbers go down a bit, go back to doctor and tell him treatment isn't working. Max Metformin and Gliclazide should be able to handle a newly diagnosed T2. Ask to go to the diabetes clinic.
Good luck
Be safe
Hana

 

[lilibet]

They throw some bones up in the air and diagnose depending on what direction they face
Otherwise they just consult the tea leaves :lol:

Seriously though, unlikely to be T1 if you have survived for 18 months
However, agree with others that a reading of 16 on max medication is not good

So, either its being poorly controlled T2 now resulting in the need for a change in meds or possibly LADA , which is called Type 1.5 at times as oral meds dont work. Problem is you wont know if they did work at one point as you didnt test. Have you not been getting hba1c's taken across the 18 months to let you know roughly whats been happening?

Also re diet, no amount of meds would help tackle a very carby, sugary diet (despite being told by med profs you dont need to test and can eat what you want as long as its low fat, low sugar!!) so it would help to know roughly

With a combination and change in both meds and food you can get things under control. This will help recurring infections etc no end

 

[Synonym]

Hello again Bolders.

How are things going?

As Lilibet infers, no amount of medication will help with a carby diet so as I asked before:

“You need to test before meals and 2 hours afterwards in order to understand how your food is affecting you BG levels and to know what foods to cut out of your diet.

What are you eating? Tell us what you ate yesterday, please.”

 

[bolders]

Thanks for the advice people. I'm going to cut right back on the carbs then go back to the doctors and see what happens then. If I'm brutally honest with myself it probably is the carbohydrate but as mentioned in one of the replys they don't warn you much about that just the sugar content of food. Thanks again.

 

[cugila]

Thanks for the advice people. I'm going to cut right back on the carbs then go back to the doctors and see what happens then. If I'm brutally honest with myself it probably is the carbohydrate but as mentioned in one of the replys they don't warn you much about that just the sugar content of food. Thanks again.

Hi Bolders.
A belated welcome to the Forum. Been away for a while. This is the information that we give to new members who have been left in the dark by their HCP's. Some of it has been mentioned before but it is for Type 2's. Hope this helps.

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.