Hi. I've been reading this forum occasionally, and this is the first time I've had something to say.
I'm not formally diagnosed. A couple of months ago I self-administered a glucose tolerance test and got some scary results. Fasting level was 6.6 mmol/l, and the 2 hour level was 10.4. I'd also got one high result after a normal, if heavy, meal. Mixed in with this were some more normal results, such as a fasting of 5.3 and a 2-hour postprandial of 7.0. Then I ran out of test strips.
I chose not to go to a doctor with this, and instead tried diet. As a result of that my weight dropped from around 72kg to around 69kg, and my waist from 94cm to 91cm. I'm a 50-year-old male, and my height is about 171cm, so I was never massively overweight, only at the high end of healthy. My BMI went from around 24.6 to 23.6. My ideal weight is probably about 66kg so I'm now half-way there.
Yesterday I repeated the glucose tolerance test. This time the fasting level was 5.4 mmol/l, and the 2 hour was 8.9. After 3 hours it was down to 3.4. So this is much improved, although the 2 hour level is still higher than the 7.8 considered normal. During the week I'd done some other tests around normal meals and got normal readings from those. It seems to me I'm making progress.
The dieting regime I chose was intermittent fasting, meaning occasional fasting days consuming fewer than 600 kcals rather than the usual 2500 or so, and eating what you like on non-fasting days. The claim is that fasting puts the body into a kind of "repair mode", and that this is beneficial above and beyond any benefits from losing weight.
So my question is, does that seem plausible in my case? Or would you expect losing a few kilos of weight and few centimetres of tummy would be enough to make the kind of improvement in glucose readings that I measured?
I'm not formally diagnosed. A couple of months ago I self-administered a glucose tolerance test and got some scary results. Fasting level was 6.6 mmol/l, and the 2 hour level was 10.4. I'd also got one high result after a normal, if heavy, meal. Mixed in with this were some more normal results, such as a fasting of 5.3 and a 2-hour postprandial of 7.0. Then I ran out of test strips.
I chose not to go to a doctor with this, and instead tried diet. As a result of that my weight dropped from around 72kg to around 69kg, and my waist from 94cm to 91cm. I'm a 50-year-old male, and my height is about 171cm, so I was never massively overweight, only at the high end of healthy. My BMI went from around 24.6 to 23.6. My ideal weight is probably about 66kg so I'm now half-way there.
Yesterday I repeated the glucose tolerance test. This time the fasting level was 5.4 mmol/l, and the 2 hour was 8.9. After 3 hours it was down to 3.4. So this is much improved, although the 2 hour level is still higher than the 7.8 considered normal. During the week I'd done some other tests around normal meals and got normal readings from those. It seems to me I'm making progress.
The dieting regime I chose was intermittent fasting, meaning occasional fasting days consuming fewer than 600 kcals rather than the usual 2500 or so, and eating what you like on non-fasting days. The claim is that fasting puts the body into a kind of "repair mode", and that this is beneficial above and beyond any benefits from losing weight.
So my question is, does that seem plausible in my case? Or would you expect losing a few kilos of weight and few centimetres of tummy would be enough to make the kind of improvement in glucose readings that I measured?
