• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

Hypo?

Thanks @Chook !

I forgot that I had a phone appointment with my diabetic nurse today, so told her about last night and this morning and how adrift I felt without being able to test (new meter arrived and it's looooovely). She was finally persuaded - she's put the test strips for the GlucoMen Areo on prescription.

So it can be done!
 

Oh, WELL DONE!!! Thats excellent! Maybe she'll be interested in a bit of 'education' once you show her how well you're doing.

I get through 200 strips a month and I'm keeping very quiet ATM because my HbA1C was below pre-Diabetes level last time and was only just in to pre-Diabetes range on the previous one. Its amazing what a bit of low carbing will do.
 
Oh, I'm an absolutely low-carb convert. To the point that I've telling people coming to celebrate my birthday with me next weekend not to bring cake. They are positively scandalised!

I have to admit, when it comes to Nurse Jayne, while she's very much all about the NHS guidance, she's also quite open-minded and has known me for a long time (about 6 years). At first it was how I dealt with and learned to manage Euan's very severe asthma, but it's nice to be in a place with her where I can tell her my progress and she doesn't try to NHS at me. She was actually delighted that I've found my own way and am making progress.

Incidentally, her view of last night is that it was a combo of factors - she admits that she put me on a gung-ho dose of Jardiance (and offered to half it - I refused for now), the massive drop in carbs compared to what I was eating just last month and the end of a heavy period sort of ganged up on me. And, yeah, she mentioned kicking the sugar habit and my body rebelling a bit, too.

I like Jayne. I like that I don't have to disagree with her so much anymore.

But I really like how on-the-mark everyone in this thread was - thank you all so much. <3

Edit: Gosh! I've gotten so used to incredible success stories I had to reread what you posted there @Chook - well done, you! How long has that taken?
 

I've been diagnosed for a long while and have had two very bad bouts of Diabetes denial but pulled myself together and started low carbing two years ago next week after a bit of an accident with insulin. When I started LC my BG was in the low 30s and was down to 17.4 within a week and then about two months to get it down in the 6s and 7s. I was injecting insulin when I first started LC so had to take it easy - slowly reducing carbs and slowly reducing insulin. But I wasn't worried, I was quite sure the diabetes wasn't going anywhere - and it didn't.

The just inside pre-Diabetes range HbA1c was last August and the below Diabetes one was this March - I was totally shocked when the DN told me it was 29 - which is 4.9%. I've chosen to carry on with Metformin because of its other benefits - maybe one day I'll cut it down to just one a day but we have a very strong history in my family of strokes and heart attacks so I'm happy to take anything that might help protect me from that.
 
There's no cute forum rating for "Amazing", so I made you a winner, instead. That's an amazing story, @Chook. Then again, I'm getting used to the notion that this is an amazing place populated by amazing folks, so I guess your story is really just par for the course
 

Oh no, I'm not amazing. There's loads of people on this forum that have done the same (if not better) than me - and without the support from all the other lovely people here I am absolutely and completely sure I'd still be injecting insulin, have multiple T2 related ailments, have no hair and be five stone heavier.

I am now constantly on the look out for when the 'denial' starts creeping in again though.
 
@SockFiddler I haven't carefully read each post, so apologies if this has been mentioned.

It's just possible your episode, was of a hypotensive nature - dehydration. One is well advised to balance what you are pee'ing out by taking in adequate fluids, also allowing extra for the present heat.
 

Well done.. result!
 
Now you have your glucometer, you must start a food diary.
This is such a useful tool to see how you react to the food you eat and the intolerant foods you should avoid in such quantities that will spike you too high.

It helps to understand your body and your preferences, because, we must find our own personal balance of what goes down your throat.
It will show you trends of those same foods you prefer.

Control is the key.
 
It's sound advice @Lamont D ! In fact, I think it was you who recommended that to someone else on a different thread (which I read shortly after my diagnosis) and I started doing exactly that - what I eat, what time, the calories and the carbs. The only thing missing is the blood readings, but it was great advice for someone else and it's been a real learning exercise for me, too.

What's been really interesting is seeing how drastically my calorie intake has reduced along with the carbs, to the point where I have been concerned that I'm not eating enough (!!). Trust me, that's a real turnaround!

I'm also keeping a log of the foods I eat in "real terms" - for example, most sites list nutritional values per 100g, which isn't useful if you're eating 2 eggs or an apple or anything else that doesn't come in tidy 100g packages. These numbers I'm listing in the back to save myself time, and that's been really helpful, too.

I'm a numbers person. I like seeing the specifics of the world quantifying and comparing. Takes all the razzamatazz, drama and guess work out of the tricky stuff. Keeping a food diary is one of the smartest decisions I've ever made - I wish I'd done it years ago; I've needed to understand how I fuel myself for years.
 


I'm not a number counter, just the basic food diary, a portion is a portion!(ish)
Calories are not so important, but eating just enough and everything in moderation will help so much!

Sounds like a plan!
 
I found that, certainly for the first couple of months, keeping a detailed record of what I ate, when I ate it, what my readings were before and two hours after along with a weekly breakdown of what I was eating in terms of calories, carbs, fats, protein and fibre (working these out in relation to portion size from stated amounts per 100g) didn't just put me in control of my blood sugar and my food; it also armed me with information to help me demonstrate my own progress to my doctors, thus justifying my decision to stop taking Gliclazide and manage my diabetes by LCHF diet alone. I also noted what meds I took (quite a little bundle post transplant) and when and what readings were at relevant times and this too allowed me to ask for reductions etc in certain dosages. All of this was accepted and convinced my doctors that I knew what I was talking about. Further, when you are feeling negative from diagnosis (or from things in general) it is empowering to know that you have taken control. Despite this, I am decidedly NOT an numbers person. I now concern myself way less with them as I know what I need to know. I can now get back to reading painting and writing and avoiding counting things as much as possible.
 
You raise a really good point: the demonstration of knowledge can only be done by gathering evidence.

I'm a feedback loop type of person. I need something to demonstrate motion; to calibrate change. I've always had a weird dislike for (or fear of) being static and being able to fundamentally measure progress is something I'm finding intensely satisfying.

And, of course, these rapid improvements will plateau out: there's a finite amount of weight to lose and a limit to how low you want your BG readings to get. At that point (I imagine), I'll be using the feedback loop to reassure myself that I'm still in control (another phobia of mine). I'm hoping, eventually, I'll just be in the habit of knowing what I can and can't eat so won't be spending quite so much time on DietDoctor and Tesco,com, but I will always track my carbs from now on, having been absolutely converted to the Low Carb "movement" (I don't know the word for a scientific collective).

I'm already amazed by so many things - not least how little I want to eat in a day compared to what I was packing away just a month ago. I ate as many calories in the whole of last week as I would happily have eaten in a single meal.
 
Just did my BG - 6.0 this morning!

*Now I'm stuffing my face with a peanut and chocolate thing to celebrate. So it's not like I'm fully rehabilitated out of my old habits yet...
 
Last edited:
It gets my eyes first too. I get a green bloom in the centre of my vision that grows in size unless I take action. I used to get the shimmering zaggies too, but think that was a warning of my strokes, as I no longer get them having had the real thing twice now. So I get the bloom, and shortly after the anger against inanimate objects (usually, inanimate that is), then the feeling ****** kicks in and I fnd it increasingly difficult to read my meter. So far I have manged to sort myself out every time on my own, and I did adjust my meds regime so that my orals had lessening power to give a deep or prolonged hypo event and so I was safe since as a T2 I will recover naturally in time. I managed to keep my hypo's shallow by meds adjustment, then I told the GP when I was happy to make the scrip changes. I dropped from 320 mg Gliclazide + 2,000 mg Metformin down to 40 mg Glic + 1000 mg Metformin, and I rarely get hypo lows now. Current my daily average is running at 7.3 mmol/l. which I am happy with. I find LCHF works for me very well.
 
Either way you recognized this was not normal, training kicked in and you did something to resolve the problem. Could have been a hypo, all the info above says you will never know. But you could use this as the basis of an early warning sign for the future. The body is good at giving signs that something is amiss. If I am out on a days walk and I get towards 4mmol/l I go quiet and tend to speed up, I ignore others round me/become short tempered. My lady knows this means I need to eat and will suggest a quick fix/to stop and eat properly depending where we are.

That's my experiences of day time lows, not had a daytime hypo. Night time yes but that is a different story.

Listen to your body, it will mostly be right, occasionally wrong. Testing will give you real answers not anecdotal evidence.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn More.…