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In a dilema

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ph!l!p

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Macclesfield, Cheshire
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all the things i am having
Hi,
having been diagnosed with diabetes last week, i came out of the surgery with tables for diabaets, i have 2 work up to 4 a day, blood pressure tablets and tablets for cholesterol. HELP, is there anything I can eat, my wife is unsure what to cook to cover both of the problems, reading the forum carbs seem very important, which we are slowly working too but what about the cholesterol side of it. i presume the blood pressure will come down once i can get these under control. I.ve recentky stopped smoking so i have possibly made things worse eating junk food as an infill but i feel i still need something to nibble on to replace the smoking at certain times, now i have heard bananas are bad for you which i was beginning to enjoy.
Thanks for the advice so far but i feel it is such a lot to take in, my doctor says i have to get cholesterol from 5.7 down to 4, but not said how, i don't know the other readings as i was told it,s over 11 therefore the tests states i am diabetic. I was told to take care of my feet, why, it's only reading what other people have said that have helped.
As you may have gathered i am not a happy bunny at the moment as i feel that everything has come to a stop untill i can find what i can and can,t do, possibly my own fault for not thinking that one day my life style might catch up with me
 
I am only a newbie, 5 weeks on. I reduced my carbs to where my meter kept under 8 after meals, and my cholesterol and bp have come down all on their own.

My cholesterol has reduced from 6.2 to 4.5 with no statins and my bp has reduced from 147/98 to 130/75 with no medicines. So maybe reducing your carbs a bit would help your cholesterol and bp without a special target for you to work on specifically for them?

I have also made sure I stop eating any trans fats or hydrogenated fats too (they are listed on labels of ingredints so you know if they are there)

This is only my experience, others will share their experience too soon.
 
Hi

I just thought I would add that my mum is a type 1 diabetic and my dad is a type 2 diabetic and they both enjoy bananas. My mum even has banana sandwiches and her BG levels are normal, mostly under 6 so it is what works for you, try half a banana instead and see what happens to your BG levels. My diabetic nurse and dietician at my local surgery even told me this. Have you seen a dietician yet? They will help you a lot.


Alison
 
In the absence of daisy here is the advice given to new members to the forum:

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.
 
Noblehead, Daisy has already posted ph!l!p her advice in an earlier post in the same thread that I posted my own.

ph!l!p, most people who reduce their carbs will see improvements to both their blood sugar levels and their choloestrol so reducing your carbs is very effective. What many of us find is that its not that specific foods are good or bad (some are obviously stupidly bad) but the quantity you consume over the day or in each individual meal. In simplec terms what determines a foods badness is how much carbohydrate it contains. So for example if you look at the back of an average packet of white rice you will see it will say something like 75 grams per 100 grams of carbohydrate. So rice is a very high carbohydrate source. If you look on the label of say some plain Greek yoghurt that will say around 5 grams per 100 grams so that's a nice low one. Things like meat, eggs, most cheese and fish have none or hardly any carbohydrate at all so they are great. Most vegetables that grow above ground while having some carbohydrate don't have that much.

To put it into context. The Americans recommend that a diabetic eats around 130 grams of carbohydrate across the entire day so just 100 grams of rice (which is not that much) that contains 75 grams of carbohydrate is over half their daily recommendation in one go. In reality that 130 grams / day varies person to person. Some people can eat more and others like me have to eat less. What determines the safe amount per day or per meal is what your blood sugar levels tell you which is why forum members would advise you to get a meter a test.

You can get the carbohydrate content of most things off the backs of the packets they come in. For fresh things use a site like

http://carbohydrate-counter.org/advsearch.php

or

http://fatsecret.com

to tell you how much is in things.
 
Hi Philip - I posted this information for you early this morning on your other thread. You will find that most of the links haven't worked here, kindly posted by Noblehead, so here is the link just in case you haven't read my other post already:

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=17088
 
Hi. Although you want to keep your cholesterol low, a reading of 5.7 isn't too bad but GPs tend to get a bit paranoid about getting it way below 5. See where you get to with diet improvements (and you must give up smoking!) and then you can take the lowest dose of statin that moves you down to around 4. Bananas particularly if ripe are a no, no due to the free sugar i.e. they are high GI. If you can get a meter you can find out whether bananas affect you. Take readings 2 hours after a main meal.
 
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