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Insulin???

A

Angela1

Member
Messages
7
Hi there, thank you for reading my post it's a bit long I'm afraid!
I'm hoping to get a bit of advice please from the more experienced type 2's on or have been on in the past insulin as iv been told I need to go on it now!
I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes 6.5 years ago and after I had my baby it went away but came back about 3 years ago. I'm on 2000mg metformin daily and have tried several other secondary drugs which either haven't agreed with me or haven't really worked very well at bringing my BGL's down enough so I find myself at the point of being put on insulin. To be honest my diet isnt very good and iv recently reduced my exercising due to a new job which is close to home so that may have effected me too. Basically I'm really upset about this and am dreading fitting it into my busy lifestyle so I have cut carbs and stuck to a really strict diet this week and have also started cycling and already in the space of a week my levels have reduced by half!
What I'm basically asking is have any of you experienced this 'wake up call' and managed to avoid going on insulin? Or maybe just been on it temporarily?
I would love to hear some of your stories as I'm booked in on Tuesday to start my injections and I'm really not 'feeling' it!!
Thanks xx
 
I was on insulin for a few years - they weren't the best years of my life but, knowing what I know now, I think the fault was with me for not taking my diabetes seriously and looking on injecting insulin as a way to just carry on the way I had been (stupid me).

By reducing your carbs you are doing the absolute best thing you can do - I'm assuming you've got yourself a meter - if not then please do get yourself one and start testing your BG frequently - just before a meal and two hours after is helpful as you can see the way that meal has affected you.

It won't take long before you start to see a pattern in how your body reacts to different foods. My biggest problem was fruit - which I always considered to be healthy - I was eating whole fruit with every meal and for snacks - and having fruit smoothies for breakfast and lunch. Just cutting out the fruit really helped.

I have been off insulin for two years now, so it can be done - it just means being constantly aware of what you are eating and knowing how what you eat affects you.

I wish you loads and loads of luck x
 

Ye, Ive been there, I refused all meds did LCHf 30 g per day, now have pretty normal blood sugars within a year .

I would not accept having insulin injections until my doctors had proved to me that my current insulin levels are actually too low. Your fasting insulin should be between 2 and 6. I would take a guess that is way way higher than that. if it is then you are simply adding in yet more insulin into an overfilled system .

LCHF or fasting or VLCD - will probably do way more for you than any of the drugs they can offer you including insulin.
read the thread I just posted re Dr jason Fung !
 

I wish I hadn't - I just thought that the DN knew what was best for me - and it might well have been the right thing at that time but looking back I wish I'd educated myself a bit more and tried low carb then - it might have saved me years of getting fat and suffering side effects. I had absolutely no idea that T2 could be properly controlled (back then) which is why it annoys me when my DN knows how well I'm doing and how yet still tells the newly diagnosed to eat 'healthy' carbs with every meal.
 
Most type 2 patients can get their sugars down to normal levels within 6-9 months using a Low Carb High Fat diet, sooner if they also do intermittent fasting.
 
At my very first appointment with the DN she told me that in her opinion I should go straight onto insulin but she said she would try me on 4x500 metformin per day and that I should switch to sweet potatoes and wholegrain bread. I am so, so glad I found this forum and managed to lower my numbers within a month so that at my next appointment she did not even mention insulin and this is down to LCHF diet. I learned about the so called healthy carbs and avoided them like the plague. I have lost weight and my palate has returned to normal. I am hoping to eventually come off the metformin and control my diabetes with diet alone as so many of the inspirational people in this group have done. And I thank my lucky stars that I managed to avoid the insulin (more luck than management) and find this great group of knowledgeable people.
 
Thank you so much that's really helpful xx
 
Thanks everyone that's made me even more determined to avoid being put on insulin!!
It's strange how the diabetic specialists would rather put people on expensive drugs instead of encouraging a simple low carb approach?? Iv read quite a few success stories now so I'm hoping I can do this without too many drugs!
 
Maybe if you stick to the diet and take along your meter or meter reading printout, however you work, that you can argue for a delay.
You could just phone up on Monday and say you can't make the appointment if you feel that you need more time to prove you can do this.
I have never been threatened with insulin - but eating low carb has put me out of even the pre diabetes range in 6 months. It wasn't even hard to do. I can only recommend that you give it hour best shot, and if you ever feel tempted to eat something you know will put up your blood sugars, just think if the consequences.
PS I can still eat the really high cocoa chocolate bars, as long as I have just a little - the Lindt ones are rather nice. there is the 81 percent one from Lidl too.
I really prefer a low carb menu to the more 'normal' diet.
I really can only say it works so well, is entirely possible - go for it and see if you can keep your BG levels down for good.
 
Angela1 said:
What I'm basically asking is have any of you experienced this 'wake up call' and managed to avoid going on insulin?
Click to expand...

I didn't exactly have a wake up call, cutting carbs was more to do with it being something I should have done 20 years ago now, when I was first diagnosed and asking the endocrinologist and later my GP "should I cut carbs", "NO" being the answer at that time.

I was finally persuaded to do the exact opposite of the medical advice by a Nutritional Therapist who I had gone to in an effort to help me lose weight, after the typical less calories and more exercise thing definitely hadn't worked for me. This was 4 years ago and I was by coincidence talking to my GP (not the same as 20 years ago) about going onto insulin thinking it was the natural progression. She wasn't over the moon when I mentioned my wish to lower carbs to lose weight but did warn me of hypos, very wise, although not needed. Within two weeks of no bread/pasta/rice/potato (little occasional cheats) I was off Gliclazide/Januvia and Atorvastatin and didn't need to go onto insulin. So a good result, even my GP was impressed.

Just my personal experience, I hope you have a similar experience.
 
I'm going to wait and see.
I was on 300units of mixed insulin per day. Currently on a combined 143units now. If I took supplement r-ala I need a third less = 80units to take. That 80units I want to lose gradually so just on metformin. Permanently.
I am on low carb and exercise as much as I can due to bulging discs and scatica.
So theoretically I could end up off insulin after bariatric surgery and weight loss should ensure that.
We'll see.
I know metformin helps me a great deal. If off metformin and cannot tolerate other existing meds. I will still need insulin. I cannot risk more complications by hoping in a years time of no insulin I'd still be able to see or walk.
I've reduced my diabetes before, I'm trying again. With the support of lower insulin.
 
Please read book "the pioppi 21day lifestyle/diet plan.

Dr Aseem is a leading cardiologist and has a lot if info regarding insulin resistance/T2/stress and good eating plans. He also on facebook.
 
I have type 2 and originally used metformin One point in your post I wish to comment on I used to watch my weight (still do) looking at calories but my specialist doctor wanted me to use Carbs as a better measurement, I then found out that If I used insulin at the rate of about 60% of the carb value I could keep my readings to around 5.5 or so , eg if I had carb at say 40 in the evening then Id take about 26 Insulin regardless of the calories.
Im enrolled on www.weightresouces.com and as a result Ive lost 11 Kg ( about a stone and a half without being hungry
Any way thats my comments
Neil Willis
 
I just wish stress and illness didn't affect our diabetes.
Does everyone find themselves with higher bgs in such cases?
I feel a lot of my higher bgs are due to stress and now illness too.
Hence needing support from meds, sometimes.
 
I support all the advice given in this threat so far.

I do want to point out that having to go on insulin is still a possibility regardless of lifestyle changes. That's not a measure of failure, diabetes is just one of those diseases that are progressive by nature. It hits some harder than others through no fault of their own. Taking insulin is not a judgment call or an example of failure, it's treating your condition correctly when other treatments aren't working out.

Women who had gestational diabetes often develop diabetes later in life, some of them are even T1/LADA and not necessarily T2, meaning that insulin is inevitable either way. Again, there's no judgment in that.

I highly recommend trying to sort your diabetes out through diet and exercise as recommended, it's honestly the best way to go where possible. Just remember that if that doesn't work, it's not because you failed somehow! If insulin is the way to properly manage your diabetes, then it just is, the same way diet and exercise changes are.
 
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