Irish Newbie

Hi, thought I'd put pen to paper so to speak. I've been reading through lots of posts over the last few days, particularly in the newly diagnosed thread as that's my situation at the moment.

I received a phone call from my local practice last week telling me that I was diabetic, luckily the practice nurse emailed my bloods results to me and I can see that my HbA1c IFCC was 46 mmol/mol I can see from what I've read here that this reading is considered to be pre-diabetes in Britain. I don't know if we have a different scoring system here but I'll take the pre-diabetes as it gives me a chance to change things before my numbers get higher.

This was communicated by the practice nurse who neglected to tell me in March that I was pre-diabetic then with a score of 42 at the time. I honestly think that she didn't want to hurt my feelings. I also have haemochromotosis and the same practice nurse is so uncomfortable with needles that i have to force the issue of getting venesections to keep my iron and ferritin levels anywhere near healthy.

These blood tests were done because I had a gout flare up, the second in two years and my Uric Acid results were 0.52 mmol/L so I'm on Allipurinol to reduce those. I know that this is considered a long term medication however i do hope that with diet changes I can come off this med in the future.

Thankfully my cholesterol is not too bad even though I'm heavily overweight at 100 kgs,
Cholesterol 4.1 mmol/L
Triglycerides 1.08 mmol/L
HDL 1.09 mmol/L
LDL 2.31 mmol/L

My kidneys seem good however my liver AST and ALT are 56 and 58 so that's not great.

I mention the figures because I happen to have them at hand and I'm a bit overwhelmed at the moment with all of the health news. At first I felt quite ashamed because I know the benefits of eating low carb, having gone primal back in 2011 and being quite happy and healthy, keeping a good weight and feeling great until falling off the wagon about 5 or 6 years ago when my mum passed away.

Thankfully I've let go of the shame and am now feeling much more empowered having read so much helpful information here over the last few days. I think I have a reasonable handle on what to eat, to add cream or yogurt to berries, to not be afraid of butter, eat loads of non starchy veg etc. I've read that oft linked blog post of Jo's on the simplicity of cutting carbs and it was reassuringly familiar. I was feeling very unsupported however since I found the forum that feeling has changed. It's been great to see the non-judgemental support that is offered here to newbies and I'm already grateful for it.

I'm curious about anyone else's experience with gout and pre-diabetes? I'm also curious about whether haemochromotosis plays a part in diabetes for anyone?


ps how do I add a signature to my profile?

Antje77 said:

Are you sailing a Drascombe?
I absolutely love Drascombes! (Way over my budget though so I never sailed one.) They are perfect for the Waddenzee, close to where I live in the north of the Netherlands. Pretty seaworthy yet rowable, shallow enough to sail on wet grass, and just the right boat to spend the night on a sandbank and collect oysters or cockles for dinner.

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Yes, We are lucky enough to have a lovely old Drascombe longboat cruiser, 1972 I think. I know that they are very popular in the Netherlands too with a lot of Dutch members in the Drascombe Association. We didn't mean to buy a boat, we acutally went to the local canal a few years ago to have an ice cream after grocery shopping and we saw a small motor-home reversing down the slipway with a trailered boat so we had to go for a look. It was the first time in the more than 20 years that we have been together that we both looked at a boat and agreed that it was indeed a lovely boat. We were suppoed to build our bathroom that summer but we bought a boat instead and do not regret it one little bit.

I'm looking forward to knowing more about your sailing adventures over time.

Antje77 said:

1. Your hba1c results. Any condition to do with red blood cells or iron can skew hba1c results.
If there is reason to suspect this may be an issue, often a fructosamine test is done instead of an hba1c, because that one is independent of red blood cells.

2. I think heamochromatosis can actually cause diabetes by damaging the pancreas.
This doesn't mean this is the case with you, anyone can develop any type of diabetes regardless of whatever other condition they have, but it may be worth keeping in mind. Diabetes caused by damage to the pancreas is called type 3C, and it has nothing to do with T1 or T2.

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Thank you!!! This is very useful information for me to bring to my next doctor visit. I'm not due to see a diabetic nurse until the end of July so I think I'll go to the local practice and have a more informed chat thanks to all that I'm learning here.

Antje77 said:

That is wonderful to hear, keep it up!

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Antje77 said:

If I were in your shoes, I'd push for a referral to an endocrinologist, chances are that your GP is not familiar at all with fructosamine tests or T3C diabetes.

Good luck!

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I will indeed!

SaskiaKC said:

Hi, just want to say Welcome and I second everything @Antje77 said including about your lovely boat! And I am very sorry about your mum. No wonder you got thrown off the rails. Take care.

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Thank you @SaskiaKC for your kind words

plantae said:

I don't think you have anything to be ashamed about. I take Allopurinol for gout and I also take Creon. At first I thought it was because I like beer and I blamed myself. But when all this happened I was drinking 1 beer a night with dinner. I stopped drinking the 1 beer a night but in hindsight I do not believe that it was the cause of the problem. I have a history of pancreatitis as well. I still don't know why I had gout and pancreatitis but my endocrinologist doesn't really know why either so I just accept it. When I had my gallbladder removed they did a test post-removal and it was "chronically inflamed". The endo didn't think that 1 beer a day would cause a problem and he could see no problem with my diet either. I naturally eat low-carb because I just don't like high carb foods (ok, occasionally I like pizza but that's once a year probably... I had it the other night, but high carb foods are not something I normally eat)

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Thank you so much for your kind words and also for sharing this part of your story, it does help me greatly. I was a little emotional reading your words so that tells me that I still have a little bit of shame to let go of - it's a work in progress

plantae said:

I'm not a doctor so I can't say whether you might be able to stop allopurinol in the future. Gout, in my experience, has a bad reputation. In my experience a lot of people associate it with alcohol and therefore you're to blame. But that's not the case and the literature supports this

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Thanks @plantae Funnily enough the gout flare up did come after an evening in the pub playing the ukulele with my local uke group however rather than a beer I drank a sparkling water with a bitter lemon soda mixed through so i was blaming the sugar in the soft drink. Of course that only pushed my uric acid over the top, obviously it was close to happening anyway.

In a strange way the gout may have done me a favour. I had a high blood sugar reading a few years back and I did clean up my diet at the time however I didn't stay with the improvements. I went back to my less healthy choices - I'm trying to not use blaming or shaming language in my story, I could easily drop into self judgement and I know that it will neither help me or change anything.

I've started to read David Purlmutter's book Drop Acid, I'm not far into it yet, so far so good. Of course I don't know enough about uric acid to be able to argue for or against what I'm reading so I'm somewhat at the author's mercy.

Antje77 said:

Do you use a glucose meter at home?

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Thank for for suggesting this, I was wondering about using such a meter at home and I was wondering whether to wait and see the DN at the end of July however a lot can happen in a month and hopefully will happen - I do hope that my dietary changes will start to make a impact. I'll pop in to see my doctor this week and ask if I can be supplied with a meter and get started taking more control.

Rachox said:

Thanks for the tag @Antje77 , hi @CaminoTurtle, here’s some info on UK meters, and to be clear I have no commercial connections with any of the companies mentioned.

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Thank you @Rachox the info is much appreciated. I'll check out what's available locally and it's great to have a comparison.