Just diagnosed and freaking out

[rom35]

Thanks rom35, that's really good to know.

I think i just need a plan. Once i have one and gain a better understanding i will feel better.

Thanks for taking the time to reply. Can i ask do you use medication to control your diabetes?

Sorry for my short answers, but I’m not native english speaker.

I use no medication. Only LCHF and excercise.

1. purchase glucometer and around 800 strips for first phase
2. purchase pedometer - each day minimum 10 000 steps
3. read the instruction of @daisy1 and the links in that pack
4. make first targets and meal/excercise plan to catch that
measure, make correction, measure, make correction ...
You have the idea
I repeat, at 37 you are young and your body can recover very quickly. I will not promise the “cure”, but I bet you can have a life as “non-diabetes”... Just go for it and catch your life to your hands...

 

[miahara]

Rest assured we've all been through the initial shock stage and it's taken us some time to understand the condition and what we can do to improve it and mitigate the effects. I'm sure by now that you've discovered that most folk on here have been very successful and there's no reason at all why you can't also succeed.
If you are in the UK, forget the standard NHS "EatWell" advice - it's far, far too high in carbs for anyone with diabetes. The five portions of fruit and veg a day should also be treated with caution as some fruits are high/very high in carbs (= sugars), veg less so but there are some higher in carbs than others, but you'll soon learn about them.
Forget the "fats cause high cholesterol" myth - it's becoming increasingly disproved. My cholesterol levels improved when I adopted a low carb high fat diet.
Eat "real food" and avoid ready meals and processed food as far as you can and look at thge nutritional info on the BACK of food packaging, the "traffic lights" on the front are not much use for diabetics.
As far as exercise goes, every little helps. Even increasing the distance you walk each day is a bonus.
A good book that will help you understand your diabetes and what you can do to help yourself is Reverse Your Diabetes by Dr David Cavan. I found it very useful, it's easy to read and handy to dip into.

Wishing you the best of luck and every success on your journey.
Dave

 

[Hiitsme]

Thanks for your post hiitsme i would love to know what you did

..Just a big thanks for all your post I'm overwhelemed that you've all taking the time to post. I'll have to log.on to a pc as i cannot keep up on my phone!

I worked on 3 things.

1. Diet - I used a meter to work out what my body could cope with. We can give you advise to the ones with the cheapest strips if you want. I wrote down everything I eat or drunk with quantities and carbs, cals etc. I did this for several months. A lot of people on here go low carb or very low carb. I just restricted the carbs that my body couldn't cope with by testing. An increase of more than 2 meant I had to look carefully at what I had eaten and alter things.

2. Weight loss - I wasn't overweight but near top end of normal BMI. I tried to keep to 500 calories under what I was burning and during the 4 to 5 months I lost 2 and a half stone, which was more than I needed so had to put about half a stone back on.

3. Exercise - I took up walking starting with trying to walk for about 30 mins a day and then increased my walking to several miles a day.

We are all different and different things work for different people.

 

[JoKalsbeek]

Hi, and welcome to the best place to start. I was diagnosed about a year and a half ago. Started lchf, and quit the diabetes meds three months later. Including the statins for my cholesterol, which is fine now! I've been in the non-diabetic range for a year, (HbA1c 38) but that just means I eat like I'm supposed to and excersize when I can. If I fall off the wagon, my numbers skyrocket. Good thing I actually like the food I'm eating! Look into lchf, ask questions, get a meter so you're not flying blind... And prove your doctor wrong...! (Like I did with my specialist). It's more doable than you might think. Good luck! (And check out this site 's low-carb program. It's excellent! I read a buch of books and half of Google before I got here. This would've been a quicker way to learn!)

 

[Resurgam]

All I did was change my diet - admittedly I felt so much better I started to do much more out of the house, and I went back to what I used to do around the house several decades earlier, but I am now very uninteresting - I have normal blood tests - as far as I know, they show normal on the home testing meter and my lat Hba1c was at 6 months from diagnosis and was 41.
I was on a cholesterol lowering diet when diagnosed - which was having very little effect. A few weeks on the LCHF diet and my numbers dropped, and at 6 months had gone down again - so all that cereal and low fat eating was worse than useless. The nurse said it was a delayed effect - yeah - right.
Avoid the usual suspects - the high carb foods, sugary stuff and starches, bread, rice - all grains really, potatoes, pasta, porridge - if you can use a meter to check on how your BG is dropping then you can test small amounts of food to see how the affect you.
I got a reading of 5.6 after Christmas dinner last year - I'm still feeling smug about that one.
The things you can eat on the low carb lifestyle are the good ones, the roast meats, fish, shellfish, eggs, cheeses - low carb veges, salads with dressings or mayonnaise. Personally, I've been eating this way whenever I could get away with it from the 1970s - it kept my weight down, I felt marvelous - only when following the accepted 'healthy' lifestyle did I feel absolutely dreadful, but I suspect that I have been diabetic for a long time, as the amount of carbs I ate when normalizing blood glucose was exactly the same as for maintaining my weight.
I've dropped lower now to try to increase muscle mass and lose more weight, but the rules for such things as the Atkins diet are what I follow, and they work.

 

[Bluetit1802]

The "5 a day" is fine if they are all low carb vegetables, but should not include most fruits. They are full of sugar and great care needs to be taken when eating any - a meter will tell you this at a glance. You will learn about the dangers of fructose (in fruit) as you learn more.

Getting a meter should be your first job. (getting a print out of your blood test results should be your second job)

You need to use your meter alongside a detailed food diary, so you do need structure and organisation, but after a while it all becomes second nature.

You need to remember that all carbohydrate turns to glucose once inside the system, so the more you eat the higher your glucose will become. This includes the so called healthy options of wholemeal and breakfast cereals.

You need to learn how to look at the nutrition labels on packaged food. if you look in your cupboards at the food you have there it will be good practice for you. You may end up taking most of it to a food bank! Look for "total carbohydrate" and ignore the "of which sugars" bit. (sugar is included in the total carb amount. It is law that all packaged food have to declare the number of grams of each nutrient per 100 grams. In other words, the percentage. Anything over 10% is high in carbs.

Your total cholesterol of 7.9 may not be as bad as you think. Cholesterol is made up of good cholesterol and not so good cholesterol. This is why you need the breakdown and a print out. Reducing carbs will help enormously.

 

[daisy1]

@mastrs

Hello Mastrs and welcome to the Forum Here is the Basic Information we give to new members and I hope you will find it useful. Ask as many questions as you want and someone will help.


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 235,000 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

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.

Over 145,000 people have taken part in the Low Carb Program - a 10 week structured education course that is helping people lose weight and reduce medication dependency by explaining the science behind carbs, insulin and GI.

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.
Take part in Diabetes.co.uk digital education programs and improve your understanding. Most of these are free.

• Low Carb Program - it's made front-page news of the New Scientist and The Times. Developed with 20,000 people with type 2 diabetes; 96% of people who take part recommend it... find out why
  
  
• Hypo Program - improve your understanding of hypos. There's a version for people with diabetes, parents/guardians of children with type 1, children with type 1 diabetes, teachers and HCPs.