Brownian_Motion
Newbie
- Messages
- 1
- Type of diabetes
- Type 2
- Treatment type
- Tablets (oral)
Hi everyone, I'm new here and hoping that some of you may be able to provide some clarity and/or peace of mind for me.
I think a short potted history may help, so here goes.
I was diagnosed as Type 2 diabetic in December 2011, having been obese for the best part of a decade and, at that point, eating incredibly unhealthily and not exercising at all on account of having lost my job a year prior in the recession. Over the next few years I slowly but surely managed to get my BG under control with a combination, ultimately, of 40mg gliclazide (breakfast, dinner) and 850mg metformin (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and improvements in diet and activity levels. I hadn't lost much weight (dropped from ~140kg to 130kg) but my fitness was significantly improved and my HbA1c results were consistently in the top third of the acceptable range.
I struggled with depression in the last quarter of 2016 and into 2017, and as a consequence of not being active and eating copious amounts of comfort food have found myself back in a similar situation to which I found myself when I was first diagnosed. After a second HbA1c this year in which my BG levels had doubled from the first* - which was incredibly disappointing, because I had already started making efforts to get to grips with my diet at the very least - the diabetes nurse suggested that the best course of action would be to alter my medication, from the above to 80mg gliclazide/1000mg metformin at breakfast and dinner. Then to start measuring my BG twice a day to see how I was progressing.**
For the fortnight before I changed medication (comedy prescription mix-up shenanigans) I was measuring my BG before breakfast and last thing before bed (mostly), and found my levels dropping slowly but steadily from a high of 15.6mmol/L down to 10.9mmol/L, and with being back at work full time, getting my bike back on the road and getting more of a grip on my diet, I expected this trend to continue, possibly even faster with the change in medication regimen.
Instead, the following week has seen my BG levels shoot back up to the 17-18mmol/L range, seemingly no matter what I eat. I appreciate that it isn't a large sample of evidence to work with yet but it is concerning enough that I felt I needed to seek some opinions, prior to my telephone appointment with the diabetes nurse on Wednesday. Is this a common reaction? Should I be concerned about a correlation between the lowering of the daily metformin dose and the BG increase? Is it more likely to be the lack of any medication with my lunch? Or should I just give it a bit more time?
Thanks in advance for any advice or experiences you would care to share.
* Apologies for the lack of numbers, I still haven't gotten my head around the "new" measurements and because of the stress and depression I've been liable to forget quite a bit.
** I note with interest the thread which suggests daily BG testing should be de rigeur, which was not what has ever been suggested to me.
I think a short potted history may help, so here goes.
I was diagnosed as Type 2 diabetic in December 2011, having been obese for the best part of a decade and, at that point, eating incredibly unhealthily and not exercising at all on account of having lost my job a year prior in the recession. Over the next few years I slowly but surely managed to get my BG under control with a combination, ultimately, of 40mg gliclazide (breakfast, dinner) and 850mg metformin (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and improvements in diet and activity levels. I hadn't lost much weight (dropped from ~140kg to 130kg) but my fitness was significantly improved and my HbA1c results were consistently in the top third of the acceptable range.
I struggled with depression in the last quarter of 2016 and into 2017, and as a consequence of not being active and eating copious amounts of comfort food have found myself back in a similar situation to which I found myself when I was first diagnosed. After a second HbA1c this year in which my BG levels had doubled from the first* - which was incredibly disappointing, because I had already started making efforts to get to grips with my diet at the very least - the diabetes nurse suggested that the best course of action would be to alter my medication, from the above to 80mg gliclazide/1000mg metformin at breakfast and dinner. Then to start measuring my BG twice a day to see how I was progressing.**
For the fortnight before I changed medication (comedy prescription mix-up shenanigans) I was measuring my BG before breakfast and last thing before bed (mostly), and found my levels dropping slowly but steadily from a high of 15.6mmol/L down to 10.9mmol/L, and with being back at work full time, getting my bike back on the road and getting more of a grip on my diet, I expected this trend to continue, possibly even faster with the change in medication regimen.
Instead, the following week has seen my BG levels shoot back up to the 17-18mmol/L range, seemingly no matter what I eat. I appreciate that it isn't a large sample of evidence to work with yet but it is concerning enough that I felt I needed to seek some opinions, prior to my telephone appointment with the diabetes nurse on Wednesday. Is this a common reaction? Should I be concerned about a correlation between the lowering of the daily metformin dose and the BG increase? Is it more likely to be the lack of any medication with my lunch? Or should I just give it a bit more time?
Thanks in advance for any advice or experiences you would care to share.
* Apologies for the lack of numbers, I still haven't gotten my head around the "new" measurements and because of the stress and depression I've been liable to forget quite a bit.
** I note with interest the thread which suggests daily BG testing should be de rigeur, which was not what has ever been suggested to me.
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