Missed Diagnosis

Hi, sorry you have had such a difficult experience so far. Many people on here with Type 2 have had a lot of success in lowering their blood sugar numbers with adding in exercise daily and eating a low carb diet, so you are definitely in the right place.

Many foods that can make your blood sugar go up a lot are things like bread, rice, pasta, potatoes, and dairy milk (the milk you put in tea, although Dairy Milk chocolate is very sugary!).

A good way of getting more information on what affects your blood sugar is to get a blood glucose monitor and strips, and test at the first bite of food and then 2 hours later.

Some people also use a CGM - continuous glucose monitor, which shows you what is happening minute to minute and is very useful to see what foods are problematic and how different things affect you, for example, stress, and illness - I am currently higher than normal as I have a cold and can usually see it coming via the blood sugar numbers before I am sympromatic!

@Rachox has a list of the blood glucose monitors and where to get them as cheaply as possible.

This forum is really brilliant as a place to come for support and to see what other people have found works for them. I would have been lost on diagnosis completely if I had not found the forum and learned so much that could help me manage the diabetes, even though there have been a lot of stumbles on the way I feel I am now doing OK and have got my HbA1c down to 40, when it was in the 120s last year like yours.

edited to add - some diabetes drugs cannot be combined safely with very low carb diets, as Resurgam has mentioned in their post, so testing is a good idea in order to make sure you are not causing yourself issues by going too low carb.

Hello @mark.hance and welcome to the forum.
Are you concentrating on sugar, or all carbohydrates?
When taking gliclazide you do ned to have some carbohydrate in your diet, but high blood glucose levels can result from starches just as much as sugars.

Thanks for the tag @AllieRainbow , I think as @mark.hance is on gliclazide he should have been provided with blood testing equipment. If you haven’t Mark it might be worth checking with your GP if they can prescribe it for you, rather than funding it yourself.

@mark.hance As people here mention, people with diabetes have to look at all carbohydrates not just sugars. It is a general misunderstanding by most people until diabetes rears its head. All carbohydrates affect us. I’m a type one on insulin, I do not eat any carbohydrates without matching them with insulin. As you are taking glicazide I agree with @Rachox your Gp should be providing a blood testing kit. I also agree with your concerns about your Gp being a little slow in the information and help they are giving you.

Unfortunately, doctors can be slow in diagnosing or indeed quite casual about doing so. My diagnosis was in 2015 with the words, 'You are diabetic' and zero follow-up for about 5 years despite my pushing. 11 years later, I have just had my first appointment with a diabetic dietician...ho hum.