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My diagnosis story

A

AntLockyer

Well-Known Member
Messages
62
Hi everyone, just thought I would share my journey so far.

Started trying to lose some weight/fat in august of last year (was 86kg, I'm 6'1" not I wasn't fat just not in the shape I wanted to be). I've been fairly active over the years with cycling and golf. I worked hard at losing the weight and slowly it started to come off, then a little faster. I relaxed my diet a bit and still was losing weight. I thought 'this is great'. I'm now 10kg lighter and never thought there was an issue.

I went to the doctors for three reasons.

1: I had to get up in the night to wee every single night
2: I had muscular pains in my left glute
3: I needed to get a review of my Asthma drugs

Had blood tests for prostate issues and diabetes and got a call to say I needed a retest of the FBS. I went the next day and got called into the nurse the day after. My FBS was 17.9 and she explained the normal range and gave me the lowdown on what was what and how I would be treated.
First step gliclazide and regular testing (she gave me a monitor).

My fasting numbers so far have been 14.2, 14.3 and 15.1. After breakfast numbers (2 hours after) 21.8, 21.7, 15.1. the first two are the weetabix I always used to eat and she told me to continue with the 11.8 is scrambled eggs.

I've realised through reading and what I know from trying to live a healthy lifestyle that low carbs is the way to low blood sugar swings and this has been born out in my testing so far. A sandwich had me up to 19.1 on Wednesday, my steak and veggies last night raised me from 13.0 to 13.6

Anyway that's me, right now I feel fuzzy headed and headachy which is exactly what I'd expect considering the lack of carbs in my diet.
 
The headache will go soon... how low are you going with the carbs? When diagnosed mine was 18 but after 4 weeks was usually around 5 - 6 but I eat virtually no carbs (20g - 50g) per day as that is how my body copes best. Everyone is different so try a few different levels - you are lucky that you have been given testing strips and that your DN feels that is useful as that is half the battle. Good luck.
 

My dinner last night was about 22 grams, maybe the same at lunch.

In those 4 weeks did you have mediacation too or was that just carb control?
 
I was immediately put on Metformin 500 x 3 a day. It has now been dropped to 2 a day. There are loads of threads on here regarding low carb diets and what other people have found successful and I am sure some of the people with more knowledge will be along soon to offer advice.
 
AntLockyer said:
Anyway that's me, right now I feel fuzzy headed and headachy which is exactly what I'd expect considering the lack of carbs in my diet.
Click to expand...

Well done for confronting this AntLockyer, you've definately taken a step on the right path.

I'm afraid that you're just going to have to bully-out the fuzzy head, it's mainly just a sign of your body adgusting to healthy BG levels. At some stage soon it'll disappear and be replaced with a wonderful feeling of lucidity (at least it did for me).

Because you liver tends to kick out water as you adjust to a low carb diet, it also spills a lot of salt. Increasing your salt intake a little bit should also help with the headaches.

20g a meal sounds like a great place to start. I managed to get off all medication on a similar amount. Now I eat <20g a day on average, have a HbA1c of 4.5% and feel fitter and healthier than ever before.
 
Thanks for the encouragement, my DN said to expect feeling a little unwell perhaps even feeling hypo despite my numbers being 'high' still. I'm am an obsessive/driven person so putting up with a headache short term for long term health is not an issue.
 
Hello and welcome to the forum.

Can see you know about low carbs, testing and carb counting which is great and by the looks of your readings you can begin to see the difference it makes. Don't get worried that your levels don't come down straight away. At this stage just look for a gradual drop in their trend day by day. On 50g / day it took me about 6 to 8 weeks to get to a point where all my readings where consistently below 8 . Do what you are doing now and look at the before and two hours after eating numbers and try to keep the jump to less than 2.

Your first thing in the morning number will always be higher. It's caused by something called the Dawn Phenomenon (DP). In the early hours everyone's (non diabetics included) liver dumps glucose so that the body has enough energy for when you get up. In a non diabetic their insulin response quickly mops any excess up but in a diabetic it hangs around sloshing about being very unhelpful. Not a lot you can do about it except to keep low carbing and gradually you will see it come down especially if you lose weight if you need to. If you want to push the morning number down as quickly as possible here's a trick I got told. Eat a small amount of berries so 3 or 4 raspberries or a couple of strawberries that kind of quantity. The small amount of sugar in the fruit will make a small but safe spike but the theory goes it will kickstart your systems into action and get your DP level down quicker. Another method is to do a brisk 5 or 10 minute walk after breakfast.

Good luck and keep asking questions but looks like you've made a really good start.
 
Hi Antlockyer and welcome. You're definitely going the right way with the low carbs, so stick woith it. Do check labels carefully though, and google carb content of loose food, to make sure you're not having more carbs than you think.
When I started the game, I was looking at sugar content initially rather than total carbs, and wondered why my dietician-approved meal of steak and kidney pudding with a pile of boiled potatos was giving me a reading of 14. I learned two things there:
1) it's total carbs that count
2) My diabetes dietician was stupid

I also piled into apples and satsumas, and occasional bananas, with great gusto because I was led to believe they "didn't count". I learned two more things:
1) Fruit does count, especially bananas
2) My dietician was more stupid than I thought.

I'm sure you're better informed than I was then, but do be aware.

By the way, golf is about the best exercise ever for lowering BGs. It's steady, continued and aerobic. Lowers the BG, but doesn't cause liver dumps. After a round of golf, I can eat almost anything. Mind you, same can be said after I've drunk a bottle of Rioja!

Good luck!
 
Thanks a lot, I'm a real geek so I've done a shed load of reading already. I've been aware of my diet and have tracked my food (and weight) on and off using dailyburn.com

Reading your posts about improvement and seeing my own results so far has me excited about managing my condition. My DN seemed really pleased at the level of knowledge I had regarding nutrition and physiology

I had my A1C done yesterday so it will be interesting to see what that says. I've displayed symptoms of diabetes for at least 10 years.
 
Yesterday I had my highest and lowest BS readings. I tried porridge with a little banana and a teaspoon of Nutella. Took me from 13.3 to 23.2. timing for my golf game was a bit off so I could only snack while playing (a pair and a pot of roasted endename beans) and after the round I was down to 9.8 my first single figures BS since I started.

Off on ho9liday to Spain tomorrow so will be interesting to see how I get on.
 
AntLockyer said:
after the round I was down to 9.8 my first single figures BS since I started.
Click to expand...
Told you golf is good!

AntLockyer said:
I tried porridge with a little banana and a teaspoon of Nutella. Took me from 13.3 to 23.2.
Click to expand...
But porridge and banana isn't!

Need to get those levels down; need a big reduction in those carbs I fear.
. The total number of carbs per day you can eat depends on how advanced your diabetes is. It’s perhaps worth starting at about 50% of normal levels for a non-diabetic then adjusting up or down according to how you get on. That’s 150 grams of carbs per day for a man. In your case, if you're already down to that level, you need a further biggish drop. Make sure you're including ALL carbs in your count. You can read the total carb content of food under “nutritional info” on the packet or wrapping, or look it up on the internet for loose food. Just google “carb content..”
You also need to stop or reduce the bad carbs; that is the starchy ones that make your BG go up quickly.
So obviously no sugar or glucose! But also no white bread, white rice, pasta, flour products like pastry, cake and batter. You can eat a little basmati rice, wholewheat pasta or the tri-color pasta fusilli ones in small quantities. A few boiled new potatos are OK but not old pots mashed, boiled or in their jackets. (Roast is not so bad, the fat slows their absorption and conversion to glucose in the blood) Amongst other veg, parsnips are about the worst for BG, and carrots not great but ok in smaller amounts.
Multi grain bread (not wholemeal) is not SO bad, but lots of us eat Burgen soya and linseed bread from tescos and sainsburys, although all bread should be in limited amounts.
All fruit has carbohydrates, and needs to be included in the amounts of carbs you eat in a day. For most people, bananas are about the worst for pushing our BG up and berries (like strawberries, raspberries etc) are the least bad.
No sweeties!
Good luck and keep us in touch.
 
Thanks. I've cut out bread and weetabix. Had a tiny amount of fried noodles instead of rice with my chinese food on Friday and ordered different stuff than usual to avoid the carbs. Interstingly a small bowl of porridge on it's own on saturday took me from 12.1 to 16.7 much much better than weetabix (14.2 to 21.8).

Ham egg and chips and two diet cokes after golf took me from 9.8 to 16.1 (bloody chips, they were nice though).

I'm aproaching it in a way that I can manage mentall as well as physically, I got sad sitting in teh pub on Saturday realising there was nothing I wanted that was acceptable on the menu.

Thanks for the advice and encouragement. Back to the nurse tonight for the first time since diagnosis, will be interesting to see what she says.
 
Well that didn't go well. She did a urine test and said there were Ketones present I explained the lack of carbs but she said she wants to see me in the morning. I'm off to Spain tomorrow and am now really concerned she's going to make me cancel. I've suffered from anxiety in the past and now I feel anxious with stomach issues that normally go with it. She couldn't believe it when I said I felt great, she said it made no sense.

No I'm worried that the symptoms of upset stomach are related although deep down I know it's due to worrying about letting my family down (the constant in my anxiety episodes.)
 
Can't see her making you cancel the hols. She might suggest extra meds to help with the BGs. Might not be a bad idea, even if only temporary. Some people go on extra meds for a while, get their BGs under control, then wean back off with a low carb diet. Your BGs ARE high at the moment, hence the ketones, so you'll need some extra help maybe. Try not to worry; I know it's hard, but worrying also raises BGs
 
Thanks Grazer, she upped me to 80mg of gliclazide (one in the morning and one in the evening). I am sitting with a peppermint tea and trying to chill
 
If anyone is interested. I went back to the doctor and they retested my Ketyones and they had risen overnight. I said I thought it was down to the fact I hadn't drank anything for 10 hours (had just got up) but they said I needed to go to hospital right away. I explained I was going on holiday and they said I'd need to go to hospital when I arrived and really tried to put the fear into me. The doctor rang the diabetic centre and then me later to say they think I'm type 1 and they have jsut caught it quickly so I should up my gliclazide to buy me time. Made no sense to me but I did it anyway.

Went on holiday and once the stress of al that had subsided I enjoyed myself and feel great. BG has come down but not a huge amount, I did see 8 after eating a couple of times which for me was a new record low.

Will go back and see what they have to say on Thursday, I'm glad they were wrong about me needed to go to hospital right away as I'm sure the rest did me the world of good.
 
A quick update, my Gliclazide is up to 120mg in the morning and 80mg in the evening and my numbers are coming down slowly. I've intraoduced a little more carbs into my diet and everything looks steady (no big jumps after meals).

HbA1c was 13.5% so plenty of room for improvement.

Off to the diabetic centre at the hospital on Thursday so will be interested to see what they say. Everyone thinks I'm late onset type 1 or 1.5 or LADA or whatever it's called
 
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