New and confused

[niclh]

Hi all,

Im new here so i am sorry if any of this has been answered before, i am very confused and my doctor isnt for explaining much and my diabetic nurse is on holiday for a month (super!)

So i am on 2 tabs metformin with breakfast - then the same with dinner.

My bloods can range from 8.2 (Morning fasting) then 2 hours after meals to (worse case 16.1)

The tablets dont seem to be helping me other than upsetting my tum! I am 24 - i eat a very healthy diet, go to the gym/run 4-5 times a week.

After a run on Tuesday night i tested and was at 2.9 - couldnt seem to raise it all night stayed at around the 2- 2.5 mark, I didnt dare sleep!! It now gone the other way and is up at 14.1.

Im worried that the tablets dont seem to be doing the job and what the next steps would be..? Also what can i do to help natural as my diet is very healthy and i get regular excerise. I have a doctors apt tomorrow but i am just very confused and concerned

Thank you for any help you can give

 

[Dennis]

Hi niclh and welcome to the forum.

The metformin you are taking is not designed to directly reduce your blood sugar. It helps to reduce insulin resistance but that can only make a difference of somewhere around 1.5 to 2mmol. The enormous rise you have experienced shows that whatever you are eating must be extremely high in sugar and/or carbohydrate. You need to be aware that all carbohydrate converts 100% into sugar as it is digested. This means that cutting out sugar, as all diabetics are advised to do, is not enough on its own. You also need to look at other aspects of your diet. If you can give us an idea of what you would have to eat and drink over a typical day, one of us will be able to advise on beneficial changes you could make.

 

[niclh]

Hi there and thank you for the reply

breakfast - bran flakes with a small amount of fruit
Lunch - Chicken Salad or sandwhich on wholemeal bread
Dinner - grilled fish or chicken with either salad/roast veg and boiled/jacket spud.

Snacks - fruit or a digestive biscuit (now and then)
Drinks - water and green tea

Thanks

 

[hanadr]

niclh
I'l comment on your food diary. It's fairly high in carbohydrate. Probably too much for Metformin
there are a couple of ways to go.
Either cut back on the carbs, or take more medication, of a different sort. The usual would be a sulphonylurea, such as Gliclazide.
You might just prefer to reduce your carbs and see how that goes.

breakfast - bran flakes with a small amount of fruit Bran flakes 64% carb, fruit variable depends on what
Lunch - Chicken Salad or sandwhich on wholemeal bread Wholemeal bread 42% carb
Dinner - grilled fish or chicken with either salad/roast veg and boiled/jacket spud. jacket potato 32% carb

Snacks - fruit or a digestive biscuit (now and then) digestive biscuits between 65% and 70% carb depending on brand.
Drinks - water and green tea

I would recommend you get the "Collins Little Gem Calorie Counter". It's inexpensive and tiny and will show you most carb counts for common foods.
Then for a week or so, keep a diary of each meal and do random checks of BG before and 2 hours after selcted meals.
You'll learn what puts your blood glucose up.
In general anything above 10% carb is hard to handle by a diabetic not on insulin,
Then of course there's portion size. 10% of not much is a small amount. A good kitchen scale can be helpful there and there's a portion size estimator somewhere on this forum.

 

[Spiral]

What I have found out is that successful diabetics reduce the amount of carbohydrate they eat, whatever approach they take. The most obvious thing to start with is cut out added sugar to anything and all sweets. This measure alone for about a month between blood tests brought my fasting blood levels down by a couple of points when it was tested at the surgery. Otherwise I followed the conventional NHS healthy plate advice while I looked for a diet I could stick to.

I recommend that you get a blood meter and as many test strips as you can from your GP and test! test! test!. That way you will find out what makes your blood sugar spike and you can avoid that food or eat considerably smaller quantities of it.

You can buy additional strips from eBay, where there are several very reliable suppliers. You can get real bargains on eBay, just make sure that you check the expiry date on the strips and the sellers profile first - my price limit at eBay is half the retail price, including the postage, for something that has at least 10 months before it expires.

I suggest you set yourself some fairly simple targets to start with - mine was to get my readings a point or so lower for the next blood tests. When I started out I knew that sugar made the readings go up, armed with only this fact for sure I managed to reduce my readings.

I agree with hanadr about the carb content.