New diagnosed

[taxi lee]

Hi all.. was diagnosed with type 2 in December.. was given no advice so im running blind here... stopped drinking.. changed diet.. cut all sugar out... doing little exercise bit not enough i suppose... but since all these changes.. ive no idea if my bs levels have gone down... now waking up with numb fingers even after all changes.. and now to top it all off im having problem keeping an erection.... this has never happened in my life and if im honest.. that bothers me more than the diabetes.. please help

 

[Bluetit1802]

Hi all.. was diagnosed with type 2 in December.. was given no advice so im running blind here... stopped drinking.. changed diet.. cut all sugar out... doing little exercise bit not enough i suppose... but since all these changes.. ive no idea if my bs levels have gone down... now waking up with numb fingers even after all changes.. and now to top it all off im having problem keeping an erection.... this has never happened in my life and if im honest.. that bothers me more than the diabetes.. please help

Hi and welcome,

Unless you buy yourself a blood glucose meter you will continue to work blind until your next HbA1c test, whenever that may be. A blood glucose meter tells you at a glance which foods and in what quantities your body reacts badly to. A meter is the best tool we have to help us. You can use it to test out different foods and meals by testing before you eat and again 2 hours after first bite and looking at the actual rise in your levels. This gives you the chance to cut down portion sizes of some foods, or eliminate completely. If/when you buy a meter we can show you how best to use it.

Cutting sugar and alcohol out will help, undoubtedly, but you need to tweak other foods as well - specifically carbohydrates as all carbs turn to sugar once inside the system. A meter will show you what I mean.

Tagging @daisy1 who has an introductory post full of useful advice for newly diagnosed. Have a good read of it, and also have a good read round the forums, then ask as many questions as you like.

 

[walnut_face]

welcome @taxi lee to the club you never wanted to join. I have tagged @daisy1 who will post some excellent information. Please read and ask questions, there is no such thing as a stupid question, and we are all a) In the same boat, b) supportive and c) Have real life experience.
It can be overwhelming at first, and you can feel lonely. Your HCP's are typical in leaving you to your own devices.
Please get yourself a Blood Glucose monitor, and Test Test Test!
As for EP, it is a 'side effect' do go back to your Dr and seek assistance (them blue pills)

 

[taxi lee]

Thanks for speedy reply... its a nerve racking experience.. dr basically told me to take these tablets and come back in 3 months... its only things ive learnt off internet that got me to change.. only just found this forum.. and got a glucose meter ordered thanks

 

[Rachox]

Hi Taxi Lee and welcome to our fantastic little corner of the internet!
First thing I’ll tag in @daisy who’ll post loads of useful info for you. Your phrase “I’ve no idea if my bs levels have come down” jumps out at me! Most of us here buy our own monitor, unfortunately very few type 2s get one on the NHS
Can you give us a bit more detail about your diet, a typical days food would be good, and any medication you’re on? It’ll make it easier for us to help you. The symptoms you are describing are certainly attributable to high sugar levels but hopefully will improve as you gain control back. Stick around and ask questions, there’s always someone around to help.

 

[Resurgam]

I've seen that look of horrified disbelief - and can only advise - don't worry.
However, it is not the sugar it's the carbohydrates as a whole, all the cheap and stodgy foods the supermarkets love to sell because they are so profitable and also somewhat addictive.
To start off with I suggest listing your normal menu - maybe find a few supermarket receipts and then use the internet or the packets to discover the percentage of carbs in each - then decide if you want to cut out or restrict that food, or eat it fairly freely.
Watch out for the different ways the US and UK lest carbs - on US sites the fibre is included but in the UK it is listed separately.
I use the UK method as only ruminants digest fibre.

 

[walnut_face]

Thanks for speedy reply... its a nerve racking experience.. dr basically told me to take these tablets and come back in 3 months... its only things ive learnt off internet that got me to change.. only just found this forum.. and got a glucose meter ordered thanks

Well done on the meter
Tablets? Metformin? If your tummy can tolerate them fine, if not go back to the Doc
It IS a nerve racking experience. Good news is that from here on it gets better.
You probably have felt anger, denial, look to pin the blame (don't) and eventually reluctance acceptance of the situation.
Most of us start with 'Not me Doc, must be a mistake'
Once you get your meter, measure immediately before you eat, and 2 hours after first bite. Make a note of those numbers in a food diary - write down what you eat. In general terms if the increase is >2 then there is something(s) on the plate your body cannot cope with - hint it will probably be the potato/rice/bread/pasta.
Adjust your diet until you get that rise down to under 2.
Your meter will be your best friend, it will never tell you a lie

 

[daisy1]

@taxi lee

Hello Taxi Lee 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.
  

 

[taxi lee]

Many thanks for all comments.. like i say.. im completely in the dark about it... my bs levels were high.. the dr said 96.. means nothing to me.. he didnt explain.
When i was diagnosed i was drinking alot of cider.. maybe 4 can a night for a good few years.. ive completely stopped that since diagnosis.. im not over weight.. in fact ive lost a stone and half since stopping drinking.. dont really eat much carbs... few new potatoes now and then and rice maybe once a week.. my typical meals in a day is..
Porridge and banana for breakfast..
Fruit to snack on through the day..
Dinner would be either tuna/chicken with salad..
Tea again. .. chicken with salad or steak.. sometimes a curry with rice...
Ive started walking and plan on going to gym.. its just the whole sugar related in my blood i cant get my head around.. obviously the no cider will help..

 

[Rachox]

A quick look at your diet shows up some high carb foods straight away.
Both porridge and bananas are, plus many fruits are high in fructose, natural sugar. Berries are the lowest carb fruits.
As you’ve identified potatoes and rice are high carb. Well done on ditching the cider, that’ll help to a certain extent, now you need to look at your food. Here’s a link to Diet Dr which has loads of dietary info:

https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb

 

[Rachox]

Oh and that result of 96 sounds like an HbA1c a clever test that averages your blood sugar over the last three months by looking at the excess sugar stuck to your red blood cells. Red blood cells live for around 3 months. Here’s a link to what the reading means:

https://www.diabetes.co.uk/what-is-hba1c.html

 

[Resurgam]

Many thanks for all comments.. like i say.. im completely in the dark about it... my bs levels were high.. the dr said 96.. means nothing to me.. he didnt explain.
When i was diagnosed i was drinking alot of cider.. maybe 4 can a night for a good few years.. ive completely stopped that since diagnosis.. im not over weight.. in fact ive lost a stone and half since stopping drinking.. dont really eat much carbs... few new potatoes now and then and rice maybe once a week.. my typical meals in a day is..
Porridge and banana for breakfast..
Fruit to snack on through the day..
Dinner would be either tuna/chicken with salad..
Tea again. .. chicken with salad or steak.. sometimes a curry with rice...
Ive started walking and plan on going to gym.. its just the whole sugar related in my blood i cant get my head around.. obviously the no cider will help..

Ah - well - it is not the sugar, it is the carbohydrate content and I think if you check the amounts you are eating and also the carbs in the potatoes the porridge and the banana, the fruit snack and the rice - you might find that your carb consumption is a bit higher than you thought - and also that the times you eat them might be significant.
I found that carbs in the morning need to be kept low, to about 10 or so but later in the day they have less impact - this might not be the same for everyone, but be aware of the possibility of there being a time factor to deal with.
I suspect that the 96 is your Hba1c - which is just a bit higher than mine was at diagnosis, but it soon dropped.
After all the hoo hah about fat and cholesterol etc it could well be that for anyone diabetic, more so for a type 2, bacon and eggs is a better choice than porridge. I like mushroom omelettes, fry ups with courgette sweet pepper bean sprouts, more mushrooms water chestnuts - but sausages and onions and steak and chops all feature fairly frequently.

 

[AdamJames]

Many thanks for all comments.. like i say.. im completely in the dark about it... my bs levels were high.. the dr said 96.. means nothing to me.. he didnt explain.
When i was diagnosed i was drinking alot of cider.. maybe 4 can a night for a good few years.. ive completely stopped that since diagnosis.. im not over weight.. in fact ive lost a stone and half since stopping drinking.. dont really eat much carbs... few new potatoes now and then and rice maybe once a week.. my typical meals in a day is..
Porridge and banana for breakfast..
Fruit to snack on through the day..
Dinner would be either tuna/chicken with salad..
Tea again. .. chicken with salad or steak.. sometimes a curry with rice...
Ive started walking and plan on going to gym.. its just the whole sugar related in my blood i cant get my head around.. obviously the no cider will help..

Yep, as Rachox says, there's a lot of high carb stuff in there.

When you get a meter, you may be horrified at how radically you need to change your definition of "high carb" in order to prevent dangerously high / long-lasting blood sugar spikes.

At times, just 6 grams of carbs can be too much for me. That is, for example, a quarter of a slice of bread, or less than one small potato. So I don't eat those things any more, unless I'm going through a 'good phase' where my carb tolerance has increased and I'm about to do exercise which will help burn off the carbs. A lot of people wouldn't eat them in any circumstances.

The main thing at the start is to try to find foods that you can enjoy but are very low in carbs.

Congratulations on cutting out alcohol. I'm pretty sure that was my main downfall in terms of general health, not just because of the alcohol itself but also it led to over-eating.

 

[Rachox]

Ah - well - it is not the sugar, it is the carbohydrate content and I think if you check the amounts you are eating and also the carbs in the potatoes the porridge and the banana, the fruit snack and the rice - you might find that your carb consumption is a bit higher than you thought - and also that the times you eat them might be significant.
I found that carbs in the morning need to be kept low, to about 10 or so but later in the day they have less impact - this might not be the same for everyone, but be aware of the possibility of there being a time factor to deal with.
I suspect that the 96 is your Hba1c - which is just a bit higher than mine was at diagnosis, but it soon dropped.
After all the hoo hah about fat and cholesterol etc it could well be that for anyone diabetic, more so for a type 2, bacon and eggs is a better choice than porridge. I like mushroom omelettes, fry ups with courgette sweet pepper bean sprouts, more mushrooms water chestnuts - but sausages and onions and steak and chops all feature fairly frequently.

I agree with when to eat carbs, I tolerate carbs better in the evening, of my 50-70g per day I keep my breakfast and lunch to around 10g each, 10g I keep for snacks if I get peckish, then the remainder is for dinner.

 

[taxi lee]

Wow.. didnt realise how much carbs i eat.. told u i was blind to all this.. so am i best cutting carbs out completely... porridge pots rice.. and fruit with carbs in too.. sorry if all this sounds daft.. but like i said.. Dr basically told me nothing...

 

[Bluetit1802]

Wow.. didnt realise how much carbs i eat.. told u i was blind to all this.. so am i best cutting carbs out completely... porridge pots rice.. and fruit with carbs in too.. sorry if all this sounds daft.. but like i said.. Dr basically told me nothing...

It is a long (and never ending) learning curve. When your meter arrives things will become clearer as that will show you which of your food choices are too high in carbs in the portion size you eat.

What you need to learn is to read nutrition labels on packaged foods. You can go through your cupboards and give it a try. Look for "total carbohydrate per 100g" For now you can ignore the "of which sugars" bit. The total carb per 100g is a percentage, so something that is 15g carbs per 100g is 15% carb. Ideally, you need to chose something less than 10% and preferably less than 5% if you intend to eat a lot of it at one go. Doing this is an eye-opener as there are carbs in just about everything, some of them very surprising such as oats (porridge). For items not in packages you can often discover carb amounts from supermarket websites. All the big supermarkets list nutrients of all the foods they sell, so using Google you can type in "Tesco Banana" and you will get this https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/275280804 (23.2% carbohydrate!!).

 

[LouWilk059]

Wow.. didnt realise how much carbs i eat.. told u i was blind to all this.. so am i best cutting carbs out completely... porridge pots rice.. and fruit with carbs in too.. sorry if all this sounds daft.. but like i said.. Dr basically told me nothing...

Once you test with your meter, you'll have a better idea of how many grams per day you are consuming and you'll see what kind of effect different carbs have on you. From there it's usually easy to figure out what you can't have. For example, I seem to be able to tolerate an occasional small potato or 1/2 cup cooked rice well enough but anything with flour creates a huge spike (breads).

 

[NewTD2]

Hi all.. was diagnosed with type 2 in December.. was given no advice so im running blind here... stopped drinking.. changed diet.. cut all sugar out... doing little exercise bit not enough i suppose... but since all these changes.. ive no idea if my bs levels have gone down... now waking up with numb fingers even after all changes.. and now to top it all off im having problem keeping an erection.... this has never happened in my life and if im honest.. that bothers me more than the diabetes.. please help

We are here to provide help and support!
https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/foods#foodlist

 

[Resurgam]

That is very common - because it is so much against accepted opinion to consider carbs in our diet to be the problem.

I think that for most people there is a level at which they can cope with carbs - particularly from lower carb foods.
Your meter might reveal that carbs from some foods seem to cause more of a reaction than the same amount from something else - for me peas and beans need to be carefully measured out.
Read the labels - and I suggest that 10 percent carb is a good maximum starting out. You can adjust to suit yourself over time, and your ability to cope with carbs should change over time. Your meter will show progress.
You might find some benefit from Alpha Lipoic acid - I buy the ordinary one from 'Nature's Best' online. You can pay more and get a more refined version but I take these and let my body pick out what it needs. I can't swear that they fix anything but if it is a placebo effect well it is still an effect.

 

[taxi lee]

Thank u all soo much.... things are becoming so much clearer... its a shock to my system but hey.. i gotta learn to live with it.. i really appreciate all your help.. probably be asking lots of silly questions.. so be warned ha ha