New to site ???? Type ???? 2 poss

Hi Grabcol and welcome to the forum.

If you have managed on metformin alone for the last year then you are 99% certainly type 2. You were absolutely right to change your GP. Any GP who would consider moving someone on to insulin without investigating alternative treatments first really doesn't have a clue and shouldn't be practicing!

I suspect what your mum is thinking of is beta cell transplants. These are still very new technology and are only for type 1s, where their own pancreatic beta cells don't produce insulin. In your case your pancreas obviously does produce insulin so a beta cell transplant wouldn't help you at all.

I think your doctor is wondering if you really are a type two.

Your blood sugars are high and you are thin. This means you may well not be particularly insulin resistant. You are just not producing enough insulin.

If this is the case you may well be needing the insulin. There is a trend to put type twos on it earlier as well, particularly if the hbaic is very high as most other drug treatments won't lower it enough to get to a target of less than 7%.

You may have LADA (Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults).

grabcol said:

Hi all, I'm 36, 6" tall & always been slim-ish, no this is not a chat up line. Any way told just over a year ago that i was a diabetic and doc put me on metformin 3 times a day, been ok up a couple of months ago, when started going higher again on me readings, now on avarage suger between 12 -18 mmol. Doc said we think you need to go on insulin, any way changed doc's and my new doc has said that insulin maybe a bit soon as they can't understand why my old doc did not put me on some other tablets as well as metformin. Not sure what they were called but work very well with metformin apparently. So yep confussed about it all and still don't know wether thype 2 or 1. Also I can loose 5lb a day or gain 5lb a day on a regular basis, baring in mind that I'm only 10 st, 6lb. Any ideas people. me mum said that stem cells from her maybe possible ???? is this true????

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Hi Grabcol
Just to clarify a common misconception (sorry if you knew this already, I wasn't sure from your post). A type 2 who starts injecting insulin does not become a type 1. Type refers to the mechanism/cause, not whether or not you need external insulin.

Good control on metformin does suggest type 2 or maybe some sort of slow-onset type 1 picked up very early. Type 2 tends to progress to needing insulin over time. If your GP's not sure what type you are, suggest referral to an endocrinologist.

If as type 2 you can achieve good control on multiple oral meds that's fine and well worth trying, but if you were confirmed as type 1 you'd definitely go onto insulin.

Sue

Hi grabcol, the traditional progression for type 2 diabetics that are not being successful with controlling their bs with Metformin (metformin acts by decreasing liver glucose production and increasing the way glucose is used around the body, it increases insulin sensitivity.) is not to go straight onto insulin, but to be put on a group of drugs called "Sulphonylureas" several are available and the one recommended depends on local preference, age of patient, kidney function, etc, an example is gliclazide.

Theses drugs act by increasing the production of insulin from the pancreas. The patient, therefore, needs some pancreatic function for them to be effective. because they work by forcing your pancreas to produce more insulin, they could work very well in bringing down your high bs readings. The negative effects of using them are, you could put on weight, because just like taking insulin, your appetite will be stimulated and you need to have liver and kidney function tests done at least every six months, they can cause kidney damage in some people, also unlike using Metformin, you can go hypo if you do not monitor your bs more often than you do when using metformin.

Because Sulphonylureas have the possibility to make you go hypo, you will need to inform the DVLA if you drive.