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New to testing my own sugars

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peppiB

Well-Known Member
Messages
101
Location
Newcastle upon Tyne
Hi,

I was diagnosed type 2 diabetic 12 months ago and until I found this forum about 3 weeks ago was blissfully unaware of perils - docs rarely test blood - I say rarely, I had one hba1c test with a reading of 7.9 and a few weeks ago when they were taking blood for something else I asked if sugars could be measured. I wasn't told the hb1ac result at the time, only that I was type 2 diabetic, I found the result when I asked a temporary nurse about the blood tests (other staff wouldn't tell me anything, not even DN revealed results) and also asked her for the result of the latest test. Apparently that blood test was between 8 and 9, but I have no idea whether that was just glucose or another hb1ac.

Following advice read on here, I bought a meter. I gather that morning 'starvation' readings should be low (4 to 5) with them rising after food. I follow a low carb diet and morning (12 hours fasting) blood readings are between 7.4 and 7.8, with readings 2 hours after food rising to between 11 and 12.

Yesterdays food consisted of 2 desertspoons museli (sp) with skimmed milk for breakfast, small piece of cheese and ham at lunch, and smoked fish with a tiny amount of coleslaw for dinner. Drinks - 3 cups of tea with skimmed milk, 1 latte from a coffee shop in town (no food with it) and 6 glasses of water. This mornings test showed blood at 7.5

I am disabled and cannot walk more than a few yards, so exercise tends to be limited to looking after the 37 year old mentally ill epileptic in my care.

Any observations would be welcome.

(am 62 year old male)
 
You don't seem to be eating much at all. Are you trying to lose weight?

The high morning blood sugars could indicate that you will need a basal insulin to help you get your sugars in line. What medications are you on?
 
Hi Katharine,

No matter what I do, over the years my weight has remained constant at 15 and a half stone - except a few years ago I did Atkins and got down to 14. Stopped the diet and went back up to 15 and a half. Being fairly inactive I don't seem to need much food at the moment.

I take simvastatin (40mg) on a night and ramipril (5mg) on a morning. I suffer from asthma and have seretide morning and night and salbutamol as required (up to 4 times a day, but usually only once or twice)

In recent months my waist size has dropped 5 inches. People say that makes me look fatter :shock:
I am 5'4" and shrinking - mainly due to spinal lordosis/scholiosis (sp) and was told a couple of years ago I was suffering skeletal degradation
 
A couple of things spring to mind here.

If your sugars are high and your waist is shrinking you are probably peeing out the calories that you need to build your body. It sounds like you need that basal insulin.

If you are shrinking in height you need to stop your bones collapsing. Firstly see your GP about getting a dexa scan to see if you have osteoporois and consider taking Fosamax or a similar drug. Also look into high level vitamin D supplementation. Look at you tube, "Vitamin D deficiency".

Dr Holick has a good lecture on "Prevention of chronic diseases" which includes osteoporosis.
Dr Heaney has a good lecture on the basics.
 
Thank you for the info Katharine. It was the head GP in the practice who told me about the skeletal degradation following a scan 2 years ago - she made no mention of treatment being available.

Will wait until I have a meaningful set of blood sugar readings (probably another couple of weeks) and then take those along to doctor and ask for opinions. It seems the only people taking my case seriously is the podiatry service!! Starvation sample this morning was 8.5 :shock:
 
hi peppib,

with regards to museli or anything that contains nuts or fat, the fat contents make the absortion rate of food longer. i used to eat museli and found that 2 hrs after my BG was fine but then another hr after that and my BG had risen quite a bit.

Ste
 
Hi Peppi
Kaharine is a genius GP, so bound to be right.
Can I just add a comment to something I spotted? You say you eat Muesli. I am a low carber and I can't touch the stuff. It's quite high in carbs. That wouldn't answer the high "fasting" though. Best go with Katharine on that.
PS I just saw Slinger's post.
It's quite useful to look up the GI of foods as well as the total carbs. Gi will tell you about the speed of digestion of that food. Low GI, high carb foods, just take a long time to hit maximum.
 
Thanks Guys - I gathered Katharine is a GP - shame we can't all be her patients! Much more and better advice than I have ever had from the motley crew at my surgery. Still with over 40,000 patients registered, they can't be masters of everything. The muesli is eaten in very small quantities once a fortnight, and it just so happened that Monday was that day. Usually I eat egg (scrambled, poached, boiled) and a couple of days a week bacon. I will look up GI and carbohydrate info. I also suffer from IBS (have done so for years) and the triggers for that in my case are veg and coffee so I tend not to eat those. I used to eat loads of fruit but my doctors told me to cut back on that as my blood potassium levels were too high.(It is the asthma crew who test blood for that but they don't do blood sugar levels) I don't seem to be able to win!!! :? :?
 
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