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Newly diagnosed

mikecarter

Active Member
Hello
First off what a great forum for people such as myself who are newly diagnosed-thankyou. I am 52 and was diagnosed on Wednesday as being type 2. I am overweight but not sofa bound. I have joined the gym again and living in the peak district with two dogs can walk long distances! I have been prescribed metaformin (500) and at present am taking one a day with my evening meal. I have been given a monitor from the diabetic nurse and am keeping a diary of what I eat and my BG levels. The levels are ranging from 10.2 up to 20 at the moment though today they are 13 ish and 16.8 I can find lots of info on about low levels but not so much about high levels. Can anyone point me in the right direction? I am seeing the diabetic nurse again tomorrow,
Thanks
Mike
 
Hello Mike, welcome to the forum, sorry about your diagnosis, but it is not the end of the world as you will find out

I advise you to read the posts in this forum and you will find answers to many of your questions, including how to lower your bg and hopefully avoid developing complications in the long run.

Here is a link to start you off, viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3527&p=18539#p18539 but as I said do make an effort to read posts in here, the more you can learn about diabetes the better.
Also come in here often, it is a really good forum, caring and supportive and ask questions, there is always someone here with the right answer to help you along.

All the best

Karen
 
welcome to the wonderful and confusing world of type2 Mike. that link that Karen gave you is an excellent starting point to learning about,and ultimately controlling your type 2.Your Blood sugars (BS) are really high at the moment and need to come down.first off cut down the size of any carbohydrate portion that you eat.Things like bread,rice,pasta ,potatoes need to be eaten in small portions as these are the complex carbs that can make your BS shot up after eating.
Test first thing in the morning before you eat and keep a diary of your readings and what you are eating.Depending on how many test strips your nurse gave you per month try and test before a meal,then 2 hours after a meal to see what an effect that meal has had on you.Keep your diary for a week so that you will see what foods affect you and what doesn't.We are all different in that respect so it's a case of trail and error mostly.
 
The Very best book is ""Dr. Richard Bernstein's complete Diabetes solution" the best website for information ( other than this forumof course ) is David Mendosa. He's American, but other than numbers and prescribing protocols, it's all relevant and informative.
 
First of all thanks everyone for all the excellent advice/info that I have gleaned from the forum. It has been an enormous help over the first few weeks since diagnosis. A bit of an update: Since cutting out the carbs my BS levels have fallen from 20s 18s 16s etc, to single figures.Mornings at the moment are 7 ish and fall after the gym to 5s and on two days have been 4.2. I have had excellent support from the Diabetic nurse and surgery with repeat prescriptions of test strips no problem. Because I am on holiday I have been able to keep a fairly detailed food diary and have been able to test whenever I want. Amazon must love me as books keep arriving! The slight problem is that my eyesight has gone a bit awry so reading is a bit hard. I had my appointment with the optician and he reckoned that with the metformin/change of diet and falling BS levels this would be at emporary thing but to come back if it persists.The dietician did recommend the low fat/high carb approach despite me showing her the spikes following porridge etc! Fergus's bread has helped with breakfast which I find the only meal that I have a bit of a problem with. Thanks Fergus! ( any suggestions welcome for breakfast.)
Slumps are becoming less of an occurrence and a lot more manageable and I'm beginning to feel more in control.Thanks once again. I'm so glad I found you as the song goes!
 
It sounds like you have a pretty good healthcare team. I only wish everyone was as fortunate. As your optician told you, your eyes are likely to change quickly as your body gets used to running at a much lower BG level - so it isn't worth spending a lot of money on glasses right now. However, if you are finding reading difficult it might be worth getting some cheap "off the peg" glasses. Most large pharmacists sell these - they usually have a device that you can peer into to see the effect that different lenses have. If they are cheap enough, it won't matter if they are only useful for a few weeks.

As for breakfast - eggs take a lot of beating, and they are very low carbohydrate. Bacon is essentially carbohydrate free (so long as it hasn't been cured in sugar - check the nutritional label). Bacon and eggs may not sound like a healthy breakfast, but it is generally excellent for diabetics.
 
Cheers DG. My one concern with Bacon and Eggs for breakfast is that I take statins for high cholesterol, although this had fallen on my last test which revealed the diabetes.
Ta again
Mike
 
Hi Mike,

Very little of the cholesterol in your bloodstream comes directly from fats in your diet. Roughly 20% I believe. The remaining 80% is manufactured 'in-house' by your liver, and the fuel source it uses for this is glucose from carbohydrates. I'm not a betting man but I'd be comortable to take a punt on your cholesterol ratio improving if you replaced breads and cereals with bacon and eggs for breakfast.
Reason being, I've got inside information. I did it myself years back and my cholesterol ratio improved.

All the best,

fergus
 
Bacon and egg will keep your blood sugar levels down.

There are other things you can eat too.

smoked salmon and scrambled eggs. (made with butter and cream)
smoked trout
smoked haddock and poached eggs
black pudding and sausages
omlettes with mushrooms, peppers, ham, onion etc
low carb baking eg muffins, cheesecakes, sponge cakes, custards etc
 
A month now since my diagnosis and last week I returned to work after the summer break. I have found this quite difficult as when at home the slumps were easy enough to cope with.At work ( a somewhat challenging secondary school !) I have quite lengthy periods where my concentration etc is shot away.My levels are now in single figures -waking normally are 6/7 and no higher than 8.8 for the last week. They have tended to be in the 5s during the days and some 4s after the gym. I am taking 2 x 500 metformin tablets morning and evening and eating a low carb diet. The times when I'm feeling ok are the best I've felt in a number of years, but I still feel really rough and foggy for quite a long time during the afternoon and I awake with what can only be described as the mother of all hangovers despite no alcohol! Could this be that my body got used to operating at such high levels (20 + during the first week of testing especially when following the dieticians high carb programme grrr!) and will the rough times become less as I get used to lower BGs?Actually writing this has made me realise that I have come quite a long way in a relatively short space of time ..it just seems like a lifetime since I was diagnosed. Thanks once again for all the excellent ideas and debate on this forum. I have found it a real help just knowing that there are people who have been there done that and ate the t shirt!
 
Hi again Mike

Yes you are right, you have come a long way since your diagnosis; I think that your body is demanding more glucose, your body got used to high levels and suddenly you are much lower, it will take a while to get used to that. I certainly remember that is what happened to me, I was doing a couple of weeks of extremely low carb and although my readings came down rapidly I felt like something death warmed up and needed lots of encouragement to stay the course. Thank goodness I did...

So dont be upset because you are not as well as you thought you might be by now, these things take a bit of time and its still a short time since diagnosis, you probably still have the shock of diagnosis in your bones too.

Be good to yourself, get exercise but also relaxation and good sleep and treat yourself to things to make you feel better, just not food or beer, there are other things you enjoy? I am sure that you will begin to feel better as time goes on, not too long at all, but listen, just wondering when you have these afternoons feeling tired and lack concentration what are your readings like then, is it after you had lunch? Can you just have 40 winks at lunch time, somewhere quiet, maybe that would help with the afternoons?

Karen
 
Thanks for the replies,

Our lunch break is 11 o' clock!!!!! ...yes 11 We finish @ 3 and normally I have some kind of meeting or rehearsal with the kids for an hour or so and then about an hours drive home.I'm tryng to rearrange a few things so I can maybe eat lunch at a more civilised time . My main concern with the 40 winks is that I might wake up surrounded by 30 screaming teenagers :lol:
 
Give them more homework or lines, something like write 500 times 'I must not make a noise for the next half hour'???

Seriously see if there are some arrangements that you can make there somewhere, not easy I can imagine, but I know from myself whenever I felt tired in the afternoon I was either a bit higher than normal after lunch so lowered carbs but it also helped to sit in a quiet room in a comfy chair and just flopped doing relaxation/meditation exercises for half an hour and found it very refreshing (I used citrus aromatherapy oils too but some people can be allergic to them).

I hope you can work out something to help you.

Karen
 
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