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Pancreas tests.

S

simply_h

Well-Known Member
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Hello,

I hope you are well.

Is there any tests that can be done after diagnoses, to show how much function you have left in your pancreas?

Cheers

Simply_h
 
Don't know, BUT, they can test to see how much insulin is circulating at any time. This would reflect the condition of your pancreas to a degree if they checked after glucose administration or a carby meal I guess. Not sure they'd want to do that, because they would see it as wasted money; the treatment of your diabetes would be the same regardless of how much insulin you can produce. Might be a "nice to know" for us, I'd like to know, but unnecessary in their eyes I fear.
 
You can have a c-peptide test which measures the amount of insulin you're producing, it wouldn't tell you how long your beta cells will function for though.

Hope that's what you meant
 
Grazer said:
the treatment of your diabetes would be the same regardless of how much insulin you can produce.
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Don't usually disagree with you Grazer, but how so? Don't some medications work on boosting the effectiveness of the insulin that you produce? So that if you produced almost none at all, then they would be less effective as a treatment.

I once saw pancreas function plotted as an ever declining graph, with diagnosis just a point in time along it. It got me pretty depressed at the time, as it meant that my dependence on insulin was inevitable and irreversible. I've since found some stuff on the site that's complete bull, so the graph probably is too.
 
swimmer2 said:
Don't some medications work on boosting the effectiveness of the insulin that you produce? So that if you produced almost none at all, then they would be less effective as a treatment.
Click to expand...

Understand your point, and you're right to a point. Metformin works by improving the uptake of glucose from the blood, and reducing the amount of glucose produced, so the insulin you produce is more effective. Point is though, the treatment regime (and progress of treatment) will always be the same unless you have raging BGs in the first place. That is, diet and exercise, if that isn't working, add metformin (although some prescribe it at outset) followed by progressively further meds until BGs DO respond. So knowing the amount of insulin you produce isn't how they adjust meds; meds are adjusted by seeing what happens on different regimes. In effect, that's how they assess the condition of your pancreas. In theory, they could look at insulin response tests and maybe introduce different meds accordingly, but it's just not done unless there's a special reason. So someone like simply-h, just diagnosed with an HbA1c of 6.6%, responding with a lower HbA1c of 6.3% on diet only after 3 months, isn't going to get different meds as a result of a test.
Cheers now! :thumbup:
 
Fair enough, but a measure of pancreatic function would be very useful here.

If, for the sake of argument, my pancreas is functioning at 20% of normal and I can stabilise my readings with a carb intake of 80g per day and median exercise - this would allow others to compare and regulate their carb intake and exercise regimes to 'patients' with similar pancreatic output.

Your sig states you intake 150-180g carbs per day + exercise. I am fairly sure that this carb intake would be too much for me (I'm averaging below 100) and I also add exercise. Therefore I'm assuming my pancreas is more knackered, but it would be great to have a number to compare (like we do with the hba1c).

Finally, one of the holy grails for type 2's seems to be to slow or even reverse the deterioration in pancreas function - but without a number to compare against it seems just like smoke and mirrors.
 
Hmm, understand about comparing function, trouble again is that 20% of your function could produce more insulin than 20% of mine. Also, the same insulin level for you might produce better BG lowering than mine if you have less insulin resistance. And so it goes on. The same drugs may work better on you etc. So, easier to treat, test and adjust! Not disagreeing though, I'd like to knowers about my remaining function and how long it might go on for
 
Yes its frustrating swimmer2 as I'd like to know the same thing. Got told by the DN last week they wouldn't do the tests because as Grazer says the treatment is identical and it costs. Also made it worse by showing her I was in good control of BG's!

Effectively unless you are on meds that stimulate insulin production (I'm not) and could therefore reduce the lifespan of what remains of your pancreatic function then I couldn't think of a counter argument.

It is irritating that Grazer can eat 150-180g a day :roll: like you I'm sub 100g averaging around 70 at the moment.
 
swimmer2 said:
Too late. Let's duff him up and steal his lunch
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:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: Not heard the expression "Duff him up" for a long while! No point stealing my lunch - I only eat grass!
 
You must eat a hell of a lot of grass to get 180g of carbs out of it :lol:
 
Oh the pitfalls of a low carb diet :roll:
 

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Hi

Just a point that Grazer made that treatment starts with Met after trying dieting. The NICE guidelines suggest that a Sulphonylurea such as Glic is an alternative to Met for underweights as Met tends to overcome insulin resistance which, if you're like me and as an underweight you have a problem with not enough insulin production. Even full dose Glic hasn't done much for me as someone else suggested in this post Glic will stimulate the pancreas to produce more but if it is already substantially knackered then the increase will be small. Sitagliptin has had some effect for me which indicates that perhaps my insulin production, what there is, was being switched off too early after a meal? This Type 2 stuff is not simple!
 
Most people could quite considerably increase the amount of carbohydrate they eat if they exercised! The muscles in our body on average store around 400g of carbohydrate... an all round body workout for an hour in most people is enough to deplete this store and force the muscles to recover glucose from your blood stream... Run 10k a day and you will be eating carbohydrates like they are going out of fashion!
 
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