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Pattern management for Type 2 (no insulin)?

tan800

Active Member
Messages
28
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
Dislikes
running
Hi,

I have read about pattern management from this site, but seems it is mainly for type 1 diabetes, or type 2 on at least 2 insulin injections a day (see below, coped from the web page).

My question is if the pattern management can be useful for type 2 patients with no insulin injections, the same 4 steps shown below can be used to help patients in:
1. determine right foods to eat, and portion sizes;
2. adjust drug dose;
3. help to reverse diabetes in the end;

I would like to hear your suggestions and experiences, like how many times you test your bs levels and when? and if the test results can help to do pattern management?

Thanks in advance for sharing
====================================
Pattern management is the observation of blood glucose patterns and altering treatment regimens or lifestyle factors accordingly.
For those of us with type 1 diabetes, or otherwise on at least 2 insulin injections a day, high and low sugar levels need to be managed and avoided on a daily basis.
Pattern management
When managing high or low levels, go through the following process step by step:
  1. Spot high or low patterns in your blood glucose results
  2. Try to find the likely cause
  3. Plan how to address the cause
  4. Monitor the effects of the changes made
 
You could adopt a similar approach, but it need not be so difficult, or with so many steps:

1 - Spot post meal highs (you don't typically have to worry about lows as a T2 not on insulin).

2 - Remove, reduce or modify the carbohydrates in your diet to give the best post-prandial BG results possible.

There are two steps, and that's about all you need. Fasting BG can be managed with exercise and oral meds (if needed). Post prandial BG can be entirely managed by you.

Good luck!
 
Hi, GrantGam

Thanks for your suggestions, very helpful. Basically I will only focus on monitoring of post meal highs and watching the carbohydrates while deal with Fasting BG separately.
 
tan800 said:
Hi, GrantGam

Thanks for your suggestions, very helpful. Basically I will only focus on monitoring of post meal highs and watching the carbohydrates while deal with Fasting BG separately.
Click to expand...

The methodology.. adjusting the drugs dose won't work with metformin as it does not "cover" your last meal like an insulin dose would.
You'd be better testing and avoiding foods that cause your blood sugar to spike (mainly carbs in any form).
When I was first diagnosed I tested a lot, before and after every meal to see what happened to my blood sugar after eating. As I cut out breakfast immediately that was 5 or 6 times a day some people test even more than this.
It took ages for my FBG to reduce and even today I can still get odd high readings (as well as the odd low ones).
So far I haven't seen any rhyme or reason in my FBG but carry on monitoring because it is now habit.
 

Wow, your HbA1c are remarkably low, even lower than people without diabetes( between 4% and 5.6%).
You have lost 40kg, really remarkable!

In the past several months I tried to cut down my carbs, eat more nuts, and no metformin, too bad my recent
HbA1c was too high, over 10 So I need to watch my BS level closely, also make adjustment of my diet
more carefully.

How many times you test BS level daily? Thanks for sharing
ps. my weight is 66kg, BMI normal, so I don't need to watch my calories.
 
I test first thing in the morning when I get up after emptying the dishwasher. Then usually when I remember sometime mid afternoon.. I tend to only eat dinner these days so try and remember to test 2h after that then sometimes before bed.
I have given up my more regimented regime as I don't eat things that will spike me these days so tend to test more if we have been out for food rather than something we have cooked at home. Still want to lose some more weight but feel much better these days for being lighter. I still have a BMI of over 30 and want to get down to about 27 ideally.
 
For a complete understanding of what is happening with your glucose management, you'd need to test on waking, before each meal and at 1 and 2 and sometimes 3 hours afterwards, plus before retiring and it can also be beneficial to test around 2-3 am if you have issues with Dawn phenomenon.

The good news is that doing all this testing and acting accordingly upon the results can and will in the majority of cases reduce your hba1c significantly, especially combined with a low carb high fat diet and intermittent fasting.
 
I completely agree. But also be cautious with over eating protein. That's raises my fasting and all readings the next day. I split it into small amount throughout the day. Never large amounts at one time.
 
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