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Pre-prediabetic?

Dari

Member
Messages
8
Good afternoon to you all.
I'd now like to introduce my situation, also giving you some value details.
I was last summer diagnosed as prediabetic by my endocrinologist. I had that visit for both problems on thyroid hormones and OGTT values.
After my 2017 pregnancy I got chronic hypothyroidism. And I maintained some gestational diabetes values.

So. In June 2018 my HbA1c was 39 mmoli/moli and results of my OGTT were: fasting 4.5 mmol/L,
at 60' 14.5
at 120' 5.5

That value at 60 minutes defined my diagnosis.
As prediabetes is no disease I wasn't prescribed any treatment. I only was told to eat low carb and to walk 30 minutes a day.
I only started with the diet. I have no time for exercising at the moment.

I lost weight during months. I now weigh 50 kilos (7.87 stones... Is the conversion correct?), I was 56 kilos in June 2018 (8.82 stones). I'm 158 cm tall (5.18 feet) and I think I shouldn't lose any more weight!
My current HbA1c is 34 mmoli/moli or 5.3% so I managed to have a good result. I haven't got a recent OGTT.

Now it's time for making some questions...
I've spent some time reading the forum discussions and understood something more about diabetes so... What could I do to gain some weight? Is increasing fat share in meals the right choice? Is that really healthy?
I would like to increase carbs a little but I don't think I can really afford it as passing from 40 grams of wholemeal bread to 60 grams means getting a 8.3 value with my glucometer after 60' from meal beginning.
And is it correct to measure BS after 60 minutes??? This is what they taught me when I had gestational diabetes.

I still have so many questions...
But I'll go with my last one.
Considering my values am I really prediabetic?

Thank you for reading my post. Thank you for replying if you do.

Dari
 
Hi,

In the UK you would not be diagnosed as pre-diabetic. As everyone can expect a spike at around an hour, particularly after a pure glucose drink, the recognised time for testing is the 2 hour mark.

In an OGTT these are the criteria for diagnosing diabetes

People without diabetes
  • Fasting value (before test): under 6 mmol/L
  • At 2 hours: under 7.8 mmol/L
People with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) (pre-diabetes)
  • Fasting value (before test): 6.0 to 7.0 mmol/L
  • At 2 hours: 7.9 to 11.0 mmol/L
Diabetic levels
  • Fasting value (before test): over 7.0 mmol/L
  • At 2 hours: over 11.0 mmol/L

In the case of the HbA1c

Normal below 42 (6%)
Pre-diabetic 42 to 47 (6% to 6.4%)
Diabetic above 48 (6.5% or above)

Your BMI (Body Mass Index) appears to be in the normal range. In fact, it is similar to mine. If you do not want to increase your carbs, which would be counter productive if you want to keep good control of your blood sugar levels, then you need to increase your good fats and proteins. This means foods such as olive oil, nuts, avocado, dairy (full fat yogurts, heavy cream, eggs and more eggs, oily fish such as salmon, tuna and mackerel, butter, cheese.) Stop using any vegetable/seed oils and cook with olive oil or animal fats. The fewer carbs you eat the more good fats you need. The choice is yours, of course.
 
Dear Bluetit,
thank you very much for your answer.
Values that show non-diabetic/pre/diabetic are more or less the same as over here, in Italy. My endo classified me as prediabetic in any case (even though I do not have the official values for prediabetes).

I think that the most important fact is I take my blood sugar levels seriously because they are not quite healthy. When compared to levels of people who eat same things (always after 1 hour from meal) they are definitely out of range. It happens sometimes that they keep staying high for hours.

I appreciate so much any suggestion about food. I'll try with increasing what you mentioned as they are all things I love to eat. Increasing fats isn't in fact something I've thought about. Doctors' suggestion over here is always to avoid fats, except for little quantities of extra virgin olive oil. But I guess they spread suggestions only thinking about people who need to loose weight.

I do not want to lose more weight. I'm still breastfeeding my baby and that's quite committing.

I'll keep reading through this forum as I've been doing till now. I've learnt that many women that were diagnosed with gestational diabetes during pregnancy develop diabetes in a few years time.
I really wonder why doctors do not deepen on women's health after pregnancy. It'd be so easy to help them delay the diabetes diagnosis. In Italy everybody speaks so loud about prevention but I do not see any control on women who had gestational diabetes. They are left alone and they do not know anything about risks either.
 

Hi Dari,
I have gestational diabetes (3rd pregnancy only), 44 yo. I don't know if I already had pre-diabetes before this pregnancy because I didn't test for it but the more I am hearing about insulin resistance and it's relation to all chronic diseases, I'm choosing to assume that if I have gestational diabetes, I must have enough insulin resistance to cause problems in my health down the track if I keep eating what I've been eating. I think waiting till you have a proper diagnosis of diabetes is a bit late if we can find out earlier that insulin resistance is already a factor. If you have any time, this might interest you:
 

I think the very fact that we already had gestational diabetes shows that we have enough insulin resistance to lead to problems in the future. Just assume that you will have and really focus on low carb to be on the safe side. Many believe any blood sugar spike over 7.8 mmol is slowly doing our bodies damage, so if I see, 8s, 9s and 10s (which I have a few times this past few weeks since diagnosis), it worries me because I often can't get the 2 hour reading back below my target of 6.7 mmol. So those spikes do matter I think. And the only way to fix it is not to eat the carbs that are doing it to you.

I've just been listening today to Ivor Cummings talking about seed oils and how they affect us as well. Fascinating stuff. I feel so fortunate to live at a time when this information is available to us so we don't just have to wait for a doctor to tell us in a number of years that we already have T2.

 

Please let us know how you go on.
 
As you are still feeding your baby, you should be having more than a tiny amount of olive oil - and bread is not nutritious - please consider replacing the dense carb foods for lighter stuff with more nutrition, vegetables in a stir fry, berries with cream and sugar free jelly makes a good dessert, you can have loads of salad stuff with tomatoes and cucumber, radish, sweet peppers - anything with vitamins and minerals, plus proteins and fats.

[moderator edit.]
 
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