really need help

Could you let us know a typical day's menu? How long have you been taking metformin?

Well that's plenty of time for the metformin to be working properly, although it only lowers BG's slightly anyway.

I know you say you haven't changed your diet much recently, but my feeling is that it is still too high in carbs. I normally don't eat bread, cereal, rice or potatoes (I say 'normally' because I do lapse into bad habits again sometimes!)

I'm not too good with breakfasts myself...fry ups are good if you have the time. Or natural yoghurt with berries.
I would try to substitute the bland carbs for tastier alternatives...proteins and fats are good substitutes.
Have a look at the LCHF section of the forum

I would agree that 9.1 is too high and that it's your blood sugar level that is making you need to go to the loo so many times at night.

Yes I can see why you are fed up. Look all I can suggest is just go for it. Do your absolute best to lower your BG's yourself. Lots of us use low carb high fat to control our BG's. It's an odd concept at first but it works for a lot of us. You have a meter already. It would be good if you could test your BG's before eating, an hour after starting to eat and then two hours after starting to eat. That should give you an idea of which foods are OK for you and which are definite no's.

And keep asking us questions.

I would certainly second checking before and after anything you eat. Since I started doing it I have had a few surprises as to what has spiked my blood sugar and what I can tolerate.

The other one I have realised was a big problem for me was snacking in between meals, you don't mention any but I realised that even a piece of fruit between meals could put the levels up so that they were already a bit high when I started eating my meals which meant they were just so much higher afterwards.

teddybear74 said:

I have 35g cereal 2 slices of wholemeal bread fro 400g loaf and 3 halves of potatoes small ones at that and about 35-40g rice.

not sure whats going to happen next there was talk of putting me on insulin if I need to go on steroids for my asthma as I spike to nearly 30 on those with similar symptoms as now im tired all the time

im just fed up

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i would like to ask for your age and bmi. according to doctors, if you are old, it is difficult tor your body to switch from glucose base to fat base energy. going on a low carb high fat diet will increase the risk of hypo.

i simply go into cold turkey, cut all fruits and carb totally. but i do take supplement together with metformin 1000mg (first week after my diagnose). by the second week it was reduce to 500mg. then 250mg for a few months before i dropped the medication. i does introduce carb by experiment basis during this period. making sure it dun spike.

please consider your age before trying anything. a lot of testing required to help you do the gauging. the cold turkey thing will trigger the withdrawal symptoms. they call it fake hypo. therefore constant test is needed. just to ensure you don't fall into real hypo.

it is best to keep yourself with companies, so that help is available when needed.

Hi teddy bear! I can only second what the others have said so far, bread,cereal, potatoes and rice daily isn't going to help you.I'm nearly four weeks since diagnosed at 7.6 ..........3 weeks into lchf and I'm averaging mid 5 on waking, high 6's after eating- all because I no longer have the bread etc! I don't miss it at all and find already my taste has so improved! Eating meat, fish,chicken,eggs,salad,veg, small amounts of fruit- strawberries with cream as the fat in cream helps stop the spike !! I learnt so much from the lovely people here so make sure you pop on often!!

Hi,

The sweetcorn will have been the culprit in that salad that spiked you. Try the same salad again without it and see what happens. It is all trial and error.

Please try to change your breakfasts to either eggs and bacon, or a natural yogurt with a few berries added. Cereals are really bad for blood sugars.

The bread is also doing you no favours. If you can't manage without a slice of bread, switch to a heavily seeded wholemeal sort, or try a low carb one such as Burgen. Personally I eat Hovis 7 seeds wholemeal, but can only manage 1 slice with a meal without spiking. 2 slices and I'm high.

I agree with what has been said above. Test out your meals and act on the results. I don't wish to sound harsh, but this is down to you. Metformin helps with various things but has minimum effect on blood sugars. Only diet and a bit of exercise can bring can bring your levels down, so it's basically all down to you and what you eat. Please give it a try and you will feel so much better.

teddybear74 said:

im 40 in august and my bmi is 30 it just seems that no matter what I try and eat or don't eat im all of the sudden experiencing these higher sugar levels even when I eat salad which is only lettuce tomato cucumber pepper and chicken and sweet corn and I was over 10 2 hours later

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This can happen eat exactly the same meal two days running and one day your BG levels may be good after 2 hours the next day exactly the same meal and the levels could be high I think we all experience this at times levels can depend on other factors not just food like excersise or not feeling well etc

Try looking on the low carb section of the forum and seeing what others are eating as their typical low carb meals. Generally they won't have potatoes, bread, rice or pasta in them. It may seem daunting and you might think 'then what's left to eat?', but you'll see from the thread 'What have you eaten today?' that people out there are making imaginative and delicious low carb meals.

After initially going 'cold turkey' and cutting my carbs down to under 50g a day, using the free diet website My Fitness Pal to record all my foods (it tells you the carbs in what you're eating), I am now experimenting with foods I can eat with slightly higher carbs in. I've found toast, even made with low GI seeded bread, raised my BS levels into the teens and they were very slow to come down. Berries don't seem to raise my BS much at all. Sweetcorn (half a corn on the cob) has to be a rare treat as that pushed my BS high too. Muesli, which used to be my breakfast of choice, OMG - my BS went through the roof! I'm so glad I've switched to egg in various forms and bacon or mushrooms. Rice with curry - no, that gave me high BS, as did potatoes. I haven't tried pasta, but am having courgettes finely sliced with a julienne maker, as a pasta substitute.

Maybe you could try and go really low carb, see how it lowers your BS (mine went from often above 15 mmol/L to often between 4 and 8 mmol/L). Then you can experiment with what you can eat and see how you get on. You do need to have a meter and test regularly though, which your GP might not fund (but people buy their own).

Good luck.

Hi. Reducing weight is the highest priority as you probably have insulin resistance which you need to reduce so you can sort the wood from the tress ref diabetes medication Do follow the low-carb diet advice others have given. Set a daily carb limit of, say, 150 gms to start with. Metformin only reduces blood sugar a bit but is the best med for insulin resistance. I suspect the Gliclazide didn't work as it stimulates the pancreas and you may well have too much insulin around already