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Recently Diagnosed Type 2

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myagi007

Member
Messages
18
Hi all,

I've recently been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, just wanted to say hi. I was only diagnosed 4-5 weeks ago so still getting my head around everything. I've lost 2.5-3 st in weight through dieting and exercise and am now around 13.5-14st. My triglicerides have dropped from 13.9 through to 2.42 (although my doctor still insists I stay on simvastatin.) I'm now on metformin as my HBA1C was at 16.9 and my blood sugars are at around a similar level. What I've found the most difficult is the diet and not really knowing what I can and can't eat, my doctor says avoid all fruit, berries etc. The diabetes nurse said I can eat fruit but only 1 cupful of berries a week........ I'd like to know if anyone has successfully used the Low GI diet to help with their Diabetes, or if anyone can recommend a good diet to follow to get those blood sugars down. I should say that I've cut refined sugar out of my diet completely (ie teas,coffee, breakfast), I also avoid most carbs except for the odd piece of brown bread.
Also could I ask what if any supplements people take? vitamins, fish oils, wheat grass etc?

Any help would be appreciated.
 
Hello myagi007 and welcome to the forum.

Daisy will be along soon with the official welcome pack but here's some info from me to be getting on with

It sounds like you are doing really well at getting control. Rather than a low GI diet what most of us would recommend a low to moderate carbohydrate diet which is slightly different. You say you are avoiding most carbs so can we just confirm that you mean everything with plain sugar plus you are avoiding things like rice, pasta, bread, potatoes, cereals and other things made of flour and you have made up the difference by eating more protein and fat so meat, fish, eggs, cheese and especially vegetables. On vegetables the ones that grow above ground are best although most of us get away with carrots. A small amount of fruit is fine and the ones ending in "berry" are best. I take it you've dropped pure fruit juices and any non diet drinks (the diet versions of things like coke are fine).

On any of the starchy carbs you have left then swap to brown basmati rice, wholemeal or better Burgen Soya bread, brown, green or the tri-colour versions of pasta. Avoid mashed potatoes!

If you're doing that great! The next thing we all finds works if you are low carbing is to begin to count the grams of carbs you eat each day. You can do this by working out the carb content from the backs of packets etc, Be sure to use the Total carbohydrate numbers and not just the "of which sugars" number. Most people start off and aim for between 120 to 150 grams of carbs a day. Those are the values you would also be recommended to aim for in more enlightenned health care countries like Sweden and Germany. You may or might have already found that the NHS recommends starchy carbs with every meal but the info you get from the NHS was drawn up 40 years ago the Swedish and German info comes from the 21st century.

What most forum members and most of the HCP's who post on this forum recommend is that you start testing your own blood sugars with a meter and strips. It sounds like as you haven't mentioned that your doc hasn't offered. Again that's pretty standard nowadays with Type 2 unless your doctor is pretty progressive. The NICE guidelines nearly say that as Type 2 you should get a meter and strips but recent interpretations suggest that only happens if you are on stronger drugs than Metformin which can cause a hypo a condition that Metformin cannot do. In any event a gp can ignore the guidlines if they want so many of us end up buying are own meters and strips.

The reason testing is important is that it will let you refine that initial 120g - 150g carb amount down or up. The aim should be to get you blood sugar readings under 7.8 at two hours after eating any meal and under 7 at all other times. Without testing you will not know what foods are good and bad for you.

I see you are Metformin. That's good as its by far the safest diabetic drug and is the only prescribed diabetic drug I take. It works mostly by blocking glucose entering your blood and does not stimulate your already overworked pancreas into working even harder. Metformin is not a magic bullet and will only reduce your blood sugar levels by 1 or 2 points but it is good at stopping them shooting up after eating. In my opinion no diabetic drug works a tenth as well as adopting the right level of carbohydrates in your diet.

I was diagnosed just 15 weeks ago and now have the blood sugar levels of an average non diabetic around 98% of the time. Obviously I'm not cured as if I eat something high carb my levels rocket.

As you can see I've ignored your supplement questions as in my mind they are secondary to getting good blood sugar control but if you look here http://www.diabetes.co.uk/vitamins-supplements.html you'll find suggestions that I used myself.

Keep asking questions
 
Hi myagi007 and welcome to the forum :) Here is some information we give to new members and I hope you will find it helpful. Ask as many questions as you need to and we will try and find the answers for you.

BASIC INFORMATION FOR NEWLY DIAGNOSED DIABETICS


Diabetes is the general term to describe people who have blood that is sweeter than normal. A number of different types of diabetes exist.

A diagnosis of diabetes tends to be a big shock for most of us. It’s far from the end of the world though and on this forum you’ll find well over 30,000 people who are demonstrating this.

On the forum we have found that with the number of new people being diagnosed with diabetes each day, sometimes the NHS is not being able to give all the advice it would perhaps like to deliver - particularly with regards to people with type 2 diabetes.

The role of carbohydrate

Carbohydrates are a factor in diabetes because they ultimately break down into sugar (glucose) within our blood. We then need enough insulin to either convert the blood sugar into energy for our body, or to store the blood sugar as body fat.

If the amount of carbohydrate we take in is more than our body’s own (or injected) insulin can cope with, then our blood sugar will rise.

The bad news

Research indicates that raised blood sugar levels over a period of years can lead to organ damage, commonly referred to as diabetic complications.

The good news

People on the forum here have shown that there is plenty of opportunity to keep blood sugar levels from going too high. It’s a daily task but it’s within our reach and it’s well worth the effort.

Controlling your carbs

The info below is primarily aimed at people with type 2 diabetes, however, it may also be of benefit for other types of diabetes as well.
There are two approaches to controlling your carbs:

  • Reduce your carbohydrate intake
  • Choose ‘better’ carbohydrates
Reduce your carbohydrates
A large number of people on this forum have chosen to reduce the amount of carbohydrates they eat as they have found this to be an effective way of improving (lowering) their blood sugar levels.

The carbohydrates which tend to have the most pronounced effect on blood sugar levels tend to be starchy carbohydrates such as rice, pasta, bread, potatoes and similar root vegetables, flour based products (pastry, cakes, biscuits, battered food etc) and certain fruits.

Choosing better carbohydrates

Another option is to replace ‘white carbohydrates’ (such as white bread, white rice, white flour etc) with whole grain varieties. The idea behind having whole grain varieties is that the carbohydrates get broken down slower than the white varieties –and these are said to have a lower glycaemic index.
http://www.diabetes.co.uk/food/diabetes ... rains.html

The low glycaemic index diet is often favoured by healthcare professionals but some people with diabetes find that low GI does not help their blood sugar enough and may wish to cut out these foods altogether.

Read more on carbohydrates and diabetes

Eating what works for you

Different people respond differently to different types of food. What works for one person may not work so well for another. The best way to see which foods are working for you is to test your blood sugar with a glucose meter.

To be able to see what effect a particular type of food or meal has on your blood sugar is to do a test before the meal and then test after the meal. A test 2 hours after the meal gives a good idea of how your body has reacted to the meal.

The blood sugar ranges recommended by NICE are as follows:

Blood glucose ranges for type 2 diabetes
  • Before meals: 4 to 7 mmol/l
  • 2 hours after meals: under 8.5 mmol/l
Blood glucose ranges for type 1 diabetes (adults)
  • Before meals: 4 to 7 mmol/l
  • 2 hours after meals: under 9 mmol/l
Blood glucose ranges for type 1 diabetes (children)
  • Before meals: 4 to 8 mmol/l
  • 2 hours after meals: under 10 mmol/l
However, those that are able to, may wish to keep blood sugar levels below the NICE after meal targets.

Access to blood glucose test strips
The NICE guidelines suggest that people newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes should be offered:

  • structured education to every person and/or their carer at and around the time of diagnosis, with annual reinforcement and review
  • self-monitoring of plasma glucose to a person newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes only as an integral part of his or her self-management education

Therefore both structured education and self-monitoring of blood glucose should be offered to people with type 2 diabetes. Read more on getting access to blood glucose testing supplies.

You may also be interested to read questions to ask at a diabetic clinic

Note: This post has been edited from Sue/Ken's post to include up to date information.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please sign our e-petition for free testing for all type 2's; here's the link:
http://www.diabetes.co.uk/petition/

Do get your friends and colleagues to sign as well.
Click to expand...
 
Hi & Welcome

you definitely came to the right place. it is a mine field of information and advice and support :)
 
Hi and welcome from me too. I won't give you my "normal" advice as it's all been covered very well above. Just shows we're all (mostly!) in agreement with each other on dietary advice!
Suprised at your doctor's advice on berries - they're about the best of fruits for avoiding sugar spikes! Most of us find bananas are the worst.
Good luck, and keep asking questions - it does get easier!
 
Hi all,
Just wanted to say thanks for the information and encouragement, I haven't had he chance to log in since my last post. I'm sure I'll have lots of questions I'll follow the links in the responses and try to read as much as possible.

Speak soon.

Regards
 
Hi all again,

Once again thanks for the previous advice firstly to answer a couple of points made previously....
I have cut all sugar and sugary carbs out so as you said white bread, rice and sugar in tea coffee. My diet mainly consists of the following:
Muesli for breakfast now switched to weetabix, sometimes with a few blueberries in.
Lunch is a salad usually with either turkey, ham or tuna. Sometimes I might have a sandwich on burgen bread with no butter but with Philadelphia extra light and maybe ham or a tuna / mayo.
Dinner varies but tends to be low fat especially in saturated fat no pasta, rice or potatoes at all. Grilled fish at least twice a week, chicken and recently ventured back on to some red meat ( as I love it) obviously vegetables as well all steamed or boiled.

What I'm really struggling with is the confused feeling of should I be eating this or not.... I've started trying to count the carbs and for example I believe that 1.5 sticks of weetabix is about 30 odd carbs (can't remember the exact figure) I also found a good website ( I think) which gives the carb count for most fruits and vegetables for example half a cup of strawberries is 5 carbs. What I was looking for was some sort of confirmation that what I'm doing is right?? Earlier someone said reduce carbs and increase protein and fat, I'm assuming you mean all good fats no trans fats or saturated fats?
On a different note my wife came hme with a glucose monitor and strips it's the Accu-Chek Compact Plus not sure if anyone has used it. Anyway I did my first test after about 3 attempts it was about 1.5-2 hrs after my evening meal and it read 7.9 which I think considering my last readings by the doc is quite good. Although I had a blood test on Monday at the docs so we'll see what that says.

Thanks once again

Myagi
 
You're doing great, and your meter readings prove it, so well done. Try to test at a fixed 2 hours after eating each time, after different food types, then if you get a higher reading than the one you've just taken, (some ofus here use "no more than 7.8", so you were pretty spot on!) you know you need to cut some of the carbs out of that meal.
Keep it up!
 
I'd like to know if anyone has successfully used the Low GI diet to help with their Diabetes,
Click to expand...
Hi,
One of the forum's oldest members has successfully used a low GI diet for many years. I hope she'll notice your question.
One thing that struck me is that you need some good info about the GI.
Weetabix is high GI!
Here's a general list.
http://www.the-gi-diet.org/lowgifoods/
The best source of accurate information about the glycemic index is here:(the GI site for the Univ. of Sydney)
http://www.glycemicindex.com/
The FAQs will give you a basic understanding, the GI news section is a pot pourri of snippets s about research, recipes and individual stories of people who use the GI.

Edit: by oldest I mean years on the forum, not age :lol:
 
Hi myagi007. I find these two sites good for counting carbs

http://carbohydrate-counter.org/advsearch.php

http://fatsecret.com

On your fat / protein / carbs question. I found it useful to separate the two aims of getting back to good blood sugar levels and getting onto a good and healthy diet. In my opinion your immediate issue is to stabilise your BG's back to safe levels so accepting that its the carbs that are primarily effecting BG's and reducing those and yes to do that upping fat / protein short term maybe a necessary thing to do. Once you have done that then using your meter as a guide you can begin to get a healthier carb / fat / protein balance and low GI is a good one to choose.

Keep asking questions and as Grazer said your BG's are looking good. Well done :clap:
 
Just wanted to say thanks for all the info, it's really helping me. I'm sure just about everyone probably feels like it's a personal battle (no war) between yourself, body and bg levels. I have moments of high (when I get a good reading on the monitor) and moments of low (when I get a bad reading). I'm trying not to let it get me down - I had a reading of 8.2 tonight prior to eating dinner and as dinner was late I may not do another reading tonight.

I had a quick read of the links for the Low GI diet and I'm really confused now... The Low GI food list is self explanatory. However the information on the link for Sydney Unv - they say that white bread and wholemeal bread have almost the same GI level same with brown rice and white rice? I think for now I might have to research the low GI diet a bit more, I've got a good book someone bought me - Helen Forster / Helen Foster (can't remember) - Is there a set amount each meal should equal on the GI diet?

Thanks again for everything..

Myagi
 
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