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Recently diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes

K

Kester

Newbie
Messages
3
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
Hi All,
My name is Chris and I live in rural Dorset, UK. I am 85 years old in a few days time. I am a retired secondary school teacher of art but also had links with technology and information technology in the early days of computing in schools.

I suffer from hypertension for which I have been receiving medication for many years. Following a major heart attack 23 months ago (in which the NHS, para medics and hospital staff, were brilliant - very quick response, wonderful care etc.) which has meant increased medication. It is since the heart attack that my blood sugar count has entered the type 2 diabetes level albeit not particularly high at 51 which means, for the time being, I am not prescribed additional medication.

A nurse specialist at my GP surgery recommended I join the local HealthCare Virtual Group but this meant installing the Microsoft 'Teams' facility on my computer. My system is Linux and although there are versions supposedly compatible, my operating system is not happy with them so I searched for alternative help and found this site.

I have recovered well from my heart attack with regular exercise building up my strength but it seems I will need to remain on my medication regime although I hoped there might be a reduction as my blood pressure level is extremely low leaving me feeling somewhat light-headed and unsteady when standing (walking is not so bad as the momentum helps keep me upright). Sometimes I feel a little depressed as I am unable to do many of the jobs I used to do without problem so cannot help my wife, who is the same age, as much as I would want. I am underweight at 63.5 kg and 180.3 cms tall metres so this poses dietary issues - how do I build up my weight without increasing my blood sugar. Probably the majority of type 2 diabetes cases involve patients trying to reduce weight but I guess underweight cases are not rare.

So that sums up my introduction to the forum, best regards to you all, cheers Chris.
 
Hi @Kester Welcome to the forum
Have a read round the forum and take your time, if you scroll down to my signature there are some links that you may find helpful. Don’t hesitate to ask any questions you may have. We have a lot of very experienced T2 members who can share their tips & how they manage their T2
 
Hi and welcome to the forum.

I've no personal experience with this as an intended result, but I have have noticed a small and steady change that appears to be muscle gain. This is in the context of undiagnosed T2 for about ten years, in which time I put on around 60-70lbs body fat. Having gone very low carb in December 2019, I was at normal BG in four months. Over the four years that followed, I lost about 90lbs - not sure where I was when I started, as the scales had ceased to register increases for some time.

I got to the point around 2023 where I didn't want to lose much more weight which is also about where I started exercising (mainly football) about the same time. Not much else altered. I eat mainly fats and proteins, with a few green veg and some legumes occasionally.

BG remains normal and stable, I'm normally in ketosis, and my weight has been stable at around 85kgish ( I am a big unit), but muscle definition is much more apparent. I think this means that I am probably still (slowly) losing bodyfat, but there's no overall weight loss because it's being replaced by muscle. Dr Michael Eades has a regular Substack where he talks about how to maintain and develop muscle mass at advanced ages (basically by resistance exercise), and you might find it interesting. I don't know if it would be suitable for you given your other considerations.

Michael Eades | Substack

substack.com

Best of luck
 
Hello @Kester I am in Dorset, down on the coast and I can see the Purbecks and Poole harbour from the back bedroom.
I programmed my first computer in Octal when doing a degree with the Open University.
I think you should have words about your low blood pressure - if you were to go on a low carbohydrate diet there is real danger that you could have a fall - several people on the low carb list I am on had injuries because HCPs insisted on them continuing on the same level of medication even though they had problems going up stairs or even just standing up - it really is not safe.

I service knitting machines and have quite a few around the house. At one point I had to give up for a couple of year as I became too feeble to pick them up, but the low carb diet enabled me to regain some strength and now I have no trouble. It was not a quick recovery but it happened against what would be considered a natural part of aging - I am 75 now.
For a while I used Nordic walking poles to navigate the pot holes on the local pavements - and I got a mobility scooter so I could go to the local parks and down to the sea front where the walking surfaces are a lot better.

For quite a few years I was diet only, but now I am on Dapagliflozin to protect my heart and kidneys I was told - it seems OK now I have adjusted my diet a bit. I was eating very low carb, no more than 40 gm of carbs a day, but the medication is too harsh for that, it drags glucose out of the blood so I need to top it up or go wobbly.

It is true that there are some then type 2's, but if your blood glucose levels do not improve on a low carb diet - if that is the recommendation, then it may be that you need some further investigation in case it is some other type creeping up on you.
 
Hi @Resurgam , Thanks for your useful comments.

My GP is aware of my low blood pressure problem and has made a minor change by halving the dosage of of one of my six medicants but, although I am officially discharged from the hospital, my GP does not want to change my medication significantly from what was prescribed by the hospital consultant. Dapagliflozin is one of my medicants too prescribed for me for similar reasons as you. I have 5 additional items including a fairly high dose statin prescribed, not to reduce cholesteral levels, for which it is commonly used, but also to strengthen the heart. I believe this is the main culprit for my light-headedness but my GP will not reduce it.

At 75 you are still a youngster. I too can see the Purbeck Hills from where Iive and can see Creech Barrow and Corfe Castle from two of the bedrooms on a clear day. To see Poole Harbour I need to walk up to the top of nearby Black Hill from where you can also get glimpses of The Needles but I've not gone up there in a while since my heart attack.

My first computer programming was in BBC Basic, local schools tended to move towards setting up BBC (Acorn) computer systems - it was quite an interesting time pre-internet but, of course the World Wide Web soon appeared and the big computer revolution began for schools with firstly, in my school, RISCOS Acorn Archimedes computer networks before switching to Microsoft Windows. I moved on to a little Visual Basic programming. I did not get my own computer until 1999 other than redundant acorn machines and took a while to eventually use the internet with a Microsoft Windows 98 system. I dumped Microsoft several years ago after support for Windows 7 ended - I now use MX-Linux exclusively on two systems. I do have a virtual Windows XP professional running in 'VirtualBox' on one system so I can run an old but excellent flatbed scanner and elderly but useful software not compatible with Linux.

Well I've been well off subject at times in this post but It's been good chatting. Cheers
 
There are still some little boxes around the house with Windows 7 on them - they were part of dedicated systems for things my husband's firm designed and sold - I always feel guilty throwing away things which still work.
I suspect that my children probably taught more of the computer studies curriculum than the teachers ever did as with my husband working in electronics we always had the latest 'kit' at home.
I still keep several slide rules handy, though - never had the battery fail on one of them.
 
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