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Reversing symptoms of Diabetes 2

Arlene, DON'T PANIC :!:

At this stage you are learning & noting results. I would recommend cutting out the obvious carbs & increasing veg, cheese, meat & fruit. Your body has to adjust to the new regime, & may be compensating so it appears that you are not responding to the change.

A month on a reduced carb diet should show results in the blood sugar, & even the beginning of weight loss.

I always check the overnight reading & this seems to be the most significant for me.
 
Hi everyone thanks again for your support and encouragement.

I am pleased to tell you all that yesterday was a more positive day.....the first since I have started testing.

I began yesterday with a fasting morning reading of 9.1. 2 hours after breakfast it was up to 11.4 (Don't think I can tolerate porridge after all!)

Before lunch the readings were down to 8.5
For lunch I had a good mixed salad with a small slice of ham and little dollop of mustard and cup of hot water. Exactly 2 hours after this lunch my readings were down to 7.7.

I had the salad again for dinner and included steamed broccoli and steamed string beans with a small slice of chicken and used a little Thai chilli dressing. My readings 2 hours after this meal was 7.8.

Finally in the evening I had a natural low fat bio yoghurt with about 10 fresh raspberries in it and checked my readings before bedtime and they were down to 6.8.

The very positive thing was that my bs stayed fairly stable during the night and I checked them again when I woke at 5am and they were 7.5 and then on rising they were 8.2 and have remained at that all day today.

It looks as if I am doomed to eating rabbit food for the forseeable future folks as salads seem to be the only foods that I can tolerate that don't send my bs soaring.

I know the readings are still high but I am hoping with time and weightloss these will come down more. I haven't as yet managed any exercise due to my ME fatigue these past few days.

Has anyone any helpful advice to me to further help me?

Thanks again everyone and please keep me right!

Arlene
 
Dear Arlene,
I'm so glad you had a good day. But the way I read your food diary is not that you have to eat 'rabbit food' - ie salads - but that you do so much better when you cut down on starchy carbohydrates as well as sugar.

The foods that we are talking about are
a)anything made with flour - so that's bread, biscuits, pastry and pasta (though some people seem to cope better with pasta) and also things like sauces made with flour
b) anything which is a grain - so rice, oats, barley (though some people can cope with smallish amounts of the last two better than with rice)
c) breakfast cereals
d) potatoes
e) anything sugary which includes some fruits. Raspberries and other 'berries' are generally fine.

People vary a whole lot on how much of each they can eat, which is why it is important to test a lot at first. However, you can be pretty sure that cutting down on those things will help a lot. If you look over your 'good' day you will see that the only thing you ate off that list was the porridge - which did send your levels up.

You don't necessarily have to give everything up, though actually that's not as hard as it sounds and after two weeks it seems pretty normal. But some people manage fine just by knowing how much of these things is 'too much' for them.

It sounds like a lot to change but actually, many meals are hardly affected. You just have them with vegetables (cooked or salad) instead of potato or rice. It's just a question of getting into the mindset. The good thing about it is that you don't have to cut back on everything, and you can eat normal quantities, not feel hungry and still lose weight.

Once you get into the swing of testing when you try something different, you will start to get the hang of what works for you.
 
Bear in mind that I had been eating a low-carb diet for three or four years before I even realised I had blood-sugar problems, which makes about 5 years in all, so I didn't get there all at once and I probably eat some things you will think are weird<g>. Don't be put off. You don't have to do the weird bit! It just seems normal to me now - I've read the cookbooks etc and get some specialty low carb stuff on the internet. I've got used to cooking things one way for my children and another way for my husband and me. (We are both what the doctor calls pre-diabetic or borderline type 2 - if we didn't eat this way I'm pretty sure we'd both be crossing the border and heading for the hills<g>.)

So today was:

Breakfast: my husband usually cooks himself bacon and egg, but I'm not often in a bacon and egg mood when I first get up. Today I had a slice of swiss cheese and a slice of ham rolled up together because I was in a hurry. Yesterday I had scrambled egg with tomato on a piece of toast made with special low carb bread. Another day this week I had greek yoghurt with blueberries. Quite often I have a protein shake which is made with some powder from the internet or health food shop mixed with soya milk. (You can't taste that it is soya in the shake, and it has lower carbs than real milk. I wouldn't use soya milk in tea.)

Lunches this week have been things like: chicken casserole left over from the night before; Ham open sandwich on one slice of low carb bread; cold chicken with salad; omelette - cheese or mushroom or even my favourite 'I just want something sweet' treat which sounds weird but is so nice - make a thin 'egg pancake' by beating two eggs and frying them like a big pancake in a large non-stick frying pan, then squirt whipped cream (the no-sugar sort) on it and top with low-carb maple syrup (which you can get from the internet). Sometimes if I'm working I take a protein shake with me - they are quite filling and avoid the temptation to grab a sandwich. Or if I'm in town I might get a salad in a cafe if I can afford it.

Dinners have been; chicken casserole (same for whole family); Cheeseburgers (kids with oven chips and buns, me with veggies); bolognese - kids with spaghetti, me with green beans - another thing which sounds odd but works fine; chicken or prawn stir fry - they have noodles with it, I have extra bean sprouts and a bit more chicken. If I make them macaroni cheese, I often make me & Tim a cauliflower cheese, with the sauce made with cream instead of flour and milk. Things like roasts and stews and steak and chops are fine; they have potatoes and I just have extra veg. Curry and chilli I serve with rice for the kids and 'cauliflower rice' for us. You put cauliflower through the food processor or grater until it is the size of rice and then steam or microwave it and it makes a really good rice substitute.

It all sounds a bit carnivorous, I know, but I do also cook quite a lot of fish though not this week and I also like stir-fry tofu if it's just me but no-one else will eat it. Tinned salmon or tuna is very handy in a hurry. I recently got a book by Rose Elliot called 'the low carb vegetarian diet' which has some good non-meat ideas in it, but my husband is a bit suspicious of anything too green<g>.

I did subscribe to a menu service for a while which was quite good because it got me thinking of things I wouldn't have thought of otherwise - after cooking for a family for years I got a bit lacking in inspiration and too focused on what people didn't like and having to be low carb as well just made my mind go blank. She sends you a set of six recipes every week plus lunch and breakfast suggestions. Some of the suggested menus were a bit American but there was generally at least 3 or 4 out of the six suggested meals which we liked, and some have become major favourites - garlic lime chicken, for example.

Hope this helps.
 
Dear Arlene,

I hope I didn't put you off with such a long post. You don't have to do what I do. You have time to find out what works for you - any improvement is taking you in the right direction.
 
spinningwoman said:
Dear Arlene,

I hope I didn't put you off with such a long post. You don't have to do what I do. You have time to find out what works for you - any improvement is taking you in the right direction.
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Your contribution has been really great and I appreciate it.

I am seeing my readings come down now to the 7s and 8s and I am really grateful.

I am still confused why something like toast and scrambled egg puts my bs up in the 9s and yet when I went out for a meal yesterday and had chicken goujons with chilli dip, salad and garlic potatoes and a dessert and later on a scone my bs was 7 when I came home. Admittedly I had a walk round tesco on the route home and really destressed throughout the day with friends.

Hope you keep well

Arlene
 

Hi Arlene, I have been on a low carb diet for several months now and purchase a lot of my food online like my breakfast cereals of flax meal, chia seeds and chocolate nibs. Other food I buy from supermarkets such as my livlife low carb bread (Waitrose), usual green veg and salad, milk, cheese, eggs, cream, meat and fish, etc; These have all helped to a) Keep me at my ideal weight of 11 stone and b) reduce my blood glucose to reasonable figures between 6.7 and 8. However, I have just tried a recipe for a supposedly healthy no bake chocolate brownies and the resultant low blood glucose levels have amazed me. This is especially so as the ingredients include pitted dates and maple syrup? Every time after eating these brownies my blood levels went down to between 5 and 6. Although the recipe has other ingredients in it such as flax meal and walnuts I have since put these fantastic results down to the half teaspoon of chilli powder in the recipe for both the cake and topping layer. I noticed someone else in your posts mentioned chillies and wanted to add my own experience here in case it might help someone else in the future. I have seen 2 opposite conclusions about chilli pepper and diabetes in scientific research but my own experience certainly shows chilli pepper to be an effective aid in keeping my blood glucose levels near to normal.
 
Hi everyone,

I have been a typo 2 for over 30 years and dependant on insulin for 12. Concerned about the unsustainability of the levels of medication required to keep my blood sugars in control I started to research.

That led me to the Newcastle study which was the first time I had heard of the possibility of reversal of symptoms; I had always been told by professionals that it was not.

Confronted by a disbelieving and unhelpful health service where I live, I set off alone on March 1st 2016 to follow a Newcastle style diet. Lots of exclusions, but in particular I went the zero carb route.

Now, precisely 6 months on I am 4 stone 3 lbs lighter and am completely off ALL medication; no insulin or metformin, no blood pressure tablets or aspirin; even kicked the Statins into touch. My HbA1c level is down at 37. (NICE sets 48mmol/mol as a target; the cut off for diagnosis of diabetes is also 48)

I don't yet claim to have cured my type 2 (though my GP does); follow up in October when I find out how well this improvement has been sustained.

I wonder why there is so much doubt about the Newcastle style dietary advice. their new study will hopefully start clinicians suggesting that indeed type 2 might be reversible.

peter
 
From what I can see the Newcastle diet is a form of one of the techniques to reduce bgs. In my experience the effects have to be monitored and occasional returned to to keep good excellent maintainance. I did similiar when I was a teenager. I didn't know it was a form of newcastle diet and didn't maintain it . I can now see the low carb lifestyle assists newcastle diet maintainance.
 
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Team, I have realized that most of the post on this forum talks about reducing the intake of Potatoes but has also read that Sweet Potatoes do not impact blood sugar.
Would be grateful if we are able to distinguish the Potatoes by stating if it is the normal or Sweet Potatoes so we are not confused by just stating Potatoes
 
I don't think it's true that sweet potatoes don't impact BG. They're a starchy carbohydrate and actually have more carbs than white potatoes, even though I think they're meant to be lower GI/GL. Many of us find that lower GI/GL doesn't make much impact when we test ourselves - a carb is a carb is a carb for many.
 
What is the Newcastle style dietary advice ? would want to know what this is if possible try it and see how it can improve my BSG level
 
It sounds too good to be true: reversing type 2 diabetes through exercise and healthy eating.

While certain lifestyle changes are key to managing diabetes, whether you can actually turn back time so that it's like you never had diabetes is a different matter. That depends on how long you've had the condition, how severe it is, and your genes.
Too much fat within liver and pancreas prevents normal insulin action and prevents normal insulin secretion. Both defects are reversible by substantial weight loss.

A crucial point is that individuals have different levels of tolerance of fat within liver and pancreas. Only when a person has more fat than they can cope with does type 2 diabetes develop. In other words, once a person crosses their personal fat threshold, type 2 diabetes develops. Once they successfully lose weight and go below their personal fat threshold, diabetes will disappear.

Some people can tolerate a BMI of 40 or more without getting diabetes. Others cannot tolerate a BMI of 22 without diabetes appearing, as their bodies are set to function normally at a BMI of, say 19.
 
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