JoKalsbeek
Expert
I doubt I'll be very helpful as others have come up with good stuff already... B vitamins could well be the issue, as well as lack of magnesium (calves). You got your HbA1c down somewhat by starving yourself and upping fruits, which isn't the preferred method: lots of fruits have a large amount of sugar, so while you were starving yourself on one side, you were putting more bad things in when you did eat. (Fruit may be stuffed with vitamins, but they contain lots of carbs too, alas.
). https://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/blog-entry/the-nutritional-thingy.2330/ might help a little when it comes to finding some balance, and might help your family too. Low carbing is quite do-able and while fasting can be part of that, going hungry doesn't need to. The difference between fasting and starving: one will assist in getting weight and blood sugars down while eating nutrient dense food when you break your fast. The other'll get you malnourished and miserable. So its a bit of a balancing act, but once you get the hang of it, it's easy. And if cookies sometimes are enough of a temptation to accept days of pain, it may be time to learn how to make low carb cookies, keto fat bombs and the like. Check out dietdoctor.com and google for how to's. Very good, but no nasty blood sugar effects. Metformin isn't a cure-all and you can easily get your blood sugars more thoroughly into the normal range through diet than through medication. Usually when you rely on meds to take care of your blood sugars for you, and keep eating the standard western diet, the condition is progressive. With a slight change in diet, it doesn't have to be. And even reversable. (Depending on how you look at it. In two months I'll have been a diagnosed diabetic for five years. I always will be one, and I accept that. But I'm a-symptomatic and have no complications nor medications whatsoever. I call that remission. If I eat cake though.... Not good. And that's just something I'll have to live with.)One more thing: there are a bunch of different things besides diabetes that can cause discomfort in the extremities. As was mentioned before, B12 deficiency (and it may be worth noting, metformin also inhibits the uptake of B12, so if that's the issue it'd likely make it worse!), magnesium deficiency, but other stuff too... Has your thyroid function been checked recently? I had to switch my thyroid meds around yesterday for a blood draw and man, my feet are burning this morning! Try and get screened for just about everything. Just focussing on prediabetes might be narrowing the field too much and the problem could well be very fixable, if someone'd just bother to test you properly and broadly.
Good luck!
Jo
