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Trying to help my wife

M

Martin_

Active Member
Messages
35
Type of diabetes
Family member
Treatment type
Diet only
Hello all, thanks for accepting me onto this forum as a non-diabetic seeking to help my wife. We are in our early sixties, she is slim (under weight), very active, healthy eating, never touched alcohol or tobacco. She discovered three years ago that she was pre-diabetic after a blood test for an unrelated issue. Her HbA1c has now risen to 47 and she has been told to take action to prevent tipping over into diabetes. Basically, she is at her wits end because she feels she can't do any more. I'm trying to do all the research I can, but still remain confused over how to handle this diabetes threat for her. I just hope I can find some answers on this forum.
 
Martin_ said:
Her HbA1c has now risen to 47 and she has been told to take action to prevent tipping over into diabetes. Basically, she is at her wits end because she feels she can't do any more.
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Hi Martin and wife, welcome to the forum.

What has she already done to try to lower her blood glucose?
Many members find that a change of diet works very well to keep their numbers in the normal range.
Especially with the help of a glucose meter to see how different foods affect their BG by testing before and after meals, and adjusting the meals that give larger rises.

I'm tagging @AndBreathe for you, who is another thin T2 and has kept her hba1c in the non diabetic, below prediabetic range for years now.
 
Antje77 said:
What has she already done to try to lower her blood glucose?
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Following the advice of the dietician on the "Preventing Diabetes" course she went to: Breakfast is usually cereal with skimmed milk. Lunch could be half a grilled chicken breast or white fish with steamed veg, brown rice, couscous or lentils. Teatime it could be two slices of wholemeal toast with banana. She drinks tea or coffee with no milk or sugar, doesn't eat red meat, maybe a little bacon if I cook it crispy.
 
Todays food was breakfast cereal. Lunch, salad bowl from local vegan cafe. Teatime, low fat cheese on a few crackers followed by Greek yogurt and fruit.
 
Welcome to the forums. Carbohydrates drive blood glucose up. All carbs convert to sugar once eaten. High blood glucose causes diabetes or worsens it. Others here will agree with me that the diet your wife is following, even though recommended by the dietician, has far too many carbs in it. Cereal, all forms of grain (both white and brown), potatoes, rice, fruit (especially bananas) and vegetables that grow underground cause blood glucose to rise sharply. I suggest you research about carbs online and about diet on this website, to work to reduce them. Plus, get yourselves a glucose meter to measure blood glucose. Take a reading just before eating and then 2 hours after the first bite so that you may learn how foods affect her. Anything over a 2 mmol rise at the 2 hour mark is considered too high. Many a member here has been led astray by medical professionals about what a healthy diet for a diabetic is. This is a great website for asking questions. The information I learned here helped me more than any medical pro. There is a link on this site to a post called "The Nutritional Thingy" (I think I have the name right) which gives excellent guidance on the diet to follow. There is much to learn but it gets easier with time. Many a Type 2 diabetic here has put their diabetes into revision using diet alone. There is much that can be done. You are at the beginning of the road.
 
Martin and Mrs Martin, welcome to the forum. I came here to support my husband almost 10 years ago - it worked, we adopted a low carb approach to eating. I'm just about to go and prepare a low carb dinner, otherwise I'm sure I could write at length on the subject, so can I just draw your attention to this site, https://lowcarbfreshwell.co.uk/. in particular look at meal plans.
It's eating sugar that puts up your sugar (HbA1c) levels and breakfast cereals, many fruits, crackers, rice and so on are just sugar in a complex form.
Good luck,
Sally
 
Hi Martin and welcome to the forum
In my opinion that 'Preventing Diabetes' course was very poor. It sounds like the dietary advice is the Whole grain Low Fat advice that gave me T2 diabetes in the first place.
If you exclude drugs and surgery, then there are 2 broad ways or reversing or avoiding diabetes.
The first Is really only for obese people - lose a lot of weight.
The second is to do what I did and have a Low Carbohydrate way of eating (no conscious calorie reduction). As a slim(ish) T2 diabetic this is the one I chose. I took no medication, had no hunger, did no extra exercise and had my blood glucose levels back down within a month.
Full remission takes longer mainly because the HbA1C test is testing glycated red blood cells which live around 3 months and so is like a 3 month average.

The best tool I found for managing my Blood Glucose levels was a blood glucose monitor. because that give immediate feedback if my body handles the carbohydrates well in a meal I've just eaten.
The most recommended BG meters in the 2 UK diabetes forums for decent accuracy and with cheaper test strips are:
SD Gluco Navii
Spirit TEE2+
I use the latter.

Here is the 'Nutriional Thingy' https://josekalsbeek.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-nutritional-thingy.html

Edited to add link to 'thingy'
 

Hi Martin, sorry to hear you and your wife are going through it a bit at the moment. hopefully we can help a bit, to get you guys going.

As @Antje77 says, I'm a small, slight person. I was diagnosed in 2013, but have maintained my blood sugars in the non-diabetic range since.

Post-diagnosis, in sorting out my ammended eating I lost a bit of weight, but that amounted to my love handles melting away. I was Ok with that, but I can understand if your wife is already on the light side, that wouldn't be a desirable outcome.

You mention your wife eats healthily. I wonder if you could describe how that pans out as a day's eating and drinking? The reason I ask is that I, and many others, discovered that healthy eating and healthy eating for those with blood sugar challenges are not necessarily the same.

Personally, I found it was the starchy stuff that wasn't helping me out, so I cut those back.

In return for cutting back the carbs, it is important to tweak up the natural fats we eat. That's what helps balance out the management of blood sugars and maintain the bathroom scales in a good place.

Let's not forget, Rome wasn't built in a day, and we're looking to modify things a bit, to maintain good quality of life over a long time, so better to move forward steadily than make sweeping changes and not be able to sustain them.
 
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That's great news!

If her hba1c was 47 while eating so many carbs, it may well be that only a small tweak in diet is enough to drop right back below the prediabetic zone.
I echo another member on reading https://josekalsbeek.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-nutritional-thingy.html, written by one of our members. It gives a pretty clear explanation on how diabetes works and what you can do about it.


Everything she eats seems to be high carb but low fat. It's the carbs raising blood glucose, but the fats don't, and fats nicely fill you up and provide those needed calories.

I'd definitely consider getting a glucose meter.
You'll read all kind of different advice, and here we are saying that the official advice she received is very likely not going to work, which can do your head in and make you doubt anything you read.
A meter is unbiased, it simply shows you how different foods affect you. This means you can test before and after a breakfast of cereal and skimmed milk today, and before and after a full English without the toast and beans the next.
 
@Martin_ what a good thing it is that my PC is oblivious to sound - when I read what your wife has been advised to eat I have to confess that the air was blue.
That dietician's ears must surely be burning. That advice encompasses exactly the worst possible food choices for an ordinary type 2 diabetic.
We cannot cope with starch and sugar,
We can eat meat, fish, cheese and eggs, full fat yoghurt, put cream in our coffee, add in low carb vegs, stirfry, mushrooms and salads. Sugar free jelly with a few berries is a standard sort of dessert.
We can make real custard with eggs and cream, icecream by freezing the real custard and whipping it up, and cakes and buns or biscuits using low carb ingredients there is a website - sugarfreelondoner with some good recipes though some of the ingredients might need to be obtained mail order.
As your wife is only just at the top end of prediabetes some small changes would be fine in most circumstances, but that diet is diabolical for anyone intolerant of carbs.
 
You've already been given the link to The Thingy, but just another vote for more fats, fewer carbs.... Her diet is the exact opposite of what she needs right now. I know it all sounds insane, but if she uses a meter she can see what her blood sugars respond to, and what keeps them lower... It'll make sense of a seemingly crazy diet, honest.
 
First of all I want to say thank you all for the welcome and taking the time to give informative and helpful replies to my first post on this forum.

I’ve been lurking here for a few days before signing up and have read many posts on diet and healthy eating for diabetics. I have come to a couple of conclusions:

Firstly, general healthy eating advice is for generally healthy people seeking to maintain general good health. Diabetes is an illness, that illness is not fixable using general healthy eating any more than it can fix a broken leg.

Secondly, chasing the number 47 wearing a blindfold will get me nowhere! I need data, numbers, readings, specific targets and stats. I need to be seeing test results, sugar levels, before and after meals, diagnostic data to help pinpoint the issues in diet.

I’m teaching my gran to suck eggs here I’m sure, but I’m thinking we need to keep a food diary and test for blood sugar levels regularly, that way we can see what it working and what isn’t. I know finger pricking isn't going to go down well with Mrs M and she's not feeling her best this morning, she was crying as she "ate her sawdust", she sprinkled bran on her cereal this morning as advised by the nurse!
 
You are learning fast! Well done. sorry your wife is so upset bless her maybe do her a nice plate of bacon & eggs tomorrow morning and she’ll be smiling happily.

Firstly, general healthy eating advice is for generally healthy people seeking to maintain general good health. Diabetes is an illness, that illness is not fixable using general healthy eating any more than it can fix a broken leg.

I vote this quote should be on every HCP wall - sums things up perfectly
 
Martin_ said:
Diabetes is an illness, that illness is not fixable using general healthy eating any more than it can fix a broken leg.
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Welcome Martin
I agree with this with respect to type 2 diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes is not fixable at all. But we can eat the same healthy diet as someone without diabetes.

When 30% of adults diagnosed with Type 1 were initially misdiagnosed with type 2, this is a very important consideration. Not just me being pedantic.
 
Nobody has unlimited willpower, so even if it worked, which it doesn't in our experience, eating something that tastes like 'sawdust' isn't sustainable!
Any long term way of eating needs to be enjoyable - otherwise it can't be maintained.

I don't know what advice/experiences you have read about Blood Glucose testing. Here is my attempt at tailoring what I experienced for you and your wife.

1. Fear of needles is common, it's usual to have a smaller reaction to a needle when you can't see it. All lancing devices that I've heard of have the actual needle hidden. They have an adjustable scale for how hard and deep to prick- on many a scale of 1 or 2 is adequate until the needle starts to get blunter with use. (I don't know of anybody who changes their personal lancet every week much less for every test). Suggestion : You change the lancet based on her reactions to being pricked so she never sees the needle. If she trusts you, then perhaps you should do the lancing for her since it can be awkward getting the lance, finger at the right angle and then the meter/test strip.

2. Site to finger-prick. Most people report more success and less pain when lancing the sides of the tips of the fingers (last joint). For most, using the Thumbs isn't so good. The chosen finger/hand needs to be clean, warm and dry.
Clean and dry so as not to contaminate the pin head sized drop of blood, and warm so that the blood flow to the prick site is good enough to obtain a big enough drop without squeezing.

3. Don't press hard when lancing, just a firm contact, otherwise there will either be bruising or insufficient blood. It's a fine balance at first.

3. BG meters need to be at an angle (some even at 90 degrees) to the finger because the test strip 'sucks' up blood from the drop (you can see it done). Practicing makes perfect. Suggestion: You practice a few times on yourself so your wife doesn't feel like a pin cushion.

4. Start by only testing one meal (partly as verification that what we say is true and what she was told by NHS was wrong). Breakfast is a good meal to start with since most people eat something similar for Breakfast every day. Test just before eating and the 2hrs after first bite. Aim for no more than a 2.0 mmol rise in BG from 1st test to 2nd one.
After she/you get confident about being able to predict the reaction to Breakfast, move on to testing another meal, and so on until you build up a repertoire of known meals that are good for her blood glucose levels!

5. Once things seem stable, then only periodic testing, or testing for new food is needed . I'm now testing less than once per month (2 tests i.e. still before a meal and 2hrs after).

Edited for typo.

Good luck
 
I've rarely seen all of it more adequately put...!

Goodbye sawdust, hello Bacon & Eggs, I say! It can only get better from here. And hey, if finger pricks are a problem, maybe a Continuous Glucose Monitor'd help... They're pricy, but when testing around every meal at the start of this new diet thing, it's about the same pricetag...

Tell her it is really going to get better. We've been there, so we really, really know. We also know about crying into your breakfast when just diagnosed. She's got a partner who cares and is willing to help, and I can't tell you how much that is worth when you've just had a pretty traumatic diagnosis.

Good luck, both of you. It'll be okay, it'll be okay, and in case I haven't said it enough yet, it'll be okay.
Jo
 
Honestly, Mr Martin - testing isn't all that important in your situation, as your wife is not deep into diabetic numbers.
I think that simply stopping the high carb foods will do the trick.
I used to have just two meals a day. I would have pork chops with mushrooms for breakfast, or scrambled eggs with cheese and a tomato sliced on top, if I had swede for dinner I would cook the whole thing in the pressure cooker, then mash the leftovers with cream and eggs, fry it and then add either cheese or bacon.
These days I tend to eat only once, or have just a small amount in the mornings with a mug of coffee, but I have weight to lose after being advised to eat high carb low fat for so long. I was always ravenously hungry.
Since settling into my low carb diet I have stopped chewing my nails, which must signal something good is going on.
 
If it would take too long to do bacon and eggs for breakfast other alternatives are full fat Greek yoghurt with walnuts, or look at a granola made by keto Hana. It’s low carb and very tasty, and nice with the Greek yoghurt. You can buy it on line or in Holland and Barrett. It’s expensive, but you don’t need much so a packet lasts quite a long time. It makes a nice crumble topping too!
 
My diet has been low carb for 5 years now - having extra fats was a huge reversal for me having been told repeatedly to count calories and reduce fats. But not only did a low carb diet with more fat (not 'HIGH FAT' as one of my GPs likes to call it) lead to T2 remission but my fatty liver resolved and the one high cholesterol measure improved.
All done using a meter and testing, testing, until I knew what I can eat.
 
Welcome @Martin_ to this forum.
You have been given a lot of advice of how Mrs M. could deal with her elevated HbA1c.
May I add this, don't panic. An HbA1c of 47 is still prediabetic, so I wouldn't do anything dramatic.

Your conclusions to measure what different food does to her blood sugar are good,
but please don't fret over a single measurement, see if you can find a trend or if some food spike your BG.
I would also say that low fat means no taste, usually has lots of added sugar and doesn't satiate.
Anything low-fat is banned from my diet.
If your weight is low and you will reduce carbs intake, it will be even more important to increase healthy fat and protein.
so bring on the full-fat yoghurt, cream, cheese, eggs, olives, humous, avocados, bacon, olive oil, ...
If I don't like a food, I would not eat it.
 
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