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Type 2 readings - what is ok and what isn't?

fumanchu

fumanchu

Well-Known Member
Husband diagnosed 2008 and still diet-controlled. Had a bypass a couple of years ago. He wants to keep his BG lower because the practice nurse told him high BG readings will affect his heart. They are pushing him to start Metformin but he doesn't want to. His current readings now are around 7.0 - 7.5. He is asking if this is ok or too high? And what figure is too high?
 
fumanchu said:
Husband diagnosed 2008 and still diet-controlled. Had a bypass a couple of years ago. He wants to keep his BG lower because the practice nurse told him high BG readings will affect his heart. They are pushing him to start Metformin but he doesn't want to. His current readings now are around 7.0 - 7.5. He is asking if this is ok or too high? And what figure is too high?
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Hi. the problem is that the fingerprick readings (which I think is what you're talking about) are one-off snapshots. Blood glucose at any given time can be affected by many things, food being the most obvious. So it depends when the readings are taken, and what else is going on and has gone on in the last few hours. Our blood glucose will vary a lot across the day in response to what we do and what we eat and drink.

In your husband's situation the HbA1c test score is likely to be more informative, because that covers the all of the last three months. The Hba1c counts the number of red blood cells that have had a glucose molecule attached to them - it doesn't measure the same thing as the fingerprick, which measures glucose in the blood at the time of testing, so there's not a direct read-across. Do you know what his last HbA1c was, and what it's doing long-term?

Metformin doesn't itself lower blood glucose, but it does stop the liver adding additional glucose from stores. I've no experience of metformin myself, but there are a number of gastric/digestive side effects that are often reported.

The link below takes you to a paper on metformin and diseases of aging: you'll see that there are indications that it may help with cardiovascular conditions. You may want to scroll past the chemistry bits to section 3 where they cover clinical applications.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ar...nce from a number,in diabetic patients 49, 50.
 
fumanchu said:
All of his readings are in the 7s now. We test 4 times a day after meals. Used to be around 9 -11 so it has improved a lot.
Diet is Bernstein.
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I eat a low carb diet, have done since diagnosis, and once I saw readings below 8 after meals I kept to those type of meals, no more than 50 gm of carbs a day, and my levels continued to go down - I assume my metabolism improved.
My HbA1c went down to the top of normal and to get it to go lower I thought I'd reduce the carbs, which I did, going down to no more than 40gm a day. My HbA1c remained exactly the same.
I was really ill taking Metformin and Atorvastatin - so ill I became suicidal after only a few weeks, I'd recommend requesting permission to stop taking medication if things don't go well. I soldiered on for 5 weeks and it took over a year to recover.
 
@fumanchu To recap, your husband is a Type 2 and diet controlled ( Bernstein diet - which is usually for Type 1's). And getting BG test readings of 7.0 to 7.5 at (2hrs?) after meal.
Those figures (if taken at 2hrs?) after meals are great - predicting a low HbA1C.
I don't see any reason for him to need metformin, unless he wants it! - I wouldn't (I had a triple bypass 6 and a half years ago).
 
That's great to hear Ian, many thanks and I've passed this on to him. We find Bernstein generally agrees with us, as long as I dont go overboard on the fats.
 
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