Wanting to try intermittent fasting & to reduce meds

lovinglife said:

Hi @Kukkar & welcome to the forum

We don’t have any clinicians on the forum & even if there was it’s against forum rules for members to give medical advice or advise on changing medication, what we can do however is share our experiences

I don’t and never have fasted, it’s just not for me. I eat 3 meals a day, no snacks with 5-6 hours between each meal.

But I did used to be on maximum dose Gliclizide, with the support of my GP I slowly reduced my carbs along side reducing my meds until I came of the gliclizide altogether in 2019. I am on Metformin but I was on that long before being diagnosed with T2 for something else.

Gliclizide is a hypo inducing drug so you have to be careful when reducing your carbs or fasting that your BG doesn’t go too low so testing is essential. Do you test your BG regularly?

When I was reducing my meds I was on 100g carb a day with maximum Gliclizide- about 30g a meal. I started dropping my carbs by 5g a meal and as I started to get more lows then the GP would reduce my medication until I went full Keto at 20g carb a day and no meds. Took me about 6 months I think

I don’t have experience of the other drugs you are on so can’t help there. Probably the best thing to do is to speak to your GP or HCP and see if you can put a plan in place where you can reduce your meds safely whilst fasting or reducing carbs

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Lupf said:

hi @Kukkar welcome to the forum.
Intermittent fasting works (IF) for many people, including myself. I do 5+2, i.e. eat very few carbs and less than 800 calories on fast days: a small breakfast, e.g. an egg or a Greek yoghurt with half an apple, lunch is a bottle of tap water, and soup, vegetables and salad for dinner. When I started doing IF, I was surprised that I don't feel hungry. But there are many other forms of intermittent fasting. It depends also if you want to bring down your HbA1c or also lose weight.
As you have a list of meds, you should consult your GP, in particular Gliclazide lowers blood sugar and could cause hypos. In fact I started IF when my GP prescribed Gliclazide. I decided there must be a better option.

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Lupf said:

hi @Kukkar welcome to the forum.
Intermittent fasting works (IF) for many people, including myself. I do 5+2, i.e. eat very few carbs and less than 800 calories on fast days: a small breakfast, e.g. an egg or a Greek yoghurt with half an apple, lunch is a bottle of tap water, and soup, vegetables and salad for dinner. When I started doing IF, I was surprised that I don't feel hungry. But there are many other forms of intermittent fasting. It depends also if you want to bring down your HbA1c or also lose weight.
As you have a list of meds, you should consult your GP, in particular Gliclazide lowers blood sugar and could cause hypos. In fact I started IF when my GP prescribed Gliclazide. I decided there must be a better option.

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ianf0ster said:

Hi @Kukkar and welcome to the forum.
I'm a slim T2 Diabetic diagnosed just over 6 yrs ago and have been in remission for just over 5yrs. I practice Intermittent Fasting, but that is merely an add-on to the thing which put me on the path to remission.


In my search for a 'cure' I found 2 main ways to regain normal blood glucose: 1. lose a lot of weight or 2. cut out a lot of carbohydrates from food.
Being slim and not wanting to starve myself I chose the cutting carbohydrates route.

I used a finger-prick type of blood glucose meter to gauge if I was cutting out enough carbohydrates (test jet before each meal and then 2hrs later, if the 2nd reading is no higher than 2 mmol more than the 1st then that meal was probably OK). Even though I ate a lot of proteins and fats, I still lost some weight but found I could keep it within a reasonable range by eating more cheese and nuts or less cheese and nuts.
The Intermittent Fasting just happened all by itself because I became 'fat adapted' due to eating so few carbohydrates, which meant I stopped getting hungry. I was no longer hungry at breakfast time , so I just stopped eating it. I was not hungry at lunchtime either, so I delayed that by an hour or two on weekdays but on weekends when I have much more flexibility as to when I eat, I just have one meal per day (OMAD) and that is late afternoon - usually around 15:30 to 16:30.

As others have said, because you are taking Gliclazide, you must not reduce your consumption of carbohydrates without keeping your GP or HCP informed, otherwise you may suffer hypos where your blood glucose drops dangerously low.

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