Weird query

PS - @LucySW -- also relating to it specifically being the rapid acting that helps me feel better.... for the first 6 months I specifically tried not to take any rapid acting with lunch -- I intentionally only injected rapid and my basal in the morning, then 10/15g carbs for lunch and went for a 4 mile walk straight afterwards to avoid taking insulin -- then injected rapid acting again for dinner and basal at bed (well, sometimes basal at bed -- but that's another story...) -- anyway -- what took me ages to figure out was that I kept feeling good in the morning, then increasingly bloody awful as the afternoon dragged on (super low energy was constantly kicking in) -- but then was picking up, energy wise after I'd taken my dinner time insulin....

So the last three or so months I've been injecting just 1 or 1.5u at lunch (and having more like 25g carbs) -- and I'm not getting the feeling like I want to crawl on my hands and knees feeling in the afternoon anymore! My daytime routine / activity is the same (still doing the post lunch walks) -- but I'm just having some more carbs and some rapid acting insulin in the day.... again I can't specifically say whether its that my body just needs a few more carbs, or whether its was having a mini meltdown every afternoon because there was just *no* insulin in my system whatsoever to do any of the jobs that @tim2000s mentioned.... but I do know that adding the extra carbs and insulin in over lunch has been a positive; god knows why I clung onto trying not to have them for so long.... ! Hindsight n' all that...

Brunneria said:

Fascinating.

I'm now wondering if your feeling caused by inadequate insulin is a direct equivalent to my old feeling of 'wanting to crawl around on my hands and knees' due to insulin resistance.

Clearly both are lack of energy, caused by insulin insufficiency, when glucose just isn't getting where it is needed. Feels dreadful, doesn't it?

Your answer is to up the insulin, mine is to go ketogenic and opt out of glucose as a fuel.
and both work.



Edited to add:

And part of the difference (as Tim says) must be that as a T2 I still have the insulin around to do the other jobs, while you wouldn't if you didn't inject...

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Interesting..... And yes! --- it definitely felt dreadful!

.... the only thing I would say is that I was also most definitely ketogenic for at least 18 months prior to starting insulin -- and wouldn't be surprised if I still was on the first 6 months of insulin.... I certainly was initially as I still used the pee sticks periodically to check what a difference the few extra crabs were making, but then I stopped checking -- and I know I wouldn't be now....

And during those 18 months of being ketogenic, I also definitely just got less and less energy.... then although adding insulin made me feel better in the morning and evening, I still felt very dreadful in the afternoons whilst I was avoiding insulin at lunch and keeping low carb too.... so for me its *definitely* either adding in just a bit more in the way of carbs throughout the day, or it's the extra insulin at lunchtime -- or a combination of both.... for me, opting out of having glucose for fuel worked numbers wise (up to a point) -- but didn't work energy wise *at all*.

I still can't figure out if being ketogenic just doesn't work for some people, or it was just cos I had almost no insulin in my system any more, so I was going to feel dreadful no matter what....

... But the *good* part of this is that it seems to indicate your body either likes being ketogenic more than mine did, and/or your pancreas is still doing it's pancreasy thang, both of which are positive / good!

I think this shows how we are all different.
I am stronger, fitter, have more energy than probably since leaving school 40 years ago.
I am not on insulin, T1 in the honey moon period (LADA). Diabetic consultant 18 months ago said I would be on insulin within weeks.
I put this down to the LCHF diet and exercise which I drifted into, simply because I started to eat to my BG meter over a year ago.

Agree, Ian. I just wish there was some quantifiable mechanism we could look to to understand it, and for reassurance too.

I wish I could know if my losing so much of my hair is ketosis/low carb or just my mum's genetic legacy.

Just saying - it would be nice. But Of course the metabolism isn't something you can just read out. Thats the mistake of establishment diabetes policy, assuming it's all simple and binary.

LucySW said:

Agree, Ian. I just wish there was some quantifiable mechanism we could look to to understand it, and for reassurance too.

I wish I could know if my losing so much of my hair is ketosis/low carb or just my mum's genetic legacy.

Just saying - it would be nice. But Of course the metabolism isn't something you can just read out. Thats the mistake of establishment diabetes policy, assuming it's all simple and binary.

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The closest I have got to the answers is Dr Bernstein... And his normalised BG levels.

@LucySW, when I lost a lot of hair a year or two ago, it was so bad, I had to cut my long hair to shoulder length. Fast forward to May 2015. I requested a TSH, and got a TSH, T3, and T4 - (the T3 or T4 was a Free but don't remember which one) - and discovered that I have the classic profile of someone with Subclinical Hyperthyroidism, and... I've had this condition for up to 12 years. None of my doctors told me. I'm so grateful to finally have an explanation for my symptoms.

Learn what to have tested, what results to look for, and the treatment protocol here... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693616/ (I have no plans at this time to kill my thyroid and begin thyroid hormone therapy. Going to explore other options first).

Hope you're able to figure out what's going on with the hair loss. Not fun.

So many different things can affect hair loss, finding the cause can be difficult - iron deficiency, zinc deficiency, hypothyroid, etc, etc.

I agree with @tim2000s about the amino acids, it is very significant, i read this article and it made me wonder about my own imbalance as i've suffered with pretty bad hairloss and they are marked as essential building blocks. http://www.aminoacid-studies.com/amino-acids/what-are-amino-acids.html. Supplementing could be the way to correct it, I just started taking a pure whey isolate and this has a lot of extra amino acids, as i'm excising a lot now i'm thinking of incorporating creatine for more energy.