first off, hi to everyone this is my first post on the site,so not sure if I've posted this in the topic section, but here goes. up to 18 months to 2 years ago i was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes after being borderline for a few years. I was put on one metformin (550mg) and up to a month it was upped to 2 a day.my recent blood test this week has shown there must still be an issue as I'm to make a doctors appointment to discuss the recent blood test.im a bit concerned that in less than a month of the increase of the metformin, I'm being asked in again. Anyway my point i wanted clarity/advice on was the eating aspect as im struggling to create meals without carbs which we know spikes blood/sugar levels. I don't have the best/healthiest palette but most of my evening meals are with a carb of some kind, I.E : new potatoes, mash potatoes, rice, chips, roast potatoes etc. im assuming im still not doing enough with the food side (hence why the doctor wants too see) but my question is should i be ditching the carbs with meals and just having a protein and veg? or just having carbs a couple of times a week. Also where do you stand with diabetes and alcohol, as I've read conflicting reports saying you're allowed a couple of drinks a day, to no alcohol for a least 5 days a week? Any way that's it for now, sorry if its come a bit long winded but this is my first forum post in a long time anywhere
Hello and welcome. As others have said, it's perfectly possible to lower high blood glucose levels without medication by changing diet. Some people find that medication helps, and if it does, why not? And a word of caution about what you read on the internet - a lot of "information" on some sites (Reddit is a good example) is people looking for validation of their food choices. So you'll see all sorts of hopeful or wish fulfilment stuff about sourdough, the order you eat food in, supplements, etc. Personally, I've never found any of the claimed shortcuts or hacks at all convincing, but that's me.
The key thing for all of these ideas is (if you want to try them) discovering the impact it has on your BG. And you won't know what that is unless you test your BG before you eat and then again two hours later. You are NOT testing to see "how high you go". The peak BG would probably be around the +45 minute mark, not at +2 hours, anyway. What you're actually looking for is an indication of how well your system handled the carb in what you ate. So after two hours you should be back at or close to your starting point (within 2mmol/l is close enough). Fingerprick testing is far from accurate and you can get different results from the same drop of blood, so a one-off result may not be that helpful and can be misleading. What you're doing is building up a picture of how your system (rather than anyone else's) is working.
From what you've said, your regular diet does seem to be quite carb-heavy, and as you've found (
83mmol/mol an increase in 2 months of 14) what you've done so far hasn't affected your blood glucose in a positive way. That would seem to indicate that your system is not coping with the level of carb/sugars you're taking in. You might find that there are other things you need to include in your calculations - milk, for example, contains a fair amount of sugar in the form of lactose. Fruit is usually high in fructose. Lactose and fructose are both sugars and break down to glucose. And as you've noticed we usually have quite a bit of carb in traditional meals - and of course the official dietary advice is to base all meals around carbs.
That didn't work for me, so when I was eventually diagnosed I cut practically everything and reduced carbs to around 20g/day, most of which came from green veg. It was difficult at first but that was preferable to the nasty symptoms I'd had for ten years. Most of my meals consisted of meat/fish/eggs/cheese, or some combination of those. If you need ideas, here are some decent cookbooks around - Katie Caldesi's "The Diabetes Weight-loss Plan" is really about managing T2 (very little directly to do with weight loss) and has some excellent stuff. I've seen other cook books that claim to be aimed at T2s that I would tell people to avoid, being full of high carb and low fat meals. You might also want to find Dr David Cavan's books - this is a link to his website:
Dr David Cavan
www.thediabetesdoctor.co.uk
The DietDoctor website has lots of basic info, and I have used it for years now:
Are you new to eating low carb? Feeling confused or don’t know where to start? Or perhaps you are a low-carb veteran looking to deepen your knowledge?
As far as alcohol goes - and I'm assuming this is entirely about the carb content - spirits are carb free. Mixers may not be. Beer has quite a bit of carb, wine less so. My very rough rule of thumb (works for me, but may not for others) is that a bottle of wine has a similar impact on my BG as one pint of beer. Alcohol also interferes with the ability of your liver to make glucose, so after a meal with alcohol you may get BG readings that are much lower than you'd expect. But the carbs you ate still went in, so don't let a alcohol-adjusted reading fool you.
I guess the good news is that my very low carb/keto approach got me back to normal levels in four months. By normal I mean the levels non-diabetic people would expect to see. I will have stayed at normal levels for seven years come next Spring.
best of luck. This forum is probably the best general resource on the internet and there are thousands of years of experience assembled here. Questions are encouraged, and people here will give you the time and attention you're very unlikely to get from your health services.
Edited to remove a cut and paste error