Why cant I lower blood sugar

Scott-C said:

My question is why does there seem to be a reluctance amongst T2s to just start using insulin?

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Scott-C said:

Yes, that's true, but the point I was trying to make was that the way it's sometimes put across leads some, including, it would seem, the OP, to the view that carbs are so inherently bad that they end up trying to zero their sugars, as if glucose in blood stream were cyanide or mercury. There is a difference between carbs consumed and sugar in stream in the sense that you could cut out carbs altogether and live a long and happy life, but if you tried to zero glucose in stream, you'd be dead. That's why there's a difference, and the OP seems to have confused the two concepts.

Can I ask a question? Why do more T2s not use insulin? I know very little about T2, but enough to understand why lchf is an attractive option. When I was dx'd I knew little about T1 apart from general (and, as proved to be the case, wrong) impressions that my eating options would be very restricted. That's not the case. I sometimes low carb, but other times high carb, and I can do that as and when I please because of insulin. Yet, in the T2 community, there seems to be a large emphasis on reversing the condition, adopting what seems to me to be very restrictive diets, and in the course of that demonising carbs, even though massive parts of the world's population (for example, Asia) exist quite happily without noticeable consequences on staples like rice and noodles: carbs can't be that bad. My question is why does there seem to be a reluctance amongst T2s to just start using insulin? I chat from time to time with a T2 in my local (we were both using a libre for a while and were comparing notes), and asked him about this. His answer was that he really didn't want to have hypos and was content to radically change his diet to avoid that. Is that the main or only reason, fear of hypos? Or is it also, as some here seem to think, that carbs are inherently evil?

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Scott-C said:

Yes, that's true, but the point I was trying to make was that the way it's sometimes put across leads some, including, it would seem, the OP, to the view that carbs are so inherently bad that they end up trying to zero their sugars, as if glucose in blood stream were cyanide or mercury. There is a difference between carbs consumed and sugar in stream in the sense that you could cut out carbs altogether and live a long and happy life, but if you tried to zero glucose in stream, you'd be dead. That's why there's a difference, and the OP seems to have confused the two concepts.

Can I ask a question? Why do more T2s not use insulin? I know very little about T2, but enough to understand why lchf is an attractive option. When I was dx'd I knew little about T1 apart from general (and, as proved to be the case, wrong) impressions that my eating options would be very restricted. That's not the case. I sometimes low carb, but other times high carb, and I can do that as and when I please because of insulin. Yet, in the T2 community, there seems to be a large emphasis on reversing the condition, adopting what seems to me to be very restrictive diets, and in the course of that demonising carbs, even though massive parts of the world's population (for example, Asia) exist quite happily without noticeable consequences on staples like rice and noodles: carbs can't be that bad. My question is why does there seem to be a reluctance amongst T2s to just start using insulin? I chat from time to time with a T2 in my local (we were both using a libre for a while and were comparing notes), and asked him about this. His answer was that he really didn't want to have hypos and was content to radically change his diet to avoid that. Is that the main or only reason, fear of hypos? Or is it also, as some here seem to think, that carbs are inherently evil?

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sheepie123 said:

Hi Folks,

Does it stand to reason that if I did not eat for long enough my blood sugar level would reach zero? For some reason I have been on around 100 cals per day and my fasting is around 5.6 and about 6.4 - 2 hours post meals. I have even gone as far as eating only two meals per day now and it never seems to push below 5.6. One day I decided to starve myself and again it still did not go much below 5.5 - 5.6. I thought that with a high blood sugar the pancreas makes insulin. Well surely 24 hours of fasting would be enough to put bloods to zero if the pancreas is still working.

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Scott-C said:

As a T1, I'm wary about venturing into a T2 question, but I'm an inquisitive little fecker so will do so anyway!

As other posters have correctly pointed out, you would be dead long before your blood sugar reached zero.

The easy question to ask is why would you want to have a zero blood sugar, but the fact you've even asked a question about zeroing suggests to me the answer is that you've seen a huge number of posts here more or less demonising carbs, their effect on readings, and concluded that it's logical to zero it.

I take my hat off to you guys/gals who do keto, lchf, fasting: each to their own and all that. Those options do seem to work very well for T2s. Indeed, as a T1, I occasionally end up as an accidental low carber: who could complain about some griilled lamb chops and asparagus? Still have my omelette on toast, though!

But the thing which concerns me a bit is that when a new poster signs up, whether they're T1, T2, or some of the other wonderful variations on those themes, the overwhelming response is often a screed of posts that, "ok, mate, just do lchf, and you'll be fine."

That might be perfectly correct for T2s, but two problems:

First, the OP seems to have interpreted that as meaning carbs are so bad, so evil, that he/she is starving to try to zero. Serious misunderstanding of basic body chemistry going on there which could result in death. Should the lchf crew qualify their advice to make it clear that there's a difference between what carbs you eat, and what glucose is in your stream? The demonising of carbs which any reader of this site has seen blurs the difference.

Second, as I've said above, I'm an occasional low carber, but I recall when I was first dx'd and told I'll need several injections each day for the rest of my life, that was a bit of a head-f*ck on it's own, and it would have put me over the edge if I was then told that, by the way, I can never eat any carbs again. Yet, I've seen a fair few posts here immediately recommending an lchf diet to newly dx'd T1s, from T2s! Lchf is a choice we can all make further down the line, but I'm not sure it's proper to suggest it to a newly dx'd T1 when they've got enough to get their head round already.

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Em1981 said:

What is lchf?

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Scott-C said:

Can I ask a question? Why do more T2s not use insulin?

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NatJS said:

Someone else has pointed out that type 2 diabetics are usually insulin resistant. When I was diagnosed, I did ask my GP why I shouldn't just go straight onto insulin. He said that at diagnosis a type 2 might typically have as much as 10x more insulin in their blood than someone without diabetes due to the pancreas working overtime to get the blood sugar back down. So we've usually already got plenty of insulin to work with! Adding more insulin apparently would work to control blood sugar (as some oral medications do cause the pancreas to secrete more insulin) but if you read about the long term health risks associated with chronic high insulin levels (cancer in particular) you'd probably choose not to go down that route if you didn't have to!

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"Virtually, no body system is unaffected by chronic hyperinsulinemia, IR and the accompanying hyperglycaemia. Therefore, the time has come for a new paradigm, recognising the primacy of insulin dysregulation as a unifying factor of chronic disease. As the various diseases associated with the MetSy may be relatively late indicators of IR that manifest only after the body’s compensatory mechanisms have begun to fail, then early identification may be one of the most powerful and profound tools for modern medicine in stemming the destructive tide of these illnesses."

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