My tests are in.
I got type 2.
Dammit.
Provider meeting next month.
Welcome to the wonderful world of Metformin. To add to the fun, it has a bit of a fishy odor to it. On the plus side, it’s very effective in controlling your blood sugar. My numbers have been pretty rock steady for at least 20 years now. I don’t even bother checking it at home. I hope you are a walker, as that is one exercise that is really helpful for keeping your glucose level down
Agreed. I’ve been in the club almost 15 years now and frankly it’s about the best health thing that ever happened to me.
Thanks to that I now eat healthy and lost a bunch of weight and even exercised regularly although I’ve mostly fallen off that last wagon. All those are things I’d never been able to achieve using my own willpower.
It can kill you or it can motivate you to self-preservation. Choose motivation; you’ll be glad you did.
The single most important tool in the counter-diabetes arsenal is a spoon. Use it wisely.
The single most important tool in the counter-diabetes arsenal is a spoon. Use it wisely.
???
You are not alone. If you happen to live in the US you are one of the many millions of people who have it.
I’ve read that some people with T2D have been able to reverse it by adopting a low-carb diet combined with intermittent fasting, and without taking any medication. It doesn’t work for everybody, but If you’re interested in learning more, read “The Diabetes Code: Prevent and Reverse Type 2 Diabetes Naturally” by Dr. Jason Fung, or watch some of his videos free on YouTube. Of course, always listen to your doctor’s advice.
I don’t have diabetes or prediabetes, but I follow Jason’s recommendations in hopes of never getting it, and I have lowered by A1C level.
If metformin gives you the shits (which it might not), psyllium fiber may be helpful. The generic is massively cheaper than Metamucil, and you may not need anywhere as much as it says on the bottle.
My guess: portion control and choosing wisely what goes in your mouth.
Good luck on your journey!
Nineteen years as a T2 here. Welcome to the club where no one wants to be a member.
I was scared as hell when I first got the diagnosis, but I discovered that, while it’s a serious disease that you have to take seriously, it doesn’t have to be a death sentence. Learning how to manage your diet is important, and if you’re able to do any sort of exercise (even walking), it can also really help with controlling your blood sugar.
The meds are continually getting better, but “good old metformin” is a staple for most of us. Expect that it’ll give you some level of stomach upset, at least at first; for me, after the first month or so, that side effect faded.
I was given my T2 diagnosis on my 50th birthday.
I felt like I’d been clubbed in the back of the head.
What happens now is entirely up to you. I gained a tremendous amount of insight from “Diabetes: The First Year. An Essential Guide for the Newly Diagnosed,” by Gretchen Becker.
I immdiately went on the ADA diet. I did lose some weight, but that diet was a struggle. I began to research nearly every-damn-thing, and decided to give Veganism a try.
I was Vegan, and then eventually Vegetarian for eight years.
I got the Lap Band in 2004.
Every single thing I did all boiled down to me losing a hundred pounds. I’m still Diabetic. I still take Metformin. I don’t home test any more (laziness), but my Hb A1c levels are great, under 7.
The important thing to understand is that even if you lose a tremendous amount of weight and exercise like an Olympian in training, you are still Diabetic. You always will be. Your metabolism is whack, and that affects everything. You will be slower to heal, so you must be vigilant with every injury and infection.
Best of luck with everything.
~VOW
(Edited to add: I turn 72 next week)
A good point to add here: take care of your body, especially your feet. Precautions like not going barefoot, and being vigilant about examining your feet (and the rest of your skin) and promptly treating any cuts or dry skin, can go a long way to preventing a common complication for diabetics.
This. The severity of the path of the disease is pretty directly connected to what you eat & what you weigh.
And, as noted by others, how much you keep moving. The good news is all of those things are free.
And unless you’ve already all but fried your pancreas to a cinder, the meds are all cheap generics.
Punchline being you now have a wimpy limping pancreas. If you make it run laps every time you eat, it will finish dying soon and you’ll be shooting insulin the rest of your life; be that long or short. If you give it a life of leisure it’ll give you fully adequate service until something unrelated eventually kills you.
Foot care, exactly! Thank you for that critical point!
I found out through experience that nail fungus is all too common with Diabetics. Oral antifungals are hard on the liver, so if you are taking Metformin, forget any pills for the fungus.
OTC nail fungus treatments are essentially useless. My doctor told me to save my money. I tried to go the podiatrist route, but it is an endless routine of regular visits so somebody can grind down your toenails with a Dremel. I wanted the nails just removed to end all the hassles, but I was ignored.
After a year of that, I bought my own Dremel.
I still have all sensation in my feet. If they ever go numb (called Diabetic Neuropathy), I’ll probably get on the podiatry merry-go-round again.
~VOW
Type 2 Diabetes isn’t just a wimpy pancreas. In fact, when you are first diagnosed, your pancreas may be heroically pumping out tons of Insulin.
Type 2 Diabetes is a metabolic disease. Your body doesn’t know how to match up the insulin with the carbohydrates correctly. Your liver is a big player in all this business.
For many T2 patients, eventually the pancreas can crap out. Once there is no insulin being produced, all of the various oral anti-diabetes drugs will no longer work, and the patient will need insulin to survive. This is not inevitable.
~VOW
I am no expert, but I was on the path to type 2 diabetes and didn’t seem to be able to do anything to change that trend. I went on Mounjaro/Zepbound and it’s been life-altering. Not only did I lose just a shitload of weight, but for the first time in my adult life I have rock-solid control of my diet. It’s almost completely eliminated my desire to eat unhealthy foods and especially to eat anything in large quantities.
The caveat is, of course, if you have coverage. It’s expensive if not.
Zactly. Essentially you burn it out through overwork due to the imbalance you mentioned. As the pancreas gets more raggedy it works harder and harder to produce less & less. That’s a doom spiral unless interrupted while you still have some function left.
That’s where the spoon, the weight loss, & the exercise come in. And yes, the metformin, etc. To break the pancreatic overwork doom spiral by reducing the metabolic imbalance and the concomitant insulin over-demand.
As you say, once the pancreas is fully destroyed you’re shooting insulin. So don’t do that; interrupt the deterioration as much as possible as soon as possible.
I had it officially for about 4 months, then I moved back down to the pre-diabetic I had been for 20 years. They didn’t give me meds right away, it had only just gone over the line. I had been overeating for no particular reason, so I cut that right out, and cut way back on carbs, and lost about 70 pounds in that first year. The diabetes by itself might not have been such a trigger, but I also had a heart event (atrial flutter) around the same time. The combination made for a good kick in the butt.
Although everything seems fine now, I still have two new permanent doctors each of which I see twice a year, a cardiologist and an endocrinologist. Yay, Medicare.
My husband was diagnosed with Type 2 about the same time I was, but his A1c was much higher than mine, so he went on Metformin and since then it has been steady at around 7.0. He’s the cook in our house, and fortunately for me he has also been cooking more healthy food (most of the time).
I just slipped into pre-diabetic territory, and I’m wondering if i ought to go on metformin. I bought a continuous glucose monitor to see what it would say. (They were recently made OTC.) It doesn’t really say anything different from the A1c and fasting glucose tests, but it’s very motivating to see the spike in blood sugar after eating a few pretzel sticks. So I’ve mostly been eating one cookie, instead of three, since watching its output.
I’m not going to keep using it after it runs out, as that doesn’t seem warranted. But it has been eye-opening.
Anyway, i need to talk to my doctor about a bunch of follow-up stuff from my last physical, including my blood sugar and metformin. I took it for ten days when i had covid and had no side effects, so i expect I’d tolerate it okay. (Covid gave me diarrhea, which cleared up the day i started the metformin.)
Psyllium fiber gave me catastrophic diarrhea.
You might be sensitive to it. Anyone can be allergic or sensitive to pretty much anything.
I find it an easy source of extra dietary fiber
I was trying for the dietary fiber but lost that lottery.