So you’re saying the glucose meters are fine for people with actual diabetes who use the numbers to dose insulin and other drugs that are potentially life-threatening if you get the dose wrong, but not good enough for someone who is pretty healthy to just check their glucose every once in a while? :dubious:
I’m the first person to wish that the meters were more accurate, but dude, they do just fine. They’ll tell you what your numbers are enough for you track, even as small as a ten point difference.
It’s not really a needle. It’s more like the equivalent of a paper cut. Not bad at all, and I’m absolutely horrid about needles.
Count me in as another who thinks you’re freaking out a little unnecessarily.
Some people are just genetically predisposed to developing type 2 diabetes (fun counterintuitive fact, type 2 diabetes actually has a stronger genetic component than type 1). It seems like you are already v. healthy, there might not be much you can do except get your bg checked regularly and if get high, get on metformin or something.
Random questions:
What is your waist/hip ratio?
Do you take any medications regularly?
If both your parents are prediabetic (that is they are not yet diabetic), why do you think you’ll develop diabetes soon?
I’m underweight, and my fasting glucose is on the low side of normal, but I have problems with my blood sugars surging and crashing which makes me feel crappy in many ways when I don’t limit the carbs I eat. I was scared when I started that I would lose weight I can ill afford to. In fact, since I eat much more fat and protein now I’ve gotten more muscular and my breasts have grown, so I’ve gained.
Don’t eat too much of foods high in sugars which elevate your blood glucose. Potatoes, rice, corn, bread, pasta, cereal, cookies, chips, even beans are mostly carbohydrate. So are ‘whole grains’ of any sort - they are only marginally different in their effect on your blood glucose than ‘refined’ grains. You don’t need to eliminate them since you’re not diabetic, but they shouldn’t be the basis of your diet or meals.
Make sure you eat enough calories. Meat, eggs, most dairy products, all non-starchy veggies, nuts, and fruits won’t give you elevated blood sugars and have many more nutrients than the foods above as well. Don’t be scared of fats. You must eat fats, if you are not eating tons of sugars, to get enough food.
You might lose excess body fat if you have some, but most tend to find it easier to build and maintain muscle eating this way. marksdailyapple.com is a good reference if you’re interested in this type of eating.
Yes that’s what I’m saying. In practice, when is a 15 mg/dl error going to alter your decision to inject insulin? It’s not like at 335 you wouldn’t and 350 you would, right?
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I wasn’t really indicating “soon,” but blood glucose increases fairly steadily as you age and the lower you start out with, the better. My parents grew up in a different time, are not overweight, and they eat a lot less processed food than I have, and still have issues. I would rather not follow in their footsteps, that’s all.
Let’s not throw around pseudo scientific crap about nutrition. Carbs are not “garbage.” If you “cut out the carbs” you’d be eating nothing but protein and fats (plus any alcohol you consumed) for energy.
Something everyone should know by a young age (even though I don’t believe it is in most curricula) is there are three macronutrients: carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Pretty much anything that goes into your body that has a caloric content is going to fall into one of those three categories. (Alcohol is none of the above and also provides energy at a rate of 29.3 kJ/g.)
While long term survival is possible with extremely low levels of any of the three, completely eliminating intake of an entire macronutrient category is not a good idea. Proteins and fats are essential for life due to providing essential amino acids/essential fatty acids. There isn’t an equivalent bodily need that carbohydrates fulfill, however eating 0 carbs would mean not eating any plant matter at all, and some of the healthier sources of protein are found along with carbohydrates (nuts/legumes for example.)
Additionally I’m aware of no studies linking preservatives to diabetes or any blood glucose abnormalities. In fact there are not, to my knowledge, any conclusive links between preservatives and any ailments or diseases, only some studies that have suggested some relationship and that remain inconclusive.
Additionally foods with no preservatives probably have a higher chance of making you sick with serious, immediately life threatening diseases. I don’t have any numbers but most news articles I’ve read of people getting serious food borne illnesses and dying over recent years, here in the United States, have been related to fresh produce and other fresh products.
I will tell my story. In 2002, my blood sugar was pushing 6.5mmol/l (= 117 mg/dl, the measure used in the US) and my doctor said, lose weight. Which I did, from 281 to about 250. But, and this is the important but, I was also suffering, not numbness, but tingling in my feet. It has gotten somewhat worse and now involves the entire front half of both feet, but still no numbness. What this shows is that there can be damage even from pre-diabetic condition and, while it is not worth freaking over, i should also not ignored. In 2004, after I broke my ankle (and the hospital spent five days pumping glucose into me), it went up to 8.1 (about 128) and I was officially diabetic. Now my doctor said my insulin levels were high, it was not lack of insulin but something he called metabolic disease. He prescribed a drug called metformin (described as a glycophage–glucose eater–but its actual effect is to inhibit the release of glucose from the liver). It has an interesting side effect of causing weight loss. Unlike insulin which promotes weight gain (because insulin is needed to turn sugar into fat). So I lost about 15 pounds without dieting over a couple years. My glucose level dropped in the neighborhood of 6 (108) and my A1C (a measure of the degree to which blood hemoglobin reacts with glucose to make glycosolated hemoglobin) of just under 6%. My doctor considers it under control, but I notice that my balance is not what it used to be. I have continued to lose weight slowly and am now down to about 225. Oddly enough, given the neuropathy (that tingling in the feet), my pulse in the foot is strong.
So this is my experience. YMMV. As always, listen to your doctor.
Yes, a 15 point difference would absolutely alter my decision to inject insulin. I think you’re assuming blood glucose levels in diabetics are much larger than they truly are for a lot of people - if I saw 335, I’d be panicking and calling my doctor. I rarely see above 170 or so. And if I saw 105 when I was expecting 90, I’d absolutely dose insulin to correct it. The meters aren’t perfect, but they are good enough to rely on for that level of control.
You are right, I assumed that diabetics were higher and something that low wouldn’t necessitate insulin. But why the change of heart? You yourself once said, “The accuracy of blood glucose meters is the pits. I think they’re only required to be within 20% of the actual blood sugar as measured by a lab. Given the types of decisions that diabetics have to make based on those readings, that’s a miserable accuracy level.”
Gah, this entire thread just backs up my wish to never be diabetic (apart from my needle phobia, of course). Some days it seems I eat nothing BUT carbs, which are apparently evil (God knows why Asians with rice as a staple aren’t all keeling over en masse); at the very least, they’re my favorite foods. Having to eliminate them from my diet would kill me.
Well, my weight is well within normal; maybe even a little low… Let’s hope that’s enough. (Though I admit I’m way too sedentary…)
My grandfather is a type II diabetic. He is 85 years old and has been a type II diabetic for about half his life. Skinny guy.
My dad inherited it, and has been one for a few years.
Yeah, watch it. Its probably a good idea to cut out the Mountain Dew (or whatever bad habits you have) and get regular exercise. But that’s good advice for anyone who is no longer eighteen.
I figure I have the genetics for it. So I watch the “empty carbs” - make sure I have fiber - and exercise. Maybe it will by me some time before I’m told I have to watch it officially. But I don’t freak out about it. I figure if he’s still alive at 85, it isn’t something to waste time worrying about too much at 44.
I don’t mean to be a jerk, but it’s definitely not “enough”. If you really never want to be a diabetic, you probably should change your diet drastically. Thin people have diabetes too, like **Dangerosa **said, though most suffer and don’t live till their 80’s with it. If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone express amazement at a patient in a relative’s office while I filled in for a sick receptionist, stuff like “how could you have diabetes/high blood pressure/high cholesterol/clogged arteries, you’re so thin!” I’d have Bill Gates envying me.
Asian eat far more plant-based food and healthy proteins like fish than we do. Real Asians don’t eat bowl after bowl of rice. They eat it in a small bowl off to the side of their skinless, boneless chicken or lean fish and plateful of mixed vegetables, like you’ll see if you go to an authentic (not Americanized) Asian restaurant. Last night I was served 1 cup of rice, roughly 2/3rds a head of broccoli and a few cups of fried tofu.
Carbs are not ‘evil’. Evidence suggests that too many, especially from certain sources, have a deleterious effect on most people’s long-term health. IMO (based on lots of reading of course) eating carbs to excess is a major factor in whether or not any individual will develop diabetes; although genetics is a major factor as well. Asians don’t get fat nearly as easily as Americans do; but their diabetes rate is still skyrocketing (often termed an ‘epidemic’).
Additionally if you eat ‘nothing but carbs’ you’re not getting nearly as many nutrients as you could be by eating a balanced diet.
Maintaining a weight in the ‘Ideal’ (or even ‘Underweight’) BMI range does not mean you are healthy or not at risk for the chronic degenerative diseases that being overweight increases your risk of. I can think of three type-2 diabetics I know personally who have always been skinny or slim. It can be a fatal mistake (but it’s a very common one, especially among young people) to assume you’re ‘fine’ living a very unhealthy lifestyle just because you are not fat. Some studies suggest being sendentary is more of a health risk than being obese, FWIW.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I still wish the meters were more accurate. But they do tend to show trends well, and it seems that between readings of 70 and 200 or so, they are quite accurate most of the time. If you were to use one to track fasting blood sugars, I’d be willing to bet you’d be able to see your ten point gradual trend downward if you truly had changed your diet/exercise enough to do it.
As an example, I will usually check my blood glucose with my meter in the morning if I have a doctor’s appointment where they’re going to check my glucose. It’s always within a few points of the lab reading.
It’s when it gets high or low that it starts being really goofy. I’ve had situations where I’m above 200, I take 3 readings right in a row, one says 227, one says 192, one says 242. That’s where I’d like it to be more accurate, because I’m taking a shitload of insulin to correct it, and 30 points is a big enough difference that it scares me.
Thin, active people get Type 2 diabetes as well. Sometimes it’s just a crapshoot. They told me I was Type 2 when I was first diagnosed, even though I was riding my bike between 5 and 10 hours a week and ate about half the carbs the dietitian told me I should be eating. There are no guarantees. But it helps to stay healthy - not just thin. Truly healthy, exercising and eating well and all that.
And as far as carbs go - they are not evil. Just don’t fill up on white bread and candy. It’s common sense; eating a bowl of steel-cut oatmeal is the same amount of carbs as a donut. Which is better for you?
And really, as far as someone who’s living the life, it’s not all that bad. I mean, I wish I didn’t have it, but at least it’s manageable. I was diagnosed a little over 2 years ago, and my life really hasn’t changed all that much, and the part that’s changed is something I wanted to change anyway (eating a bit healthier, exercising more regularly). And I have a huge needle phobia as well. I dealt with that by convincing my brain that little tiny insulin needles (they are tiny - a few millimeters long, thin like a hair) are not REALLY needles.
Indeed. I dunno what I was thinking when I was writing that.
I know. I’ve been to plenty of genuine Asian restaurants. I guess I was just remembering this CS thread in which someone was asserting the inherent unhealthiness of the traditional Asian (or was it just Japanese?) diet.
I should’ve clarified… Sometimes it’s “nothing but carbs” because I’ve had days where I only ate a single plate of spaghetti all day, maybe some cheese and crackers when I got hungry later. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten pure carbs for THREE meals. That’d just be insane.
Gah, just missed the edit window. I was wanting to add that I don’t think I’ve ever eaten 100% carbs for even for just two meals. That’d just be even more insane. (Though I do love pasta and Japanese rice, thus my initial comment in this thread.)
(Oh, yeah, and my “carbs are evil” belief comes from reading Eat This, Not That where a LOT of effort is put into convincing you to cut every single gram of carbohydrates you can out of what you eat. They spend as much time on it as they do on trans fats.)
Nevertheless, I am still pretty lazy, which is an obvious big minus. Maybe it’s just leftover “I don’t want to go to a gym and get mocked for an hour,” I dunno. But probably just laziness. That should change, once I figure out how.
Something that surprised me was that, in terms of your blood sugar levels, it’s no worse to eat straight-up sugar than carbs like white bread or white rice. Like you, I’ve always enjoyed rice and pasta, thinking it was healthy (or if not overtly healthy, at least not harmful). I didn’t realize until now how bad they are.
And that was the reason I started this thread; it seems like you only really have a couple of choices:
Cut down on carbs to lower blood sugar while eating recommended levels of fat/protein but lose weight as a result;
Cut down on carbs to lower blood sugar but substitute more fat/protein and maintain weight, but destroy your triglyceride and cholesterol levels and increase strain on kidneys.
There doesn’t seem to be a consensus on what’s best. I’ve just started to cut out the obvious things like the cereal and all the whites, but I can’t imagine it would make that much impact because I already was trying to eat more whole grain stuff when I could.
There are two excellent books about type 2 diabetes that cover a lot of diet/nutrition info that you might find helpful. Both are by the same author. One is called The First Year - Type 2 Diabetes and is targeted at people who have been actually diagnosed. The other is called Stop Diabetes and is targeted at those who are pre-diabetic or just want to lower their risk. I’ve read both, and there’s quite a bit of overlap; for you, I’d probably recommend reading The First Year, just because it’s more informative and in-depth and you seem to want that level of detail. The author’s name is Gretchen Becker.
Keep your weight down, and watch your blood pressure. High blood pressure will destroy your eyesight and kidneys, too.
My mother died of diabetes complications and my father-in-law is rendered totally blind from the ravages of diabetes and hypertension. He is going to need dialysis soon, as was my mother in need of dialysis. Of course, they were both “old” but that’s not how you want to spend your “golden years”.
I am prone to high blood pressure and I take my pressure and make sure that it is kept somewhere in the normal range.
