So tell me about your Type II diabetes.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I had a few health issues that are completely unrelated to diabetes over the past week. They are resolved, but one of the by-products is that I found out I am either pre-diabetic or actually diabetic.

I have an appointment with my regular Doc this week, who is going to refer me to an endocrinologist and a nutritionist. So I am not asking for your medical opinion.

How did you find out you had it? How did you feel before you were actually diagnosed? How much better did you feel after making the lifestyle adjustments and/or getting on meds? What changes did you make?

I will go first…

I have been feeling run down and utterly without energy. I have been at meetings at work and been unable to focus on the other person. I am not sure how I got through those meetings…probably not looking too sharp.

I had a pretty bad flu-like bug this week and ended up in the ER last night. They did a panel of bloodwork and everything was clean except my glucose was almost 300, and I had not eaten in 8 hours, and that was not very much.

The doc said , “No wonder you feel like hell”. He seemed to think this was an ebb on my daily bloodsugar roller coaster and speculated that it gets much higher at times. He put me on Glucotrol until my appointment with my regular doc. He said it is very possible I can control it with excercise and diet if I take it seriously.

So…how about you?

2

This is a great thread, and I can’t wait to read the responses. I do diabetes training at my job, and our 9 year old daughter is type 1. My husband has been running high BG recently, and he is thirsty all the time and has to go to the bathroom a lot. He’s also forgetful. His endo appointment is next Monday, and I’m sure he’ll be told he has diabetes then.

3

I got gestational diabetes wayyyyy back in 1980 … and it decided it liked me well enough to stay.

It is controllable by diet and a combination of metformin and byetta, and i get mycardis to preserve my kidneys.

Really? It isnt a big deal … I keep track of what I eat, and my meds, and I get regular check ups, and my general practitioner, endocrinologist, eyedoctor and podiatrist are all in contact as appropriate. I want to make sure I keep all my body parts.
People who whinge about having to watch what they eat, do meds, go to the doctor and test their blood need to be whacked in the head with a cod and told that if they dont care about their health, they should care about it for the benefit of their loved ones …

4

Agreed. My grandfather had diabetes for 30 years and lived in willful denial. He took his insulin, but was terrible about his diet. He ate like a person who had no issues - only worse. Cookies, candy, the occassional beer, cake, yadda yadda.

He ended up blind with terrible foot pain and kidney disease. Lived to 83, but he was miserable for much of the last 10 years.

5

For a number of years my blood sugar was around 6 m-moles/liter (multiply all these numbers by 18 to convert to mg/deciliter, the measure used in US). This is kind of pre-diabetic. I lost a lot of weight and it went to 5.something. But I had one other symptom, tingling feet. Then four years ago I was in a hospital for 6 days for a broken ankle. For six days I had a constant glucose drip. I complained but they said I needed extra calories for healing. (I need extra calories like a hole in the head and I was eating whatever they fed me–I always eat whatever is around.) A month later my blood glucose level was suddenly 8.1. Did the glucose feed trigger it? I don’t know anything about how these things work, but it was a sudden rise and I have wondered.

At any rate, I have been taking metformin since and lost more. The blood sugar seems to be constantly 5.8. The A1G seems to always be around 5.5%. The tingling in my feet got gradually worse, but seems to have stabilized. I avoid sweets and try to stick to whole wheat bread and other whole grains.

On the other hand, except for the foot tingling, I didn’t have any other symptoms. Not tired, had reasonable energy for my age (nearly 72) and mostly seem reasonably healthy. So far, there has been no talk of insulin. My doctor has not recommended daily testing of blood sugar.

6

In the 300s? Fasting? I’m no doctor, but that doesn’t sound pre-diabetes to me. If I’m remembering right, anything above 140 is diabetes.

I found out I was diabetic right before Thanksgiving. I freaked out for a few weeks, but have settled into it now. I didn’t have any symptoms, nor did I feel bad, so I can’t comment on feeling better or not.

My advice to you is to make sure you get a good diagnosis. There’s a lot of nuances in Diabetes, and it’s not uncommon for people to go along for years thinking they’ve got one type and in reality they have another.

Lifestyle changes… for me, it hasn’t been huge, because I ate relatively well and exercised before being diagnosed. Eating wise, the worst part was over Christmas, not eating my favorite cookies and such. However, I’m pretty sure that level of deprivation is temporary. I’m still in the phase where we’re trying out oral meds & insulin and trying to find the right fit. Once I get everything in control, the occasional cookie will be OK. Or at least, I think it will be. I will probably never binge on sweets, but then again, I didn’t do that before.

Check out my other thread here. Lots of good diabetes info.

7

About 7 or 8 years ago, I decided to start trying to lose weight by “not eating so damned much”. And, pleasant surprise, it worked! I dropped 2 pants sizes over the course of a couple of years.

But, then, I started to noticed other things…

I was thirsty all the time. This was my first real warning sign, and I was immediately reminded of an episode of “MAS*H”, in which a chopper pilot was hiding his diabetes, because he didn’t want to be grounded (and constant thirst was one of his symptoms). It undoubtedly didn’t help that I was frequently trying to satisfy that thirst with regular soda…on a typical day, I’d guess I was drinking the equivalent of 6 to 8 cans of Pepsi a day. (In retrospect: yikes!)

In early 2005, I was feeling good, I was looking good (no longer overweight), and was totally in denial over this thirst thing. Then, my feet started to hurt. I’ve had arthritis for all of my adult life, so, at first, that’s what I thought it was, but taking pain relievers didn’t really do anything for the pain.

By the summer of 2005, I was starting to get concerned. The pain in my feet was nearly constant, and I now noticed that my breath had a funny odor. Also, my blood pressure (when I’d take it at the self-service kiosk at the drug store) was elevated. I was also spending way too much time on WebMD, trying to self-diagnose. :stuck_out_tongue:

Finally, I went to a doctor, for the first time in 6 years. First thing he does is weigh me. I hadn’t weighed myself in a long while, but I was stunned to learn that I was about 20 pounds lighter than I thought I was! Then, he took my BP, which was something like 160/100. He asked me, “do you have any pain or tightness in your chest?” “Yeah, a little bit.” He sent me to the emergency room, with suspicions of a heart attack.

Well, once I calmed down in the E/R, my BP dropped to 120/80, and the bloodwork and chest X-ray came back negative. They held me overnight for observation, and were about to release me, when the GP stuck his head in my hospital room. “By the way, your blood sugar was like 200. You need to come back for an A1C test.”

I took an A1C a few weeks later, and it came back at 8.8. I had Type II diabetes.

The weight loss was undoubtedly contributed to by the uncontrolled diabetes…and, it made me very lucky, as I didn’t have to lose any additional weight (I have a number of diabetic friends, and most of them are significantly overweight, which doesn’t help at all).

The GP put me on metformin, and didn’t do a whole lot else (it became clear to me that he really didn’t know an awful lot about diabetes). I sought out, and found, a great endocrinologist; I highly, highly recommend that you do the same, if it’s at all an option for you. He put me on Actos as well as metformin; my A1C numbers are now around 5.5 (in my doctor’s words, “the blood of a normal person”).

Lifestyle changes: one of my other issues before the diagnosis was that I was very sedentary. I make a point of exercising most every day now…not a heavy workout, but I try to walk a couple of miles a day, do some light weightlifting, crunches and push-ups, etc. I think that’s made a big difference. I went cold-turkey on regular soda and the like (candy, cookies, etc.), and have tried to cut back on other starchy things (switched to whole-wheat bread, don’t have as many french fries as I used to, etc.)

I’d say that it took a few months for my daily numbers to come under control (my fasting number is now usually right around 100, my after-meal numbers usually 130-140), but feeling like I’m in control of things, and able to make choices that will keep me healthy going forward, has been a great help.

8

I’d had out of control blood pressure for years (some top numbers I remember are 182, 195 and 205, but I can’t remember the bottom number) and was put on blood pressure medication and told that I would be on it for the rest of my life. Then during a routine check-up it was found that my A1C was 8.9. Diabetes, baby. Not wanting to lose my sight or my feet, I tried to do everything I was told in a series of diabetes classes I took. That included switching from an “anything goes” way of eating to an ultra low-fat, ultra low-calorie diet, with the help of a nutritionist.

My numbers were not improving.

Just because I wanted to know how certain foods affected me, I started testing my blood sugar after eating anything, and keeping a diary. That whole time was horrible. I was doing everything “right,” was constantly hungry and irritable, totally miserable, and yet my numbers weren’t improving.

Out of curiosity and desperation, and with the blessing of my regular doctor and my endocrinologist, I went on the Atkins diet and cut out carbohydrates altogether. As before, I tested my blood sugar after eating anything. My numbers consistently were totally normal. Over the next year my A1C kept dropping, and now the number is that of someone who’s never had diabetes. More surprisingly, my doctor took me off my blood pressure medicine and my blood pressure has been totally normal for over 2 years now. He still has me take cholesterol medicine just as a precaution. I also take vitamins.

I’m not really advocating a low/no carbohydrate diet for anyone else, I’m just telling you my own experience. You’ll find lots of people who will tell you scary stories about the dangers of low carb. Frankly, I don’t care what they say. My blood pressure is better for me normal than high. My blood sugar numbers are better for me when they’re normal rather than when they’re high. My cholesterol numbers are normal, and that’s better for me. I’ve lost a lot of weight, and that’s better for me. I don’t see a downside here, health-wise, so scare stories do not affect me anymore.

As a perk, I get to eat things I could never eat on the low fat, low calories diet, and I’m never hungry, even though I eat much less than I used to.

Diet-wise, there’s a helluva downside. You have to love meat, and lots of it. Low carb is horrendously boring, unless you’re an adventurous cook. If you are, there are thousands of recipes online, and products galore (I could spend a lot of money at netrition.com), but if you aren’t, and I’m not, it’s extremely limited. I’m even more limited because what with testing my blood sugar I find that I’m highly, HIGHLY sensitive to sugar, so I can’t eat a lot of things that regular low carb eaters can eat. For instance, I have to find specific brands of bacon, sausage and ham that are not cured in sugar, any kind of sugar. Just because something says “0 carbohydrates” is not enough for me, I have to read the ingredient list closely. It’s a pain in the ass. But that’s just me and my own physiology.

Even without that limitation, you’re still severely limited. You go low carb, and all of a sudden 98% of a grocery store’s contents are off-limits. Shopping is shocking and painful until you get used to it. The plus side there is that even though I’m eating more meat, which is more expensive than things like pasta and rice, I’m NOT buying all the things I used to buy, so I think it works out less overall. When I think of all the things I used to buy, it seems like it has to be cheaper, because I ate almost the same amount of meat back then, but along with tons of carbohydrates. Now I only eat slightly more meat overall, but not as often, because I’m not ever hungry, and I used to be hungry all the time.

Still, if this were “just” a diet, I don’t think I could stick with it, I have llittle tolerance for boredom, but it’s not “just” a diet. So even when I despair at the sheer mind-numbing boredom, I remember my blood pressure numbers, and my blood sugar numbers, and my A1C, and that’s keeps me on the diet.

You could do a test, try low carb for a couple of weeks, and constantly check your numbers if you’re curious as to how it might affect you. You can’t cheat though.

If nothing else, I would recommend that you cut carbohydrates down as much as you can. Learn about the glycemic index and try to stay away from foods that have high GI numbers. That can only help you. IMO, IANAD.

9

Congrats on making it work for you!

I went Atkins a few years ago when it was hot, and lost a lot of weight. I did not find it sustainable. You are right, it was boring.

I have an appointment with a nutritionist and I bet they tell me to lower the carbs, too. I have a bit more motivation to do it this time as compared to just wanting to lose vanity pounds back then!

10

I don’t think doing a super low/no carb diet is much of a test - carbs are what raise blood sugars (well, fat does a little, too, but so small it’s not typically a worry). Of COURSE it’ll help your blood sugar. No carbs = nothing to work with to spike your sugars.

Of course, as Equipoise points out, not everyone can sustain an ultra-low-carb diet. Personally, I can do low-carb (ie, 40% of calories per day from carbs.) Much less than that, my quality of life goes in the tubes. I’d much rather take medication and be able to eat a normal diet.

Low-fat diets, as Equipoise points out, are just stupid for diabetics. You end up eating MORE of what raises your blood sugar. I haven’t read anything that’s come out in the past few years that advocates low fat for diabetics.

And here’s the stuff I’m sure Equipoise knows but has decided isn’t for him. So stop reading here, Equi! :smiley:

The reason to continue to eat a reasonable amount of carbs as a diabetic is that :

  1. long term ultra-low/no carb diets can cause ketosis, electrolyte loss, and dehydration. They can adversely affect your kidneys, cause gout, and calcium depletion. Also, many people who follow these diets end up eating more saturated fat (gotta eat something!), which contributes to heart disease. So there are some very real issues with these diets. Of course, there’s a lot of people, including doctors, who dispute these findings. Decide what you want to believe; for me, I’ve already got one organ going kaput, I’m going to do my best to keep everything else going.

  2. out of everything you can eat, carbs are what stimulate your pancreas to produce insulin more than any other type of nutrition. Because of this, moderate carb intake can actually balance things out, assuming your pancreas is still producing any insulin at all.

  3. it’s fookin’ hard to eat low/no carb forever. For people of normal weight, it may be difficult to not lose too much weight. Quality of life may go way down.

Regarding the Glycemic Index: <shrug> it’s not all that useful, IMO. It often doesn’t take into account typical amounts of food, or how it’s prepared, or what it’s eaten with. Glycemic Load is a little better, because it takes into account typical amounts (ie, chances are nobody eats a pound of carrots in one sitting, so even though the GI on carrots is high, the GL is low.)

But for me, anticipating what foods might spike me is a crapshoot, and varies based on time of day and activity level. Last week I made a stir-fry and had it with 1/3 cup of rice for dinner. Blood went up 40 points. Had the leftovers for lunch two days later, same amount of rice and everything. Sugars went up maybe a point. Go figure. Basmati rice is supposed to be relatively medium, GI-wise, but most of the time (but not all!) it causes pretty big spikes, so I don’t eat it often and when I do, I take small portions.

On the other hand, pizza - that horrible, carby, bad-for-you stuff - rarely makes me go super high. So WTF?

What most of my doctor’s reference books say, re: diet, is that in general, being aware of carbs is a good idea for diabetics. Learning which specific foods cause spikes for you is also important, so use your meter. Tools like GI and GL can be useful reference points, but they may not accurately predict blood spikes for everyone. Learning what causes spikes for you personally is the key.

And overall, eating a balanced diet and exercising is what’s good for ALL of us, especially diabetics. Don’t overeat. Calorie-wise, here’s how to calculate your needs:

Basic calorie needs: 11 * your current weight
Add 20% if you’re moderately active
Add 40% if you’re very active

That’s to just maintain your weight. If you want to lose weight, use the target weight instead of your current weight in the first calculation.

To find how many carbs you should eat, decide your percentage (maybe talk to your doc/dietitian). Joslin recommends, for example, 40% of diet coming from carbs for an overweight Type 2, whereas a thin Type 1 might want 50% or 60% of their diet from carbs.

They also say nobody should go below 130 grams of carbs a day, at least not long-term.

11

A couple other things, diet-wise, that I forgot to include:

Joslin and others are recommending Cinnamon as a dietary supplement that may help with blood sugar control. Dunno if it really works, but hell, I’ll try it. Can’t hurt me, at least.

After reading some great reviews, I just bought this cool scale.

I already have a really nice kitchen scale, but this one has a database of 1000 common foods so you can, for example, stick a carrot on top, type in the code for carrot, and it’ll tell you exactly how many carbs (among other things) are in that particular carrot, based on its weight.

You can also enter in the stats for pre-packaged foods. For example, if you have something that’s got 20 carbs for a 227 gram serving, but you want to know how much is in a half cup, just put an empty bowl on the scale, hit a button to calibrate the scale, add a half cup of whatever to the bowl, then type in 227, then 20 carbs, and voila, it’ll tell you how much is in that half cup.

I can (and do) do all this by hand, but it’ll be WAY easier with this scale if it’s truly as nifty as people say it is.

12

I was diagnosed some years ago after a routine blood test. The doc put me on glucophage (metformin), and then added Avandia some time later. I have a constant battle with avoiding carbs, as I get a jones for pasta (bad) or rice (worse) quite often. I have the trifecta of diabetes, high cholesterol, and high BP. All three are under control with medication. I’m also overweight. :smack:

I didn’t see where anyone was particularly stressing exercise as something that can really help out with the numbers game. Since I’ve been hitting the gym for the past several months, my energy level is way up, and I’m actually looking forward to my annual bloodwork today. Getting my diet under control is proving more difficult than I expected.

13

That’s an excellent point, and one that I sorta glossed over. Being active helps a LOT. My understanding (probably imperfect, at best) is that, when you’re exercising, your body can use carbs without the assistance of insulin (or maybe it’s with less insulin). Anyway, I’m certain that exercise is part of the reason I’ve been able to get my numbers where I want them. And, if you’re overweight (which many diabetics are), it can help from that standpoint, too.

14

From what I’ve been told, a South Beach-style diet (which is based on the Glycemic Index) can be a good guideline for diabetics.

15

I was diagnosed in 1999, my fasting number was 357. I’ve had good periods, and bad. For the last year, I’ve been good. I limit, or eliminate at all, anything after about 7 pm.

If you know something is loaded and BAD (do you hear me Mr. Caramel Corn??? ), have a small handful and walk away.

Exercise has helped me immensely. I look forward to it, but then I beat myself into exhaustion 3-4 times a week.

You need carbs, I agree about the GI -v- GL. Nowadays, it’s just a matter of my knowing what’s going to be good, what’s going to be bad.

I know, I’m no help.

16

You’re right - muscle contraction during exercise allows muscles to directly convert glucose to energy without insulin. Pretty fookin’ cool if you ask me.

Here’s a question that I haven’t been able to figure out. Anyone got any ideas?

I was very active this weekend, going for an hour long pretty intense snowshoe on Saturday, then on Sunday, went for what I planned on being an easy 30-45 min cross country ski, but we got lost, and it ended up being 1 hr. 40 minutes.

I was pretty bushed when I was done, but my blood sugar was GREAT all day. I didn’t eat anything other than what I normally eat - ie, I didn’t binge on pasta or anything.

Next morning… holy shit… I woke up with it at 137. It was high all day, too - 195 after lunch! And it refused to come down. I finally sat on the spin bike for 30 minutes, which brought it down to 118, but as soon as I ate a very moderate carb dinner (15 grams carbs) it was right back up to 176.

It seems like if it’s high in the morning, it stays high all day, regardless of what I’m eating/exercising/etc.

So wtf is up with that?

17

Yeah, that’s weird. I’m no expert, but maybe your body was reacting to all the exercise the prior few days, and dumped extra glucose into your bloodstream in anticipation of more energy demand?

18

I’m a bad, bad diabetic.

I was diagnosed several years ago when I had another medical emergency which might or might not have been related. I think my sugar was over 300. My blood pressure was very elevated, too. I had a small “brain bleed” - a tiny vessel in one of the dura (a membrane) that covers the brain - burst. OWIE!

Anyway, I’m overweight, I don’t exercise hardly at all, and I try to eat healthily but I still eat tons of carbs as well. My excuse is having two men in the house that I cook for, and I don’t feel I can deny them the carbs. And I have no willpower. :frowning:

I’m being treated with metformin and glipizide, as well as cholesterol and BP meds. My A1C was 7.0 last time we tested, I think.

I don’t have any symptoms anymore. While we were getting my meds worked out, I would get the shakes when my sugar was low.

If I would just get motivated to eat better and moderately exercise, it would help so much. Congratulations to those of you who have made the lifestyle changes.

19

While you’d certainly like that to be lower, it could certainly be worse, too. If memory serves, they generally say that they like to see a diabetic’s A1C be at 7.0 or below (and a “normal” range is 4.0 to 6.0). So, if you’re around 7, you’re at (or close) to what’s recommended. And, if your fasting number was 300 when you were diagnosed, I’d be willing to bet that your A1C was substantially above 7 back then, too.

I’d say my biggest motivation has been this: I’m not that old (43; I was 40 when I was diagnosed). I want to be able to enjoy the rest of my life. I want to be able to keep my feet and my vision. I’d really rather not go on dialysis. Yeah, that’s sort of scare tactics, and (potentially) a long ways down the road, but, at least for me, it’s sufficient motivation.

20

My fasting number at diagnosis was something like 319, and my A1c was 11.5. So yeah, whatever you’re doing Dolores Reborn, it ain’t ALL bad!