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Just found this forum recently and see that it is quite extensive. Hope to receive helpful advice/tips from my peers and offer some help/advice if I can from my experiences on this special life journey. I live in Barrie, Ontario, Canada (about a one hour drive north of downtown Toronto). I will be 73 years old, full-time home-office worker (IT and Web manager for an online training company), and consider a workaholic 🙂 Married for 50 years (yes ... to the same woman), 3 adult children (I am the only one with Diabetes), and 3 grandsons. Diagnosed about 8-10 years ago as pre-diabetic then a definite T2. A "gift" from my Mom's side of the family going back at least 3 generations. I will do my best to be active on the forums as I have found that information, stories, and experiences, from fellow Diabetics to be enlightening and extremely useful.
Hello and Welcome.
How are you doing? What are your levels like now? Just curious to know as you might have good tips to share too 🙂 I'm still a relative newbie, so learning, falling, dusting off and back on track - repeat daily lol
Good to have you join us 🙂
Hello and Welcome.
How are you doing? What are your levels like now? Just curious to know as you might have good tips to share too 🙂 I'm still a relative newbie, so learning, falling, dusting off and back on track - repeat daily lol
Good to have you join us 🙂
Thanks for the welcome! Yes, daily levels can fluctuate and more so recently. My own fault more than anything. Hard to change eating and lifestyle when diagnosed late in life and you soon "fall off the wagon" if you are not diligent. I do have questions that I will be posting, as I can, to hopefully be seen by others with similar situations and physical/medical demographics.
I am 70 and having been prediabetic for several years found myself just in the diabetic zone nearly 2 years ago, mainly due to retiring and being less active as in my job I was always on the go doing anything between 15,000 and 20,000 steps a day and just those portion sizes creeping up and the slice of cake with the afternoon cuppa which I wasn't having before. Together with the stress of having daughters working on the front line in the NHS with COVID, I wasn't sleeping and that I think is a factor.
I immediately adopted a low carb dietary regime which to be honest has been really easy, I never feel hungry and enjoy the food I have with plenty of variety of tasty meals and is a regime I feel is sustainable. In hindsight I reduced my carbs down to 70g per day too quickly as I got some eye issues which took some months to get better.
Blood glucose levels were back to normal within 6 months. A bit of a hiccup on weight loss as I had an accident requiring knee surgery which has restricted exercise for the last 6 months.
You might find this link helpful in looking at a new dietary approach based on real food.
We use IFCC numbers in the UK rather than DFCC which you use, though we do still use mmol/L for fingerprick blood test meters and 'Flash' glucose monitors, rather than mg/dl which they use in the USA and other places. So when they say their glucometer says 90, ours says 5.0.
Anyway your DFCC 7.6% correlates to an IFCC of 60.
I was confused at the start as I found that the UK Diabetes forums were so much better than Canada or the US, with the UK using IFCC. Had to learn another conversion table. Confusing for you also when using meters or FGMs. You also use "stone" for body weight and we use both metric and imperial (kg or lb) as Canada still, after many years since conversion to metric, is confused - even between generations. It would be nice if, globally, we could all be on the same form of measurement of many things. Imperial or metric, Imperial Gallon or US gallon. As we, in Canada, border the US, it can be confusing as we use metric (actually we are bilingual metric/imperial) and the US gallon is smaller than the Imperial gallon and they are stunned after crossing the border to Canada to see our speed limit signs on major highways displaying 100 - results in a few speeding tickets LOL. To be politically correct, it must be us that drive on the wrong side of the road, not you 🙂
There has been a shift towards metric during my lifetime, but many things in the UK are still determinedly imperial (pints for beer, miles for road distances etc).
The two gallons being different on either side of the border is hilarious!
Beer ... we just call it a pint or quart bottle, draught is by the pint (who care ounces or ML). Whiskey is still called a "Mickey" or "40 pounder". Canada started conversion to metric in 1971 (51 yrs ago) and we still think in both Imperial and Metric. A trip to Toronto from my place is "an hour" not 90 kms. Ottawa is 5 hours away - don't ask me the distance LOL. While car dealers call it "fuel economy" everyone still says "mileage". I still convert 'kilometers and litres' to 'miles and gallons' as I can better relate to 'miles per gallon' compared to 'kilometers per litre' 🙂 The different gallons between US and Canada is crazy. To make things worse for visiting Americans we use litres at the pumps (we don't show both). They don't know if our prices are good or bad. A 20 US gallon tank is about 75 litres. The US gallon, right now in the US, is about $4.50 USD while we are $1.70 CDN/litre. Approx 4 L per US Gallon (4.65 L per Imperial/CDN gallon or currently $7.90/gallon). So we really are at about $6.80 CDN per US gallon, so they have no clue - bargain or expensive - because they don't know how to convert including currency exchange. But a full tank really hits their wallet LOL. Canadians don't really care because if we travel to the US it costs less to fill the tank (we don't care gallons or litres), and we are familiar with MPH as our speedometers are in both.
For blood glucose we simply use mmol/L while the US uses Mg/dL. Not a problem as we travel with our meters or FlashGM/CGM. I don't participate in US Diabetes forums as the atmosphere is really different. I feel so much more comfortable in the UK forums ... after all, we are a colony 🙂
Well you just make yourself nice and comfy .. we are happy to have you ! Great bunch on here well they tolerate me well lol. Must admit I signed up to a US forum once, didn’t realise it wasn’t UK…. Nobody spoke to me
Obviously writing with a markedly British accent then!
I noticed @T2Canada mentioned 'whiskey'. When we refer to 'whiskey', it is because we're referring to Irish whiskey, as opposed to Scotch whisky, which has no E in it. So brands like Jamesons or Bushmills are whiskey, Dewars, Johnnie Waker, Laphroig or Famous Grouse are whisky.
But at least there's a stretch of sea water between Ireland and Scotland! - you've only got a river and a few (5) lakes (though they are sizeable to be fair) between you and that's only at one end of the border .....
LOL, I thought about that when I posted. Should have said "liquor". Thanks for the education into the famous/infamous libations.
The Canada/USA border is the longest friendly border in the world, but still we have heavy customs and crossing checks. One comedian once stated, "Canada is like living above a meth lab" .... so we are friendly, but cautious 🙂 There are a few towns that actually are half in Canada and half in the US.
Our Great Lakes are the largest fresh water lakes in the world and shared with the USA (border down the middle) except for Georgian Bay which is totally Canadian. Lake Superior holds 10% of the world's fresh water and is 222.17 fathoms (1333 ft, 406 m) deep at the deepest point. We live between Georgian Bay and Lake Ontario - about an hour's drive either way. Georgian Bay has Wasaga Beach - the longest fresh water beach in the world. Only Russia is larger than Canada.
Our social medical system is very similar to the UK - a stark contrast to that of our southern neighbours in the US. In our diverse city of 150,000 people (plus the surrounding community) we have a Diabetes/Endocrinology Clinic, complete with Podiatry, Eye Care, Pharmacy (chemist), and Diabetes education, for those that want a more focused care compared to a family doctor. We also have a very large and modern hospital, with cancer care and heart clinics, that is always growing and now approved to build a 2nd campus in the city south end.
ROFL - I knew that, just joking, cos I knew it would provoke a response! Wherever we happen to hail from with diabetes - the same as with life itself - the most important weapon in anyone's armoury is a good sense of humour, in my book!
Status
This thread is now closed. Please contact Anna DUK, Ieva DUK or everydayupsanddowns if you would like it re-opened.
