Additional medication

[MrBuzz]

Hi everyone. I’m about 4 weeks into my diabetes diagnosis. Started on metformin (500mg x 4) and made my start on changing diet and increasing activity. I’ve reduced carbs down to around 150g per day and lost around a stone in weight. I spoke with the nurse at the end of last week and now need to start on gliclazide (80mg), which I’ve started this week.

My fasting finger prick tests had come down from 24 at the time of diagnosis to 10 last week, can’t help but feel like I didn’t manage enough, even though it’s come down a lot.

I’m still staying really hard with the diet and exercise and trying to keep it sustainable. Do people think I need to drop the carbs a bit further? I didn’t want to go too far at first as want to keep it sustainable.

 

[Leadinglights]

Hi everyone. I’m about 4 weeks into my diabetes diagnosis. Started on metformin (500mg x 4) and made my start on changing diet and increasing activity. I’ve reduced carbs down to around 150g per day and lost around a stone in weight. I spoke with the nurse at the end of last week and now need to start on gliclazide (80mg), which I’ve started this week.

My fasting finger prick tests had come down from 24 at the time of diagnosis to 10 last week, can’t help but feel like I didn’t manage enough, even though it’s come down a lot.

I’m still staying really hard with the diet and exercise and trying to keep it sustainable. Do people think I need to drop the carbs a bit further? I didn’t want to go too far at first as want to keep it sustainable.

I am quite surprised that you have been prescribed additional meds without giving you dietary changes time to take effect, it seems a bit premature.
The suggested amount of carbs is no more than 130g per day so yes you could probably drop your carbs down a bit more, however it is good to lower gradually which you would be doing especially as you are now taking the gliclazide.
Getting down to a fasting level of 10 after only a few weeks seems like good progress and in any case morning levels are the last to come down.
You could make good use of your monitor to test some meals to see if you need to trim some carbs from those, testing before you eat and after 2 hours would give you an indication whether the meal was OK if the increase was no more than 2-3mmol/l.

 

[MrBuzz]

I am quite surprised that you have been prescribed additional meds without giving you dietary changes time to take effect, it seems a bit premature.
The suggested amount of carbs is no more than 130g per day so yes you could probably drop your carbs down a bit more, however it is good to lower gradually which you would be doing especially as you are now taking the gliclazide.
Getting down to a fasting level of 10 after only a few weeks seems like good progress and in any case morning levels are the last to come down.
You could make good use of your monitor to test some meals to see if you need to trim some carbs from those, testing before you eat and after 2 hours would give you an indication whether the meal was OK if the increase was no more than 2-3mmol/l.

Thank you. I’ve done a few tests before and after meals, so will try and do a few more and be a bit more confident in those meals. Maybe do each meal I have a few times to make sure it isn’t effected by anything else I’ve done that day too.

I’m hoping I can get the fasting level down to the 4-7 range pretty quickly (especially with the gliclazide doing its thing) and reduce the meds as soon as I safely can. I’d rather not have to have any, but not at the risk of not controlling the diabetes.

 

[Drummer]

Thank you. I’ve done a few tests before and after meals, so will try and do a few more and be a bit more confident in those meals. Maybe do each meal I have a few times to make sure it isn’t effected by anything else I’ve done that day too.

I’m hoping I can get the fasting level down to the 4-7 range pretty quickly (especially with the gliclazide doing its thing) and reduce the meds as soon as I safely can. I’d rather not have to have any, but not at the risk of not controlling the diabetes.

If you are seeing good results, I don't understand the reasoning behind more tablets when barely a month has passed.
I had a glowing response to my latest test results, at 7 years from diagnosis and I wondered what they expected - if I've not got it right by now I might as well give up.
Actually, I have never actually tested first thing in the morning, and I soon gave up the pre meal tests, I just wanted to keep the after eating levels down, as that seems to be how to run things for my metabolism to cope well enough to avoid medication.
Dropping from 24 - presumably mmol/l down to 10 in 4 weeks is bloody brilliant, and you should not be pessimistic about going even lower. I cranked mine down to under 8 mmol/l eating no more than 50gm of carbs a day - but as I have found out, I was left for a decade at least with high glucose levels, which must have had some effect. I have a HbA1c in the low 40s, and seem OK with that, but now my limit is 40 gm a day and I still can't lower my Hb1c into the 30s. There must be more going on that a simple correlation. My actual glucose in the blood levels are good though.