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Advice please

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helli said:
I ha

I have seen people discussing this approach to "save their beta cells".
Is there any research to show that you can, effectively, extend your honeymoon period by eating low carb?
Click to expand...

The only research I’ve seen about extending the honeymoon, particularly in LADA, said that early introduction of insulin preserved the remaining beta cells longer.

Eating very low carb causes insulin resistance and makes the beta cells work harder. If it was me, I’d go for moderate carbs and insulin if/when needed.

As @Gwynn is still waiting for a diagnosis he’s short of the final information he needs to know precisely what’s happening anyway.
 
The extensive care team and diabetic nurse do know that I am zero insulin and have no concerns hsving looked at all the readings. They know that I am checking things and very alert to any unusual changes that may occur.

I am very open and honest with them so that they can offer the best advice to me.

I have been online to see which is less stressful on a body system and most beneficial in regard to the quantity of meals eaten in a day. Unfortunately many sites contradict each other whilst claiming theirs is a scientific study. So no conclusions could be drawn.

My take on it all is that the results may vary depending on the people being tested and the type of foods they eat, but I don't actually know. It feels right that smaller more frequent meals would be less stressful on the body, but that could be completely wrong. The carbs I am eating in any day are roughly the NHS recommended daily quantity, divided as evenly as I can across several meals. The balancing across the meals seems to have stopped my hunger. Is that carb heavy?

I will ask the extensive care team about it all when they next visit. By then there may be a diagnosis too.

Reading this evening is 5.8. Quite happy with that. What ever I or my pancreas are doing, we are getting the right sort of results. I hope that it will continue.
 
Now this is scary for me.

In an attempt to increase my fasting BS from 5 to 6....

I increased my carbs yesterday evening (that one meal to 147g) and ate later for my last meal at 10:30pm. At 6am this morning I got my lowest reading so far of 4.2.

So what am I doing wrong do you think?

I will ring the diabetic nurse today to ask for some advice.
 
Oh I can't. It is a Saturday. Now what?
 
Inka said:
The only research I’ve seen about extending the honeymoon, particularly in LADA, said that early introduction of insulin preserved the remaining beta cells longer.
Click to expand...
Yes that's what my diabetes nurse and GP both said when they stopped me taking Gliclazide on the second day of my diagnosis and concluded I had type 1 not type 2. They said that taking Glic would stress my beta cells and kill them off faster. Hence the immediate move to me using insulin.

The idea that your diet can save your beta cells for type 1s doesnt make sense to me at all and I also think that the "it can't do any harm" idea is potentially dangerous.

The low carb thing for type 1s just confuses me. Type 1 is fundamentally not about carbs (leaving spikes aside for a second). It's about insulin. For me, I genuinely don't understand why anyone would do anything other than give the body the insulin it needs. It seems odd to avoid that.
 
Whoops. Panicking. I meant 61g of carbs in the last meal of the day at 10:30pm.

It was 147 for the whole afternoon and evening.

Sorry.
 
Well we don't know what it is. Type 1, type 2, LADA, yet
 
Gwynn said:
Now this is scary for me.

In an attempt to increase my fasting BS from 5 to 6....

I increased my carbs yesterday evening (that one meal to 147g) and ate later for my last meal at 10:30pm. At 6am this morning I got my lowest reading so far of 4.2.

So what am I doing wrong do you think?

I will ring the diabetic nurse today to ask for some advice.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure what you are worried about here.
Personally, I would go back to eating 3 normal meals per day and split the carbs reasonably evenly across the day and continue with that until your body starts to show signs of beta cell failure.
You might be in danger of making unwise dietary decisions here based on over analysing numbers which seem OK to me within the random fluctuations you would expect.
 
Now this has me a bit confused.

Worried., I took a calibration reading of the BG test meter. All ok, within calibration range.

I then did a second BG reading 30 minutes ater having eaten nothing and the BG reading was 5.2.

Could the meter be faulty. Or could I need to do the test 30 minutes after waking up in the morning rather that straight away.

Any advice on this please.

5.2 was lower than I expected too. Almost as if my pancreas is behaving well (for now). If so, what went wrong for me to end up in hospital I wonder.
 
The meter isn't faulty but it is innaccurate.
Individual readings are less important than observing the general trend in your readings.
 
Now that surprises me for something so important, with calibration too and the manufaturer guaranteeing that the readings are accurate to within 0.87 in 97.7% of test cases (sorry lost the link). Perhaps the meter is a faulty one.

So do I ignore it if the reading is, lets say 3, but I feel fine. But the diabetic nurse said that with such a low reading eat first and get emergency help second. Do I go into panic mode or not?

Sounds like I may have to do things based on how I ferl, unfortunately I do not feel any different if the meter reads 4, 5, 6, or even 12. So I don't think that judging things by how I feel will be a good way forward. But then again, if I feel fine then I feel fine, what could be better.

Am i missing something.
 
Meters usually claim great accuracy, but the legal specifications are quite lax, they only have to be within 15%, and 10% at the lower end.
Secondly, blood is not homogenous, I usually get a higher reading from my right hand than I do from my left.
Thirdly, your liver starts trickling out glucose the moment you wake up (and sometimes from the early hours), so a rising blood glucose level is quite common first thing in the morning.
If your pancreas, for whatever reason, is working well at the moment, there’s nothing you can do the night before to increase your morning readings, and if you are not on any medication, I’m not sure why your diabetes team would want you to try. However many carbs you eat, a working pancreas will deal with them and bring your levels down to what it considered normal for you. Which is usually between 4 and 5 in most people without diabetes.
 
4.2 to 5.2 in 30 minutes without eating first thing in the morning is perfectly normal (for any type) - dawn phenomenon or foot on the floor syndrome.

The 1 decimal place reading on the meters misleads one into thinking they are more accurate than they really are. All readings are "ish". Given the allowable +/- 15%, 4.2 could be 3.6 to 4.8, and 5.2 could be 4.42 to 6.0.
Also blood is not homogeneous - readings taken at the same time from different fingers can vary a bit.

As you are not at the moment taking any insulin 4.2 and 5.2 are both very acceptable readings! No need at all to panic. Even if the reading is only 3, while you are NOT on insulin you do not need emergency help.
 
If you get a 3 on your meter, you treat it as a 3 and as a hypo. However, the glucose meters have a 15% margin of error. They’re not supposed to be giving you an exact figure, just a ball-park one eg you test before a meal and get a 4.9. You test again immediately after and get a 5.6 - “Oh no - what’s going on??” you might ask yourself. The answer is nothing. All you need to worry about is you have a good blood sugar there whether it’s a 4.9 or a 5.6.

If you’re on zero insulin now, you don’t need to worry about hypos. You don’t need to worry about a 4.2 (which might be a 5 anyway). That’s a normal blood sugar.
 
Robin types faster!!
 
I was going to say the same thing as others. You don’t need to worry about hypos since not on insulin, you may even go slightly below 4, non diabetics do that, and it isn’t an emergency unless it goes really low. The reason readings under 4 are an emergency for diabetics is that the medication we give to reduce blood sugar will still be reducing us further, it doesn’t stop working just because we are 4 like a pancreas does.

your blood sugar increasing without eating in the morning is normal too. Your body saw you woke up, thought you might need a bit more sugar than 4.2 and provided it, increasing you to 5.2 which is also a perfectly great number whilst not on insulin.
 
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