Don't know where to start

[13yayabo]

Hello there folks,
I have a few issues I really need help with, but I'll try and keep it simple.
First, my husband was told he had pre diabetes by the doctor, he was slightly overweight and had stopped exercising (which he did regularly for years) due to time constraints (he is now 42 and 14st). So he went away and lost about a stone and a bit'(he was 15.5st) To me now he looks thin, he was never overweight looking to start with. But I did a blood glucose test a few weeks ago on him and it was still high 2 hours after eating.

The doctor didn't give any specific advice, just lose weight. He has worked hard at losing the weight and looks healthy and trim. He eats quinoa for lunch with vegetables, no puddings now, eats what we think is a good diet for diabetics. But here's my worry, is he REALLY eating the right diet? Yes he's lost the weight, but how are his sugars still at pre disbetes levels? If he loses any more weight he'll look ill. So I'm wondering if I am maybe not giving him the right foods?

Which brings me to my other problem. I have been diagnosed after 25 years of symptoms (I'm 36) as hypoglycemic and I did have gestational diabetes during my last pregnancy and had to inject insulin. I know it's different to diabetes, but I think the diet I should be eating is the same as my husband.

My point is I have spent a lot of time researching and I have paid a lot of money (on a private nutritionist) to find out what to do to prevent my husband getting type2 and me too I suppose, but there is so much conflicting information out there on foods to avoid and foods to eat. I feel overwhelmed! And just find it so hard to know where to start that it's just easier to give up and carry on eating as we have. Should we never touch bread and pasta again? Are potatoes a big no no? Fruit as a snack yes or no? I know they are simple questions but I have heard yes and no answers to all of them. We really want to look after our health but don't seem to be managing too well at the moment.

What is the best approach to getting help and finding trusworthy information?
Thank you to anyone who takes the time to reply

 

[Owen]

Welcome, I assume you mean reactive hypoglycemia?

Without insulin, carbohydrates are the cause of rise in blood sugar.

Therefore reduction in certain carbohydrates will help. Potatoes, rice, pasta and bread are the biggest culprits.

There are ways to reduce the impact on blood sugar, by combining foods with healthy fats to slow absorption of carbohydrate.

Reactive hypoglycemia also can be helped by eating small and more frequent meals.

This is a very simplified overview

 

[Ralph-YK]

Therefore reduction in certain carbohydrates will help. Potatoes, rice, pasta and bread are the biggest culprits.

Breakfast cerial, like shredded wheat, as well. I've only done limited testing, so can't say much more than that.

 

[Northerner]

Hi 13yayabo, welcome to the forum 🙂 Sorry to hear that you are both having problems, and that you are finding it so difficult to find a solution. The relationship between the food we eat and the impact on our blood glucose levels is a complex one, and often we have very individual and differing tolerances for the same foods. As such, it's not possible to give a 'one-size-fits-all' solution - instead you need to build up knowledge and experience of your own particular tolerances.

The best way to achieve this is to invest in a blood glucose monitor and test strips - the cheapest option we have come across is the SD Codefree Meter which has test strips at around £8 for 50. Read Test,Review, Adjust by Alan S to understand how you can use the meter and strips efficiently in order to tailor your (and your husband's) diet to your own tolerances. As for diet, I'd suggest looking at the GL (Glycaemic Load) diet as a good starting point for understanding how to select foods that have a slow, steady impact on blood glucose levels - The GL Diet for Dummies is a very good introduction. By starting off with a good general choice of food, you can then use testing to see what you can happily retain in your diet and what you should reduce or omit 🙂

Has the hypoglycaemia you experience been termed 'reactive hypoglycaemia'? If so, then you should also benefit from following the GL diet as it should not 'spike' your levels as quickly.

 

[Owen]

Breakfast cerial, like shredded wheat, as well. I've only done limited testing, so can't say much more than that.

Yes cereals too. The conclusion I am slowly coming to, is that diabetes is a very individual thing and needs a bespoke solution for each person, sadly the only way to get this, is take the control of your condition and almost become the leader.

 

[13yayabo]

Thanks for the replies! Yes it is reactive hypoglycemia, I have been getting hypos since I was 11 but as I didn't know that is what was wrong I have overeaten all this time to "avoid" the sweats, shakes, etc and only now a doctor has said that is what it is. I did go to the doctor numerous times but they never did anything about it before, I think getting gestational diabetes 'helped'. I still have my monitor so will bulk buy a load of strips for the 2 of us and I'll have a look for those books. I feel more positive now and get that we both have different problems and therefore need differnt solutions.

 

[margie]

Hi 13yayabo and welcome to the forum.

You didn't say what levels your husband is getting but if losing weight is not helping he could go back to see your GP and explain that despite losing weight his glucose levels aren't changing and ask them for further advise and a referral to a dietician that specialises in diabetes.

Another thing to consider is what you are eating, things like smoothies, or mash will raise blood sugar levels faster than having the fruit/veg in its complete form. This is because the sugars are more freel accessible to your body - it has to do less work in breaking down the food to use it. So its not just the type and amount of carbohydrate that will affect blood sugar, but so will the way it has been prepared. I see that you have already been given some advise of the type of information you need to look into.

In some places there are courses run that help people to understand and manage their conditions - it might be helpful to ask your surgery if there is anything in your area that you could attend. Such courses should be a more reliable source than the internet where it can sometimes be hard to tell what is true and what isn't.

 

[Owen]

I would ask for test strips on the premis of learning about your condition, this is within NICE guidelines.

GL for Dummies works for me with small amounts of insulin. I eat small and often, but alternate carb free meals just to avoid excessive injections.

 

[TheClockworkDodo]

Hello, and welcome 🙂

My partner has hypoglycaemia: he finds eating something like a yogurt at bedtime is really helpful as otherwise he tends to wake up starving before morning. For the low blood sugar shakes he gets sometimes he usually has something like a dried apricot - it brings blood sugar levels up quickly without being too high in carbs (I could also use dried fruit to treat a hypo myself if it's not too bad a hypo - but it's not a good thing for diabetics otherwise so don't feed it to your husband!).

Fruit as a snack - the short answer is no, not for someone at risk of diabetes. The slightly longer answer is that it depends on the fruit, the person, and what they eat it with - but generally berries are better than other fruit, and fruit combined with fat (eg in yoghurt) is better than on its own.

Do you mind if I ask how tall your husband is? That's going to make a difference to whether 14st is a good weight or not ...

 

[13yayabo]

Hi,
He's 5 foot 10 so he's not that tall but he is broad and he has a flat tummy. He's a 32 inch waste maybe that's a better way of putting it. I now keep a little tub with a tsp of sugar in it in case of a bad emergency, I have been known to have to stop driving and call someone to bring me something, when I didn't know what the problem was I had no idea how to treat it. I have got my husband and myself a glucose monitor, it will be interesting to see whatnit says, I had eggs with soinach salad and seeds for breakfast and was getting shaky 2 hours later but that's unusual. It's a lot of hard work! Can't imagine how everyone copes....

 

[TheClockworkDodo]

Flat tummy is good, and 32 inch waist for a man sounds good to me! You might want to have a look at the various calculators on here - http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmi-classification/bmi-normal-weight-information.php - they usually use BMI to check weight for people with diabetes, but it's not an exact science and you may find body fat percentage and waist to hip ratio are more helpful indicators of whether weight is healthy, especially if your husband's weight is more muscle than fat (don't forget to select male every time if you're doing it for your husband, sometimes it resets itself to female!).

For a bit more info. about why these calculations don't work for everyone though, have a look at this thread: https://forum.diabetes.org.uk/boards/threads/waist-measurement-how-to-reduce-it.60843/

As far as diet for preventing diabetes is concerned, the 5:2 diet or intermittent fasting is supposed to be a good idea. It's not meant to be a weight loss diet, it's just meant to keep down body fat and prevent various diseases including diabetes. My partner's been doing it for a few months now and found it really helpful, though whether it's really preventing him from developing things in years to come we obviously can't say! We did wonder whether he'd be able to do it with hypoglycaemia, but he hasn't had any problems with that at all, though he's only been doing 1 fast day a week rather than 2, and making sure he's doing it on a day when he wouldn't be doing anything energetic.

There's a thread about it here - ignore all the stuff about basal, and bolus, that only applies to me because I'm type 1 and on insulin: https://forum.diabetes.org.uk/boards/threads/the-5-2-diet.59069/

And another thread about intermittent fasting here: https://forum.diabetes.org.uk/boards/threads/intermittent-fasting.61002

A lot of people here, especially type 2s, also do low carb and high fat diets, replacing carbs with fat, though with that you do have to bear in mind that some fats are healthier than others!

 

[13yayabo]

Thanks Juliet, that is all very helpful. My husband is muscly so,I suppose that'll have something to do with it too. We have been testing our lood sugars and his results are definitely pre diabetic, from what I have read. Fasting this morning he was 7.7. He was a bit upset because he is trying. It was my birthday yesterday and we even had a chocolate cake from one of the blood sugar diet recipes with kidney beans etc early on. Maybe that had something to do with it, but he tested 13 hours after the cake! I was wondering, if you have lunch and test your blood and hour and 2 hours later, what happens if you have a snack before the 2 hours is up? Should you test anyway? Or test 2 hours after the snack? Thanks for the helpful links I will check them out this evening.

 

[grovesy]

The targets for Type 2 are
4-7 before meals
Less than8.5 2 hours after meals.

 

[Northerner]

if you have lunch and test your blood and hour and 2 hours later, what happens if you have a snack before the 2 hours is up? Should you test anyway? Or test 2 hours after the snack?

If you have a snack containing carbs then the blood test wouldn't really tell you much about what you ate for lunch. If, however, you have a carb-free snack, like cheese, then it shouldn't affect the test. Ideally though, test before you have the snack! 🙂

 

[13yayabo]

Hello again
We have been monitoring our blood sugars and really trying to watch what we are eating. I am ok, as long as I don't eat anything I shouldn't. My husband on the other hand after a first few days of high results 2 hours after a meal seems to be doing better. At first he was in the 10's 2 hours after a meal but if he is strict about what he eats they seem to be in the 7's, sometimes 6's range. His first reading of the morning though is a bit of a mystery, he has readings in the mid to high 7's, even a little higher, with having had nothing to eat since the night before and habing had a 'normal' reading 2 hours after his dinner. He seems to think this is a disbetic reading but can't understand why it's like that on a fasting test. Also, he tried having a snack of nuts before bed and it was still the same the next morning.

Even more odd is, after his 'high' morning readings, even without eating anything, they go even higher? If that makes sense, as if he tests and hour later, having had no breakfast it goes up. Until he eats. Does anyone have any advice on that, and is it normal to have diabteic levels in the morning and not the rest of the day?

Thanks!!

 

[Ralph-YK]

What I've heard is there is this thing in the morning, the dawn effect. You're BG goes up so their is something for our bodies to use.

 

[TheClockworkDodo]

High levels in the morning are quite common among diabetics - our livers decide we need some energy to cope with the day so they start pumping out glucose, and our pancreases can't produce the insulin to deal with it so our blood sugar levels go up. I don't know whether this is true for pre-diabetics though, I'm afraid - someone else may be able to tell you.

 

[Martin Canty]

I don't suffer from the Dawn Phenomenon but I have heard that a small snack just before bed (cheese, nuts or anything else very low in carbs) helps some people.