I think that an individual assessment should be made in each case to see if they should have any test strips and how many.
Just wondering for those type 2's who are in good control and have had diabetes for a while (wallycorker, VBH, any others) test now. Do you test after tried and tested meals or only for new things exercise/food? how many tests does that work out in an average day?
Hi sofaraway,
Sometimes I carry out no tests in a day but in some very few cases, especially early on, I have tried to test hourly throughout the day to try to understand what has been happening to my body. Together with the reading of books from the USA I think that I've sorted quite a lot of my situation out. Certainly, one or two years ago when my HbA1c level was in the 8s or 9s, I had absolutely no idea what was going on. Moreover, I had no symptoms. The first I would know of a problem would be when the nurse gave me my reading and told me to see the GP.
In general, firstly, I started testing what I considered to be the basal fasting level - i.e. first thing in a morning and often last thing before going to bed at night (I was surprised to see that morning results were always higher than the night before although I have since read that there are good reasons for this) - also, sometimes before lunch or evening meal. I've never had a major problem with those results so next I started to concentrate on what happens after meals.
I started to test 2 hours after finishing a meal (whenever I remembered and it was convenient) to check that the level is below 8mmol/l - particularly where this was a regular type of meal - i.e. breakfast or lunch. Breakfast is my most regular repeatable meal - cereal with added fruit or berries - or sometimes porridge with added berries. I found that often the result after breakfast was higher than I liked so I reduced the cereal (e.g. 45g to 30g) and added more fruit. That sort of change seemed to help a lot.
I did similar thing at lunch - but in that case moving away from bread sandwiches to salads or soup type meals - plus fruit almost always (apple, pear, orange etc).
My evening meal is more varied and so I've not done very much in that area - whatever my wife offers me then low-fat yoghurt and or fruit (apple, pear, banana or something similar). My blood sugar before the evening meal tends to be at its lowest - sometimes as low as 3.8 or 3.9 mmol/l - and I've never noticed much of a problem in the evening perhaps partly due to that.
As regards, snacks in the evening I have learnt to keep to small bits and pieces that I know do not affect my blood sugars very much - nuts, seeds, fruit etc.
I found that I realised a big improvement in my situation almost immediately I started checking my levels.
However, at the same time I started testing, as a separate exercise, I also started dieting to lose weight by calorie counting. Because of that, I do not know what has had the biggest effect. My GP told me the standard stuff that he expected that my blood sugars would improve if I lost weight. However, the blood sugars seemed to improve straight away - in my opinion, not through weight loss but by lower caloric intake.
Over time I've changed my diet to a very low-fat (almost no animal fat or saturated fat), plant-based, wholefood diet with lots of fruits and vegetables (quite a lot more than the five-a-day) - in addition, I suppose I'm getting more fibre but that hasn't been a major part of my strategy. I've reduced my caloric intake to a quite low level of usually around 1300/day but never feel hungry. In addition, I have reduced my alcohol intake to a very low level. Genuinely, I haven't found any of this a problem - I suppose because I really wanted to sort things out to the best of my ability to avoid diabetic complications.
Since I started eight months ago, I've lost 25 kgs in weight. I'm fully committed to getting my weight down to my ideal weight as defined by the medical people. Moreover, I'm absolutely committed to keeping it at that level - believe me I do not want diabetic complications.
More recently, I've just started to try to keep my post-meal level lower by reducing the amount of carbohydrate in my meal. To effect this I now tend to test one hour after finishing a meal when I expect my level to be around its highest. I'm looking to try to keep that level below 8mmol/l. I'm not far enough into that to be able to tell you how successful this has been.
Overall, I'm quite pleased with what I've been able to achieve. Hence, my looking around and finding this forum to share my experiences with others. However, I'm quite prepared that things might go wrong in the future - and, because of that, I want to learn from others so that I'm at least partly prepared for what setbacks might come my way.
On a separate but not unrelated matter, nine years ago my total cholesterol level was 7 (it had been higher than that in the more distant past!) at my last check - before I changed my diet - it was a very normal 4.2 and I expect that it will be 3 next time round (or may I hope for 2?). Moreover, again nine years ago my blood pressure was a very unhealthy 164/109 - today it is around 105/60 (almost as low as my ten-year-old granddaughter and even better than my sports-mad and very active thirteen-year-old grandson.
All the above numbers include medication - metformin to deal with the blood sugar - simvastatin to deal with the cholesterol - and rampiril and bisoprolol to deal with the blood pressure - plus aspirin to give additional help. However, I'm expecting my GP to make some changes at my next review which is due shortly.
I suppose, I should consider myself lucky still to be here to tell you my story!
😱
