Hello

[Elbow777]

Hi,
Just been diagnosed with type 2. I think I may have had this for some time but was told I was ok by the Dr a couple of years ago as was tested due to a medical I had for work.
Became thirsty, controlling when I needed to urinate, etc. I've been put on Metformin 500mg x 2 per day. Been mostly ok with a bit of an upset stomach but not too bad. The Dr quoted numbers at me that I didn't really take in at the time. When tested by the nurse she said I was 11.0 ( assume mmol/L). Been on the tablets just over a week and I am now 8.1 (bought a tester on amazon).

I had the strips you pee on, they were dark brown to start now a light shade of green so hoping the tablets are working. I have completely changed my diet and now walking a lot. I'm struggling a bit with what to eat (no sweets, white bread, red meat - eating more fruit & veg and wholegrain) but it's hard. I'm not sure what is good and what is bad so glad I found this site to learn.

I now dont need to get up at night to pee but often waking early due to feeling like I have trapped wind. I'm 56, a white Scottish male with no history of this in my family.

Not sure if this is TMI but glad I found this site. I'm taking slow but hopefully positive steps to manage this.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Welcome to the forum @Elbow777

Sorry to hear about your diagnosis, but glad you caught it fairly early on - some people can go years and years before their diabetes finally comes to light.

Sounds like you’ve made a load of positive changes already, and that you can already see a change in your BG levels and symptoms. Hopefully any stomach discomfort you are experiencing will quickly settle (as it does for most people). Metformin is widely used, and most people get on well with it.

Many new members find it can be really helpful to keep a brutally honest food diary for a week or two. Note down everything you eat and drink, along with a reasonable estimate of the total carbohydrate content in your meals and snacks (not just ‘of which sugars’). Total carbohydrate content is likely to give a good indication of which meals have the potential to raise glucose levels the most.

The food diary idea might sound like a bit of a faff, and will involve weighing portions, squinting at the fine print on packaging, and possibly looking up things on the internet, but it will give you a really good idea of which foods are the main sources of carbs in your menu. Once you can see which meals or snacks are your ‘big hitters’, and where carbs might be unexpectedly lurking, the process might also suggest some likely candidates for swaps, portion reductions, or using lower carb alternatives (eg celeriac or swede mash, or cauli ‘rice’).

The really tricky thing is that blood glucose responses to various foods can be highly individual, and it can be impossible to say which types and amounts of carbohydrate will ‘spike’ your BG without checking for yourself.

If you’d like to tweak your menu to be more BG friendly without unnecessarily cutting back on sources of carbs in your menu, you can use your BG meter to help. Taking a reading before and again 2hrs after eating, and seeing what the differences are, will identify any sources of carb or portion sizes that seem to be spiking BG (initially in a way the numbers themselves matter less than the differences between them). Ideally you would want to see a rise of no more than 2-3mmol/L at the 2hr mark. Once you can see how you respond to different meals you can begin experimenting with reducing portion sizes of the carbs where you see bigger rises. You might find that you are particularly sensitive to carbohydrate from one source (eg bread), but have more liberty with others (eg oats or basmati rice) - It’s all very individual! You might even find that just having things at a different time of day makes a difference - with breakfast time being the trickiest.

Good luck and let us know how you get on 🙂

 

[Leadinglights]

This link has a good explanation of what it is all about and is a low carbohydrate approach which many find is helpful for both weight loss if you need to and reducing blood glucose level. https://lowcarbfreshwell.co.uk/
Usually, diagnosis is made from an Hba1C blood test taken from your arm and sent to the lab, which is the average over the previous 3 months and a level over 47mmol/mol will give a diabetes diagnosis. The numbers you mention look as if they are spot tests from a finger prick which is not the norm for a diagnosis.
The urine sticks are only useful when your level may be quite high as it is only then that urine will contain excess glucose and that is really very much higher than you want to see.