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Hopeful Newbie
- Thread starter Caz66
- Start date
- Status
Leadinglights
Well-Known Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 2
Welcome to the forum
There is so much information and some of it will not be applicable to your situation as how people manage their blood glucose is quite personal to them as an individual but will depend on what their HbA1C is that has given them their diagnosis, what mediation if any they have been prescribed and if they need to lose weight. It is a matter of picking through to see what is a sensible approach for YOU.
It is likely to have come on gradually and the changes in lifestyle have to be a sustainable one as you are looking at lifelong changes not a quick fix.
When you are ready, have a look at this link which is straightforward and an approach that many have found successful and it may be suitable if you are only trying by diet and or metformin. Other meds may require more caution with low carb.
Freshwell Low Carb Project - Home
lowcarbfreshwell.com
rebrascora
Well-Known Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Hi and welcome.
Would you like to tell us a bit about your diabetes like....
How long you have been diagnosed and how that came about? ie routine blood test or symptomatioc?
What if any medication you have been given for it?
What your HbA1c result was? This is the blood test used to diagnose and monitor the management of your diabetes and will be a number in excess of 47mmols/mol if you have a formal diagnosis. How far beyond 47 gives an indication of how significant the risk from diabetes is long term or possibly short term if it is exceptionally high and will help us to advise you better.
It is important to understand that diabetes is surprisingly individual and that partly explains why there is so much contradictory advice out there and even from health care professionals. What we believe is important here on the forum is to find how your body responds and adjust your diet and lifestyle to account for that plus the many other factors which affect us all differently. For many people a Blood Glucose monitor can be an invaluable tool in enabling us to see our diabetes in numbers, otherwise it can be surprisingly invisible for many until they get their next blood test. We often liken home testing to having a speedometer on a car. If you don't have one you are essentially winging it until to get a speeding ticket. Without a BG meter you are winging it until your next HbA1c test which might be 3 months or 6 months or a year's time. If that result is not as good as you might hope, you have no information from it about what you did in that interim period which worked or didn't work, so you are still pretty much in the dark as to what to do to make it better, whereas home testing will tell you from one meal to the next which foods are OK and which your body can't cope with or in what portion size. The important thing is to have a good testing strategy in order to get useful information from your testing and we can help you with that. The only draw backs to consider before investing in a testing kit are that it can cause some people anxiety, particularly if they don't get/seek enough support with the results or they are people who struggle with numbers or anxiety and of course the cost, but a basic test kit will set you back about £15 and then pots of test strips are about £10 for a pot of 50. You do get through quite a lot of test strips in the first few months of testing but after that once you learn how your body responds to foods, then just an occasional test is usually enough to keep an eye on things. I have used birthday money for diabetes kit when it was too expensive to self fund, because what better way to spend it than to enable yourself to keep you healthy.
Would you like to tell us a bit about your diabetes like....
How long you have been diagnosed and how that came about? ie routine blood test or symptomatioc?
What if any medication you have been given for it?
What your HbA1c result was? This is the blood test used to diagnose and monitor the management of your diabetes and will be a number in excess of 47mmols/mol if you have a formal diagnosis. How far beyond 47 gives an indication of how significant the risk from diabetes is long term or possibly short term if it is exceptionally high and will help us to advise you better.
It is important to understand that diabetes is surprisingly individual and that partly explains why there is so much contradictory advice out there and even from health care professionals. What we believe is important here on the forum is to find how your body responds and adjust your diet and lifestyle to account for that plus the many other factors which affect us all differently. For many people a Blood Glucose monitor can be an invaluable tool in enabling us to see our diabetes in numbers, otherwise it can be surprisingly invisible for many until they get their next blood test. We often liken home testing to having a speedometer on a car. If you don't have one you are essentially winging it until to get a speeding ticket. Without a BG meter you are winging it until your next HbA1c test which might be 3 months or 6 months or a year's time. If that result is not as good as you might hope, you have no information from it about what you did in that interim period which worked or didn't work, so you are still pretty much in the dark as to what to do to make it better, whereas home testing will tell you from one meal to the next which foods are OK and which your body can't cope with or in what portion size. The important thing is to have a good testing strategy in order to get useful information from your testing and we can help you with that. The only draw backs to consider before investing in a testing kit are that it can cause some people anxiety, particularly if they don't get/seek enough support with the results or they are people who struggle with numbers or anxiety and of course the cost, but a basic test kit will set you back about £15 and then pots of test strips are about £10 for a pot of 50. You do get through quite a lot of test strips in the first few months of testing but after that once you learn how your body responds to foods, then just an occasional test is usually enough to keep an eye on things. I have used birthday money for diabetes kit when it was too expensive to self fund, because what better way to spend it than to enable yourself to keep you healthy.
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Drummer
Well-Known Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 2
Hello @cazz66.
Welcome.
Basically - its the carbohydrates, starches and sugars.
For an ordinary type 2, carbs are a problem but cutting out the major contributors - grain, potatoes and other starchy vegetables, high carb fruits, I set the limit at 10% by weight, it is quite often possible to lower blood glucose levels to normal numbers.
Testing after meals is a good idea as we all tend to differ in what we can or can't eat to keep our numbers normal. For some porridge for breakfast is fine, my insides just see it as a challenge....
Welcome.
Basically - its the carbohydrates, starches and sugars.
For an ordinary type 2, carbs are a problem but cutting out the major contributors - grain, potatoes and other starchy vegetables, high carb fruits, I set the limit at 10% by weight, it is quite often possible to lower blood glucose levels to normal numbers.
Testing after meals is a good idea as we all tend to differ in what we can or can't eat to keep our numbers normal. For some porridge for breakfast is fine, my insides just see it as a challenge....
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