My DN said to me today.........

[Carina1962]

I asked my DN today how long she thought i would get away with D/E control and she said that she has 400 diabetic patients on her books and there are only a few that have managed to keep to D/E control. She said that it could be 6 months to maybe 2 years before i may need medication but this depends on maintaining a healthy lifestyle, losing weight and being very strict. She then repeated from the last time that diabetes is a progressive disease and that it worsens with age so when i left her today i felt a little down even though my Hba1c result was good so although i should feel happy - i don't :-(

 

[Northerner]

Don't let her bring you down Carina. Diabetes is a complex and very individual disease. It may be possible for you to go many, many years keeping good levels before and medication is needed. There are things that you can control, like sticking with a healthy diet and lifestyle, and things you can't, like whether your pancreas is able to continue to produce insulin sufficiently to keep your levels steady. Some people need medication earlier through no fault of their own, and many people don't work hard to help themselves so require meds earlier.

Your nurse has presented a very simplistic view without addressing you as an individual and recognising your determination to learn and put into practice the thingsyou can do to improve your situation. What she says may be true, on the whole, but that may be because she has sapped the motivation from them with speeches like the one she gave you!

Don't let it get you down, you are doing very well! You should be proud of yourself and determined to continue your good work so far - it is working! 🙂

 

[wallycorker]

............. She then repeated from the last time that diabetes is a progressive disease and that it worsens with age so when i left her today i felt a little down even though my Hba1c result was good so although i should feel happy - i don't :-(.............

As I think you know already Carina - I'm a firm believer that diabetes is only progressive in poorly controlled Type 2s who are on diet and exercise. Certainly, my Type 2 diabetes progressed for eight years after diagnosis because I was following the "do not test" and "eat plenty of starchy carbohydrate" advice that is so often given out by healthcare professionals.

Once I discarded that advice and started to test and then started to cut back on the starchy carbohydrate that I eat because my meter told me that that food group sent my blood glucose levels into double figures, my condition has got better - i.e. it has done just the opposite of progressed it has regressed. These days all my numbers are much lower than they have been at any time in my life to the best of my knowledge.

What's more any symptoms of diabetes that I had experienced during the progressive eight years have now disappeared altogether.

Don't believe what your DN tells you about the inevitability of your condition getting worse with time. Just keep working at getting your numbers lower and stick around to watch your grandchildren grow up.

Best wishes as usual - John

 

[Caroline]

Sometimes health care professionals forget we are individuals. It is possible to go for a long time diet and exercise controled, there are people here like Wallycorker who will testify to that.

I think they give us the worst case scenario so that if it happens it is not too much of a shock, but if it doesn't we are happy. It's a win win situation for them.

You are doing very well, so keep up the good work. It is to your credit!

 

[Andy HB]

To be fair to the DN, she was only reporting what she sees on a daily basis.

But, that has little bearing on what will happen to you. You are an individual and won't necessarily follow the same path as her other patients.

Diabetes is a progressive disease, but that progression can be stopped or at the worst reduced through good control. Concentrate on the good control and stay positive (that also will have a bearing!).

Andy 🙂

 

[Cliff]

My uncle is very proud of the fact that he's been diet controlled for about 10 years. Even more impressive is that he has always been a slim chap and didn't have the advantage of being able to lose weight to assist his control.

I'm convinced it's possible for some to stay diet controlled for a long time. It's going to depend on how much pancreatic function you have left amongst other things, and that's outside your control but, for me, I will control what I can and hope for the best.

At 45, I have at least another 20 years of work ahead of me. I travel throughout the UK and abroad and need to be able to drive. The thought of having to take insulin terrifies me mainly because of the possible effects on my ability to drive, so I am well motivated to stay diet controlled for as long as humanly possible.

 

[wallycorker]

............At 45, I have at least another 20 years of work ahead of me. I travel throughout the UK and abroad and need to be able to drive. The thought of having to take insulin terrifies me mainly because of the possible effects on my ability to drive, so I am well motivated to stay diet controlled for as long as humanly possible........

I can relate to all of that Cliff!

Before I retired, I too used to travel widely in the UK and abroad and in doing that drove around 40,000 miles per year. I really cannot imagine how I would have managed to cope with that if I had needed to inject insulin.

As you know, I have the same motivation as you to stay diet controlled for just as long as I can - and hopefully the rest of my life. I'll certainly be doing everything that I can do to try to achieve that objective.

Best wishes - John

 

[RachelT]

It annoys me when they do that, not tell you you can stick with diet and exercise, that's good news, but have to point out how very terrible it's likely to get in the future weather you like it or not. I think that perhaps, although it's important to mention them, that nurses and doctors should scale back thier warnings about complications and stuff, it just scares you stupid when you're first diagnosed. Then everybody wonders why your're either avoiding the issue of your diabetes or obessesed about it.
When i went on the DESMOND course, the nurse running it virtually promised us that we'd all be on insulin in 5 years. She told us she had one patient who had avoided this, and this was because he was training for a marathon, and he still had to take his tablets...way to cheer us all up mrs....
I know for a fact that this isn't true. I have two grandparents with type 2 diabetes, both have been diagnosed for over five years. My mum's mum's diabetes is controlled by diet and exercise (well, diet, mostly as she is 80+) and my Dad's dad has been type 2 for over 30 years, probably longer, and he's only recently switched from Metformin to Gliclazide.
Well done Carina, good for you! Don't let the obligatory dark cloud spoil your achivement.

Rachel

 

[wallycorker]

...........When i went on the DESMOND course, the nurse running it virtually promised us that we'd all be on insulin in 5 years. She told us she had one patient who had avoided this, and this was because he was training for a marathon, and he still had to take his tablets...way to cheer us all up mrs...... I know for a fact that this isn't true. I have two grandparents with type 2 diabetes, both have been diagnosed for over five years. My mum's mum's diabetes is controlled by diet and exercise (well, diet, mostly as she is 80+) and my Dad's dad has been type 2 for over 30 years, probably longer, and he's only recently switched from Metformin to Gliclazide.
Well done Carina, good for you! Don't let the obligatory dark cloud spoil your achivement.

Hi Rachel - I agree with you on that matter.

It's nearly ten years since I was diagnosed and my situation did progress over the first eight years by following the "do not test" and "eat plenty of starchy carbohydrate" advice until my HbA1c reached 9.4% and I was getting near to the limit for tablet medication. I was staring down the gun of needing to start to inject insulin.

It was only then that I started reading about what I ought to do to deal with my diabetic condition. It was that that led me to start testing against my GP's specific advice. He wouldn't prescribe strips so I started buying them from people off eBay. That testing led me to start cutting the starchy carbohydrate that I ate - i.e. cereals, bread, potatoes, pasta, rice, pizza etc. My situation improved very quickly and quite dramatically!

These days my HbA1c is 5.0% and I am told by the healthcare professionals who advise me that I run blood glucose levels lower than their non-diabetic levels. What's more my GP has started to cut back on my metformin medication - from 2000mg to 1000mg per day - and that hasn't led to even a small increase in my blood glucose levels. Eventually, I fully expect that I will be able to come off the metformin - and quite possibly simvastatin and blood pressure tablets - altogether.

Moreover, I fully believe that I will be able to control my Type 2 diabetes through diet alone for the rest of my life. Whether things will work out like that then I can't really tell you, however, I certainly feel confident that it will be that way. These days, I no longer suffer any of the quite mild diabetic symptoms that had started to affect me - some of which neither I nor the medical people had associated with the fact that I suffered from Type 2 diabetes. More importantly, I have no fears regarding diabetic complications because I don't think that they will ever affect me now that I am eating correctly.

I can tell you that I am not "training for a marathon" - in fact I'm not even training for a twenty yard sprint. I rarely ever walk distances of more than one or two miles and when I do it is fairly infrequently.

As far as I am concerned, diet is the secret to controlling my long-standing Type 2 condition.

Best wishes - John

 

[Carina1962]

John, it is always inspiring to read your story and i do hope that with hard work and determination, i will get to my set 'goal' weight in the future as i do feel it is important for me to get my weight off and although i haven't given up starchy carbs completely (ie i will still eat wholemeal pasta and have bread but only use the burgen low GI and have cut down on my bread intake anyway) i am conscious of how much i have but apart from the odd blip i am managing to stay within the set guideline for BS control. I am on 40mg of simvastatin but i hope one day to reduce that to 20mg. I don't know how long i can avoid medication for high blood pressure but hope that i will be able to stay off this. I do lots of walking. I take one multivitamin every other day and omega 3 capsules twice a week (i try and spread them out because they are quite expensive, good quality ones).

 

[richardq]

With regard to the driving, I drive at least 30,000 miles a year, and the insulin isn't a problem, it just means an awful lot of test strips, as I have to test every time before I start the engine.... unless I've done it within the last 60 minutes. Again, good control helps as the numbers are generally more stable, and making sure to keep a good eye out for hypo symptoms.