New member, Hello

[fairportfan]

I am a new member, have been living with Type 2 diabetes for a good number of years (I forget exactly how many but I think it's over 10). Currently, I am 'on the high side of OK' (they tell me it's all those jammy doughnuts. But I will take that under advisement.) and am making every effort to reduce my HBA1C number.
Any help and suggestions will be welcomed.
Regards
Stuart

 

[trophywench]

Seriously though - if you have a fondness for such things and don't hold back in your consumption of them, that really is the fast route to trouble! None of us with diabetes can cope with too much carbohydrate and there's an end to it - so we have to watch how much carb we consume, to avoid accelerating the end of us!

Tell us more about yourself - have you made any effort to cut down and/or limit the amount of carb you eat?

 

[rebrascora]

Hi Stuart and welcome

Yeah, jammy doughnuts are not such a good idea unfortunately!

Can you tell us a bit about how you manage your diabetes? ie. What, if any, medication you are on and any adjustments that you have already made to your diet, joking aside. If you could give us an idea of a typical day's food and drink, that would enable us to see where you might easily make some low carb swaps and give your body a chance to get back on top of your blood glucose backlog!
Are you able to exercise at all?... A brisk daily walk is as good as anything if you can manage that or seated exercises if you have limited mobility.

Do you know what your recent HbA1c result was? Here on the forum we encourage people to take control of their diabetes and knowing results, so that you can track your progress is part of that. Getting a BG meter if you don't currently have one is an invaluable tool is enabling you to see how your body responds to different foods. Seeing your BG levels shoot up into the stratosphere might help you to avoid the doughnuts in the future. It cured me of eating big bags of Jacobs salt and vinegar crackers!! Seriously though we liken managing diabetes without a BG meter to driving without a speedometer. Getting a nasty high HbA1c result in 6 months time is like a speeding ticket coming through the door and doesn't really tell you where you went wrong, whereas getting results in real time, meal by meal and day by day can be quite motivating and help you to regulate and tailor your diet as you go along, as well as deter you from the naughty stuff, when you can see what it is doing to you.
BG meters can be relatively inexpensive (some companies give them away) but it is best to buy one which has relatively cheap test strips as it is the test strips which make the meter manufacturers money and test strips are individual to each particular make and model of meter. For this reason, the 2 meters most often recommended here on the forum by people who self fund are the Gluco Navii or the Spirit Healthcare Tee2. Both are available online and cost about £15 for the meter kit and about £8 for each extra pot of 50 test strips. You go through a lot of test strips, so it is worth getting at least a couple of extra pots of test strips if you decide to buy a meter. There is a box to tick to confirm you are diabetic and that automatically removes the VAT. We can advise you on testing strategy if/when you get a meter, but this will help to give you knowledge about how your body responds to food and that can be quite individual..... Would be a shame to give up the doughnuts if you are the one diabetic in the world who can get away with them 😉!

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Welcome to the forum @fairportfan 🙂

The convention (hehe!) is to aim to manage blood glucose levels by moderating the amount of carbohydrate in your diet to a level where your body can properly digest it. It can also help to experiment not only with portion sizes, but also with the types of carbohydrate, as different sources of carb suit some people more than others. Eg you might find breakfast cereals are a bit of a disaster no matter how much fibre they contain, but that a moderate portion of white basmati rice is much kinder on your BGs

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

You can use a BG meter, taking a reading before and again 2hrs after eating, to see what the differences are (initially in a way the numbers themselves matter less than the differences between them). Ideally the difference between the before and after readings would be 2-3mmol/L or less. Once you can see how you respond to different meals you can begin experimenting with reducing portion sizes of carbs and trying different types to reduce the ‘meal rise’ (sometimes just having things at a different time of day makes a difference). It’s a gradual process of tweaking and tailoring your menu to find one that suits your tastebuds, your waistline and your BG levels 🙂

If you are interested in this approach you may find test-review-adjust by Alan S a helpful framework.

If you need to self fund your BG meter, the most affordable meters members here have found are the SD Gluco Navii or the Spirit Tee2 - which both have test strips at around £8 for 50

Good luck, and let us know how you get on 🙂

 

[Vonny]

Hi @fairportfan, not only replying to wish you luck in ditching the doughnuts, but to say our Fairport gig in Leeds last Friday was cancelled as poor old Dave Pegg and Simon Nicholl have covid! We're going to see them in Buxton instead on the 5th
March.
You've been given great advice which I can't improve on, so best of luck and hope you get to see Fairport on this tour! 🙂