newbie confusion

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romperwoman

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Type 2
Hi. My name is jeni and I'm 38 years old. I have had gestational diabetes with all 3 of my pregnancies, each time being pregressivly worse. It left me with reactive hypoglycemia and then last week I was diagnosed with diabetes. The thing is the nurse said she doesn't know if I'm type 1 or 2 as I have got worse quickly. But I jhave lots of hypos even though I'm not on medication. How can this be?? I'm very confused and I think in a bit of denial. Any advice or help greatly appreciated. X
 
Hi Jeni, welcome to the forum 🙂 Sorry to hear about your diagnosis :( What levels are your blood sugars falling to when you have hypos? Do you know what level you were at when you were diagnosed? It's possible that you re dropping low because your pancreas is being a bit slow on the uptake when you eat, and then over-reacting a little late when your food is already well on the way to being digested. If your levels are not dropping below 3.5 mmol/l then another possibility is that your levels since your diagnosis have been better than they were before - this can lead to 'false' hypos, where your brain thinks, because your levels are lower than it is used, then you must be too low so it sends out the alarm signals and you get hypo symptoms.

What sort of things are you eating? I would suggest keeping a food diary and noting the amount and type of carbohydrate in your meals, and also recording the time and level of any hypos. This might help you to determine whether certain foods are worse than others at dropping your levels low.
 
Welcome to the forum, romperwoman / jeni.

Reactive hypoglycaemia happens without medication, usually when people are extemely active over a long period and / or (perhaps more likely in your case) when body produces too much insulin in reaction to taking food. As different foods may cause different reactions, it's worth keeping a food diary, so you can avoid foods that cause you problems. If you have a blood glucose meter and test strips left over from your pregnancy, then you can compare blood glucose levels before eating and 2 hours after.

Don't worry too much about whether you're type 1 or 2 - it's more important that you get the right treatment for you. If you need diabetes medication, then, in England, you will qualify for free prescriptions.
 
Welcome Jeni 🙂. There is a lot of confusion over T1 & T2. In very basic terms T1 your panc doesn't work in T2 it works but in a restricted way. Every ones different fat around/ etc. There are lots of people off meds for various reasons. Good luck 🙂
 
Thank you for your replies. I have a monitor and the nurse has asked me to do a week of tests so she can get an idea what's going on. I had a second fasting test the other day too. I think my last fasting was 7.2 and my gtt was 10.something. Can't remember! Was all a bit of a blur tbh. I knew it was coming as after my last baby the consultant said I was likely to be diabetic within 10 years. But that was only 9 months ago, tjpiught I might have a bit longer! Im not overweight and I am pretty active. I've got 3 kids under 6 so its a bit non stop! I walk 3 miles most days with a two year old strapped on my back as I don't drive. I am breastfeeding too so not sure if that is adding to the lows? My lowest yesterday was 3.1 but I do go down to 2 sometimes. I know my diet could be better and I'm going to work on that. I followed a wheat free diet for a while and that seemed to help but just got complicated when trying to feed the whole family.
 
Hi Jeni
I can't be much help with information, just wanted to say hello and welcome. Hopefully the nurse will be able to help work it all out 🙂
 
Something that may help is to eat meals with a low glycaemic index/load. Glycaemic load is choosing combinations of food that will have a slow, steady impact on your blood sugar levels - The GL Diet for Dummies is a good introduction 🙂
 
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