Newbie to the Forum.

[Amirati]

Hello to all 🙂 I am new to this forum, but I am an oldie to Type 2 Diabetes. I was a little anxious and nervous to join (I am unsure as to why). But…here I am. So, heyyy. I feel a little lost, confused and a little disappointed. I think of a lot of my anxiety has to do with how I have been treated by some healthcare professionals within the NHS. Here’s my story…I was diagnosed with T2 Diabetes in 2011. I was able to manage my Diabetes quite well with Diet and Metformin for quite some time. But, due to a few life changing factors, this is no longer the case…my last HBA1C was 101. I was referred to the most appalling Diabetes Clinic, where I was greeted by the most unfriendly Consultant, who practically rolled their eyes at me. I have now been put on Ozempic (as well as the metformin). I was very apprehensive in starting Ozempic (especially when I did inform the Doctors that my diet was poor). I have now been put on this drug and didn’t feel good with it initially. However, I suffer with severe Acid Reflux. So was sent to have an endoscopy and have been diagnosed with Diabetes Paresis and GERD, I feel as if this is all spiralling out of control. I have already contacted my GP to say I no longer wish to that Diabetic clinic (they were very understanding and apologetic). I really want to get back on track, but just feel it’s getting beyond me. Sorry for such a long winded message. Thank you for reading and listening 🙂

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Welcome to the forum @Amirati

Sorry to hear you have had a negative experience in a diabetes clinic, but good to hear your surgery was understanding.

Great that you have joined the forum, and it feels as though you want to make something of a fresh start, and to refocus on your diabetes management, perhaps in a slightly different way.

It is all too easy for our best intentions to slip over time, and needing a bit of a reset is not at all uncommon.

Sorry to hear that you have developed gastroparesis and GERD alongside your diabetes. Hopefully by improving your diabetes management you can slow any further progress.

You’ve already identified that your diet may not be ideal for your diabetes, and it is certainly the case that medication cannot work alone, but has to be balanced with a way of eating that supports your body’s ability to cope with the food you are eating.

Sometimes our eating, and especially snacking, can become fairly mindless and automatic over time, and we sometimes don’t really accurately understand exactly what we are eating over the course of a week.

One of the biggest questions when trying to get to grips with your diabetes is often ‘what can I eat’ and while there are obvious things like cakes, biscuits, sweets and sugary drinks that you will want to cut right back on, you might be surprised how much *all* carbohydrate affects your BG levels, including rice, pasta, potatoes, bread, pastry, grains, cereals and many fruits.

Many members wanting a bit of a diabetes reset 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 (not just ‘of which sugars’) in yoir meals and snacks. It doesn’t have to be a gram-perfect calculation, the nearest 5-10g is fine. It 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, and the impact of any snacks on your daily intake. The learning you gain might also suggest some likely candidates for swaps, portion reductions, or using lower carb alternatives (eg celeriac or swede mash, or cauli ‘rice’) to reduce the ‘carb load’ of various meals.

If you would like a good overview of T2 diabetes, to add to the knowledge you’ve already picked up over the years, members here frequently recommend Maggie Davey’s Letter and Gretchen Becker’s book T2 Diabetes, the first year, which you can work through gradually.

And keep asking questions on the forum too - we are here to support and encourage you 🙂

 

[Amirati]

@everydayupsanddowns thank you kindly for your reply. I will definitely check out the links you have provided. Yes, you are correct…I wish to hit the reset button and start afresh. Do you recommend any good tracking apps to monitor carbohydrates?

 

[Leadinglights]

@everydayupsanddowns thank you kindly for your reply. I will definitely check out the links you have provided. Yes, you are correct…I wish to hit the reset button and start afresh. Do you recommend any good tracking apps to monitor carbohydrates?

There are a few app that people use (I don't myself, just a pen and paper when I first started) some you have to pay for some are free.
You might want to check out this link for a good way forward to changing your dietary regime, obviously you have to take account of your gastro issues but people often find low carb does help with those issues. But it is an approach that has had success.

Freshwell Low Carb Project - Home

lowcarbfreshwell.co.uk

 

[Mrs Mimoo]

myfitness pal is useful for food diary and exercise diary.

 

[Amirati]

@Leadinglights thank you for the link. I will definitely look at this.

 

[Amirati]

@Martin.A Thank you for your message. Yes, I have just been given a machine. Although not entirely sure when to test. I have an appointment on Tuesday to go through this.

 

[Amirati]

@Mrs Mimoo thank you for the message. I will also check this app out.

 

[Deleted member 34756]

Hi @Amirati, welcome to the diabetes UK forum! It's great to see you've joined hopefully you find this platform useful and receive many amazing tips 🙂.

 

[kazz94]

Start with a daily fasting test. This is best taken as soon as you get up in the morning, as you won't have eaten or drunk anything during the night. This will tell you how well your body is managing your BG in the absence of food and exercise.
For T2s the target range is between 4 and 7. I've usually tested within a few minutes of getting up.

The other tests should be before and after a meal (pre- and post-prandial). If you test just before you start eating and then again 2 hours later, without having anything else to eat or drink in between, the second reading will tell you how much that meal affected your BG. For T2s BG should be below 8.5 and the difference between the pre- and post-meal reading should be no more than 3. If you're within those numbers then your meal choice was OK. These checks are useful for showing us how different foods affect our BG so that we can ditch or cut back on things that push our numbers too high. After a while you'll know enough to only have to do pre- and post-meal testing when you have something you haven't had before.

Random testing during the day won't tell you anything meaningful so we tend to follow the above testing regime. Keeping a food diary alongside your pre- and post-meal readings will help you sort out your diet.

Hope this helps.

Martin

Hi Martin, how does the dawn phenomena sit with fbg and does it still happen if you get up later than dawn

 

[silentsquirrel]

DP and FOTF are not quite the same thing, DP can start well before you wake/get up.

 

[trophywench]

Whereas FOTP does not start until you literally put your 'foot on the floor' when getting out of bed!

 

[silentsquirrel]

Thanks for pointing that out but I didn't actually say they were the same thing.

Apologies, Martin, I misunderstood your

"Dawn Phenomenon is just a term that describes how your liver produces a glucose burst to get your day started once you get moving. Foot On The Floor Syndrome is another term."

to mean FOTF syndrome is another term for DP.

 

[kazz94]

Dawn Phenomenon is just a term that describes how your liver produces a glucose burst to get your day started once you get moving. Foot On The Floor Syndrome is another term. Some people aim to minimize it by testing even before they get up. I don't think there's anything anyone can do about it as it's the way Mother Nature has engineered our bodies to function but if people test a little higher than usual in the morning the tendency is to pin it on DP/FOTF.

Thanks for explaining Martin.