Hi, I have been on a well being course for the last 12 months which is designed for people who are borderline diabetic. When I started the course my 'number' was 45 and I know that reaching 48 would be bad news as it gives a diabetic diagnosis. I take good care of my diet, took the advice from the course but in March this year my number had risen to 48. During some routine tests for another health problem I recently asked for a repeat diabetes test and the number has come back as 68! I am waiting for a retest but can anyone out there confirm that such a rise could have happened in only a few months and just how bad 68 would be? Thanks
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Newbie waiting on a diagnosis
- Thread starter Alfieboy
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ColinUK
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Can you give an example of the kind of things you eat during a typical week?
Generally granola for breakfast sometimes with banana in it. Light lunch some sort of salad, occasionally a small homemade pizza with salad. Dinner try to eat a couple of fish based meals. Virtually no ready meals (particularly since lockdown), we have a veggie in the house so meat eating has reduced significantly. I do eat a fair amount of fruit and lots of veg. Unfortunately I do like a few bottles of beer each day though so not a saint (yet)
rebrascora
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Hi and welcome
Sorry to hear your HbA1c has headed skywards.
Unfortunately the dietary advice you were given together with your increase in vegetarian meals may be responsible for this rise and your odd beer will not be helping. Most forms of vegetarian protein (lentils and pulses etc) also add carbs to the diet (whereas meat doesn't) and it is carbs that we diabetics cannot process effectively and cause our BG to rise.
Carb rich foods are the things that we need to ration or avoid and these include the obvious unhealthy cakes, biscuits, sweets and yes beer but also the starchy carbs like bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, lentils, whole grains and even the otherwise healthy foods like porridge and fruit.
Granola, unless it is a special low carb variety is usually full of sugar and oats (both carb rich foods) and probably as bad a choice for breakfast as a banana (which is one of the highest carb fruits) so the combination of the two is a double whammy to your Blood Glucose (BG) at a time of the day (morning) when we are usually most insulin resistant, so the first thing you can do to improve things is probably is change your breakfast choice. Eggs would be a better option for breakfast without bread or with a slice of low carb bread/toast, However, the approach we encourage on this forum is to get yourself a BG meter and test before each meal and then 2 hours after to see the effect each meal has on our BG levels and tailor our diet around our BG response to foods, rather than follow bog standard NHS dietary advice which may work for some people but certainly not for everyone.
BG meters are relatively inexpensive to buy at approx. £15 for a basic meter but the cost of buying more test strips fot them is where the finances stack up and testing 2x for every meal soon uses up test strips. For this reason we recommend the 2 meters with the cheapest test strips.... the SD Gluco Navii or the Spirit Healthcare Tee2. The test strips for these are just £8 for a pot of 50 as oppose to 2x or even 3x that much for other more fancy meters.
It is also really helpful to keep an honest food diary alongside your BG readings. Over a period of a few months you will start to build up a list of meals and portion sizes which your body can cope with and then you will not need to test so frequently although many people feel it is helpful to keep a check on things after that but perhaps in a slightly less regular basis.
Anyway, I hope the above gives you some food for thought and an idea of how to progress. We can give you lots of tips and tricks for substituting high carb foods for lower carb alternatives and if there is anything you need to know or don't understand, just ask.
Sorry to hear your HbA1c has headed skywards.
Unfortunately the dietary advice you were given together with your increase in vegetarian meals may be responsible for this rise and your odd beer will not be helping. Most forms of vegetarian protein (lentils and pulses etc) also add carbs to the diet (whereas meat doesn't) and it is carbs that we diabetics cannot process effectively and cause our BG to rise.
Carb rich foods are the things that we need to ration or avoid and these include the obvious unhealthy cakes, biscuits, sweets and yes beer but also the starchy carbs like bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, lentils, whole grains and even the otherwise healthy foods like porridge and fruit.
Granola, unless it is a special low carb variety is usually full of sugar and oats (both carb rich foods) and probably as bad a choice for breakfast as a banana (which is one of the highest carb fruits) so the combination of the two is a double whammy to your Blood Glucose (BG) at a time of the day (morning) when we are usually most insulin resistant, so the first thing you can do to improve things is probably is change your breakfast choice. Eggs would be a better option for breakfast without bread or with a slice of low carb bread/toast, However, the approach we encourage on this forum is to get yourself a BG meter and test before each meal and then 2 hours after to see the effect each meal has on our BG levels and tailor our diet around our BG response to foods, rather than follow bog standard NHS dietary advice which may work for some people but certainly not for everyone.
BG meters are relatively inexpensive to buy at approx. £15 for a basic meter but the cost of buying more test strips fot them is where the finances stack up and testing 2x for every meal soon uses up test strips. For this reason we recommend the 2 meters with the cheapest test strips.... the SD Gluco Navii or the Spirit Healthcare Tee2. The test strips for these are just £8 for a pot of 50 as oppose to 2x or even 3x that much for other more fancy meters.
It is also really helpful to keep an honest food diary alongside your BG readings. Over a period of a few months you will start to build up a list of meals and portion sizes which your body can cope with and then you will not need to test so frequently although many people feel it is helpful to keep a check on things after that but perhaps in a slightly less regular basis.
Anyway, I hope the above gives you some food for thought and an idea of how to progress. We can give you lots of tips and tricks for substituting high carb foods for lower carb alternatives and if there is anything you need to know or don't understand, just ask.
ColinUK
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Generally out of the things you’ve mentioned the ones which may well wreck your BG levels may include:
Granola
Bananas
(Presumably dairy milk to go with the granola?)
Pizza
Quite a lot of fruit
Root veg (generally green leafy stuff is OK and cauliflower, broccoli, courgette are OK)
Beer
The advice given by many courses designed for diabetics is seriously outmoded alex really ought to be updated taking into account up to date research.
Do you have your own BG monitor? That’s the only way you can really be certain how your body reacts to various foods.
Ralph-YK
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HbA1c results can change that much within a year. The HbA1c gives an average covering 3 months. So you'd needs tests with at least that much time between them.
I don't know how to quantify that.
Drummer
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I know what I want to write, but feel that it would not be appropriate.
You have been very badly advised to eat things which you can't cope with and which have done you no good, and now - with any luck - by stopping the high carbohydrate foods you can make a proper start on getting back to where you were, but you have probably wasted a lot of time and effort making yourself unwell.
You have been very badly advised to eat things which you can't cope with and which have done you no good, and now - with any luck - by stopping the high carbohydrate foods you can make a proper start on getting back to where you were, but you have probably wasted a lot of time and effort making yourself unwell.
Docb
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I can relate to your experience of a sharp increase in HbA1c. Mine went from bumbling around in the 40's for 10 years or so before jumping to 82 with spot readings in the high teens/low twenties. GP arranged a pancreas scan to make sure nothing sinister was going on - there wasn't - and then I found this site and started reading. That gave me an insight into the role of carbohydrate in glucose control and within months my HbA1c was back below 40. A big change in diet, some medication and a small weight loss all contributed to the reduction and my opinion is that the diet change was the major factor.
So if my experience is anything to go by, yes you can get jumps in HbA1c and you can get it down again.
So if my experience is anything to go by, yes you can get jumps in HbA1c and you can get it down again.
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Welcome to the forum @Alfieboy
Hopefully with a slightly modified approach to your menu, which aims for a moderate carbohydrate intake, your HbA1c will come back down into the normal range.
I think one of the challenges with the default normal ‘healthy eating’ advice is that it rather requires you to have a fully functioning metabolism, and it often needs tweaking and adjusting if your body has developed a difficulty in effectively processing carbohydrates 🙂
Fortunately, as you can see, there are plenty here who have had great success from slightly altering their diet to reduce the proportion of carbohydrate in meals. You don’t need to cut carbs completely... you just need to tweak them downwards until you’ve found a level that your body can cope with.
If you are carrying any extra weight, then shedding that will really help you use the insulin you produce properly too, especially if there is any fat built up around your organs. Exercise and activity also improves insulin sensitivity, so adding that in is another helpful strategy 🙂
Hopefully with a slightly modified approach to your menu, which aims for a moderate carbohydrate intake, your HbA1c will come back down into the normal range.
I think one of the challenges with the default normal ‘healthy eating’ advice is that it rather requires you to have a fully functioning metabolism, and it often needs tweaking and adjusting if your body has developed a difficulty in effectively processing carbohydrates 🙂
Fortunately, as you can see, there are plenty here who have had great success from slightly altering their diet to reduce the proportion of carbohydrate in meals. You don’t need to cut carbs completely... you just need to tweak them downwards until you’ve found a level that your body can cope with.
If you are carrying any extra weight, then shedding that will really help you use the insulin you produce properly too, especially if there is any fat built up around your organs. Exercise and activity also improves insulin sensitivity, so adding that in is another helpful strategy 🙂
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