pre diabetic debute

[Foetal]

Hello, I was on heavy psychiatric medication for seven years. The threat of developing diabetes, due to phenomenal weight gain from the drug, is a well known consequence of taking such medication. The medication is increasingly being pushed towards people who only suffer moderate depression, anxiety, mood swings or those with autism. Many more children suffering from various mental health issues are being prescribed such powerful, diabetes causing, medication. Last year I came off the medication because it landed me in the General Hospital emergency department with heart failure combined with pneumonia due to the inflammation from the drug reaction. It could have been fatal. Since then, I have been off all medication. So, imagine my deep disappointment when my GP recently diagnosed me as 'pre diabetic'. I got the blood test because I was suffering from catastrophic weakness, blurred vision, bone dry mouth, peeing a loch (I am Scottish). GP told me I am blood level 42, so only just into pre diabetes levels. I don't care what magic number she has given me, I know my own body, and my body is feeling ill every day from this. All my other bloods checked out fine. Though I am a neurotic person I am also a realist and a fatalist and so I bought a blood glucose monitor and find it comforting to document my bloody ups and downs. I have a disability that gives me awful pain after walking thirty yards. I have to stop walking for five minutes to let pain diminish a bit before I can walk again, then stop, then walk. It isn't intermittent claudication and it's not the pre diabetes, I've had it for years, but it's deterioration has occurred same time as I now need to do brisk walking to get my weight down. Since I cannot, I am facing not being able to get on top of the pre diabetes. I'm on low carbs now. Maybe I still eat too much? 1500 calories per day. Ravenous. I do sneak a tiny, baby sized chocolate bar each day in case I lose the will to live, : ) , but I probably should pack that in. The blurred vision is so profound and sudden it's like a metal shutter on a hardware store slamming shut, I can't watch tv, can't read, without squinting like Clint Eastwood in A Fistful Of Dollars. The dry mouth feels like I've swallowed a tumble dried facecloth all day. It's always the straw that breaks the camels back, not the real burdens, and these straws, blurred vision, dry mouth, freak me right out. If this is what life is like at the shallow side of diabetes then my true empathy and admiration goes out to those people with diabetes at the deep side. All that being equal, I do want to say that those pre diabetics who comment that they are getting symptoms, probably really are. I think we should think of it like how in a hospital the people with lung problems don't kick out the people with stomach problems and the people with back problems don't kick out the people with exotic diseases, in other words, it is generally respected that ILL IS ILL regardless of correct diagnosis, or diagnostic criteria or levels. I hope pre diabetics like me, who do get distressing symptoms they'd rather not have, continue to find compassion, and welcome, from this, and other forums. Experienced members should not overlook how very much appreciated their experience is. You are like Guardians Against Diabetes to those new members who have the pre diabetes innocence that advances sleepwalking into the full blown disease. I've never joined a forum before. I'm not sure how it works. I'm presently snowed under with lots of other duties, chores, obligations that gobble up my life and give me no time. I will have to go away for a bit but will be back to check whether I've had any responses. Apologies about my ignorance in these mechanical/computery matters. I will give my blood glucose notes at a later date (it's a bit like shyly showing a leg to a community of thousands). Be Well!

 

[Drummer]

I was feeling a bit dismal when diagnosed, and walking using poles due to a damaged knee - little did I know how I was to need them in a few short weeks - but 2 and 1/2 years (almost) later - last night I was doing a demo of a morris jig. Not with the spring and vigour of my youth - but non the less - dancing.
You have symptoms of diabetes, but they can - for the lucky ones, reduce and fade away.
Many people find that just by eating low carb and avoiding low fat alternatives to natural ones, their metabolism recovers or at last improves. Your Hba1c isn't bad, but it represents an average - you could have been experiencing high spikes after meals, or still be suffering the effects of the medication.
Don't worry about not being able to walk stopping weightloss - taking brisk walks only serves to sharpen the appetite, as far as I can see. You could try using some sort of exercise you can do sitting down - there are those shaky blade things or resistance bands and springs you can use to work your muscles - it is all exercise.

 

[CathyB]

Welcome @Foetal
I agree with @Drummer, you can control this by thinking about your diet, I chose the low carb route and also struggled with activity at the start due to heart disease, just walking to the bottom of my road was like climbing a mountain, I was short of breath and my angina would kick in. I started really slowly, just doing what I could without pushing too far, it’s taken me a year to get to where I am now, blood glucose and cholesterol back in normal range, haven’t used my gtn spray or had angina pain in six months and I’m now walking 45 mins most nights!! My weight has dropped, my heart is stronger, I’m coming off my metformin and I am much happier in life, for me, diabetes has changed my life for the better 🙂

 

[Madeline]

Another one with very reduced mobility, mine is due to respiratory disease - I have really bad asthma that has badly damaged my lungs and am on oxygen. I find even just pottering about helps, and like @CathyB I'm trying to push myself every day. I have to agree, in some ways having diabetes has increased my ‘fight’, I’m bloody minded and I don’t give up easily.

 

[SueEK]

Hello Foetal and a big welcome to you. I agree with all of the above and your glucose level is quite good so a few adjustments will really help you. Have a look through the forum and ask any questions you like, we are all here to help you and each other

 

[Foetal]

Thank you to everyone for replying to my newbie post. I hope this is the way to position my response and it doesn't shoot down a rabbit hole when I click it. I hope you can all hear me. I'm so moved that you all replied. Your words of encouragement really comfort and empower me. I just wish I had the magic fairy dust that could make you all better. I was late home because this evening I went to a Science Festival lecture about Diabetes. It was held in the opulent Great Hall of The Royal College of Surgeons. A Professor Mark WJ Strachan delivered an overview talk about scientific innovations and how type 1 diabetes, late diagnosis, is increasingly being rediagnosed as type 2 variations via C peptide analysis. Also, slides were shown of marvels of technology like a portable bionic pancreas and pumps that get messaged by cutaneous blood glucose machines. I'm new to trying to figure everything out so some of it went over my head but most of it I understood. These are some of my blood glucose monitor readings. Forgive me if they seem like petty digits compared to what you all have to contend with. Maybe you'd be happy to have these readings. For me, I feel so unwell on these readings.

Seven am (fasting, no food for thirteen hours) 6.6
Three pm (no food for seven hours) 5.8
Ten pm (no food for four hours) 5.6
Next day.
Six am (no food for eight hours) 5.8
Four pm (no food for ten hours) 4.6
Next day.
Six am (no food for thirteen hours) 5.9
Twelve pm (no food for six hours) 6.2
Five pm (no food for five hours) 4.5
Ten pm (no food for four hours) 5.9
Next day.
Six am (no food for eight hours) 6.2
Four pm (no food for ten hours) 5.0
Seven pm (no food for three hours) 5.7
Ten pm (no food for three hours) 6.3
Three am (no food for five hours) 6.2
Next day.
Seven am (no food for nine hours) 6.6

I eat one small slice of buttered toast and two unsugared coffees for breakfast, then eat absolutely nothing all day until early evening, around four or five pm approximately, with some random exceptions. I then eat at that sort of time a full meal of about 1300 calories, limiting carbs as much as possible. I do include in that amount a small token chocolate bar every evening, maybe I should not. I get very empty and burningly hungry but try to distract myself. I could maybe try to break up the big evening meal throughout the day but I'm ridiculous and find that because I'm an eat the whole damn box kind of a person a 'little' lunch would make me lose all control. Sorry if this seemed too long a post, there's probably an etiquette about not writing epic posts. I'll trim it next time. Nice bird by the way! I adore birds. The photo/icon of a crow.

 

[Madeline]

You yap away as much as you want to, I’m sure it will come as a welcome change from me blathering on

That’s my baby Odin in my pic - he was a baby rook I hand reared before becoming ill, it’s what I used to do, wildlife rehabilitation for the local sanctuaries and vets. He’s released now, in a group of other similarly aged rooks.

 

[Drummer]

The problem with anything carby at breakfast time is that it causes a release of insulin, and that makes you feel hungry.
Why not have a proper meal, with protein and fats and maybe some salad - check on just how many gm of carbs there are in your slice of bread and have about the same amount in low carb foods - stir fry is good on a cold morning - mushrooms, courgette aubergines, sweet peppers - I eat that and am not hungry all day. I don't need to eat lunch.
I have coffee with cream after breakfast - and another one after dinner.
So much 'information' about the foods to eat to lower weight just doesn't prove true when tested.

 

[Foetal]

Thankyou, responders so far. Madeline, what a joyous name for a Rook! My life has been reared by rearing an assortment of unexpected birds. I even once had an tiny finch egg hatch in the warmth of my cleavage in the middle of a cinema screening of an avant-garde French movie. I was something of a bird Superhero. I'd be strolling with a friend, chatting away, next second running into oncoming traffic to rescue a Coot, or ambling along a beach, next minute stripped of outer jacket and wrestling with a downed Gannet. Such events happened to me so routinely that friends soon learned to stand like coat hooks waiting for my return and carrying on the conversation as if there had been no pause. I was always great at the rescue part but I totally sucked at properly looking after the poor, hapless creatures I did. I learned shamefully over the years to simply box em up and pass the buck to the professionals, like you. One baby Crow that I rescued from huge, ginger moggie, I tried my stupid best with over a week, turning my bedroom into a burgled-looking human aviary but found the limp, feathery heap one morning. Parent Crows, (whom I idiotically thought would be thankful for my rescue efforts) quite rightly tried to savage my very eyeballs every time I emerged to do some shopping, for quite some considerable time, in fact, until I left that neighbourhood. Daren't go back! I have since ascertained I should not have given the baby Crow water through a tin foil pipe, no water at all, now shudder to think, what was I thinking? Anyway, I try to let Mother Nature do the rescuing these days, and avert my gaze, unless the situation is truly dire. Having the prediabetes symptoms usefully makes my vision so blurred that a bird would have to fall on my head for me to see it. The bird world can breathe a collective sigh of relief! My walking problem means I don't frequent wild places anymore, and although cities can have abundant nature, mostly all I see are pigeons, not that pigeons don't have feelings too. Anyway, I must resist turning this thread into non-diabetes matters. And Drummer, I'm impressed with your Morris dancing. I saw Morris dancing when visiting Glastonbury. It moved me to tears. Somewhere I read that Morris dancing was pinched from the Scots where a rudimentary form of it had been a type of fertility dance mimicking stags with antlers (by holding the arms aloft). But I may have picked that up quite wrong. I might have just invoked the wrath of Morris dancers. I'll shut up now and never mention it again. But, seriously, yes, I thank you for your encouragement to get dancing and moving and jiggling. Thank you for caring about me. Thank you all. The mention of heart disease I can sympathize with because I recently had heart failure with the medication crisis. And asthma, because I had pneumonia. Not easy to live with. But as the rather annoyingly smug saying goes 'if you're not six feet under, you're having a good day'. That's not to dismiss suffering.

 

[CathyB]

Thank you to everyone for replying to my newbie post. I hope this is the way to position my response and it doesn't shoot down a rabbit hole when I click it. I hope you can all hear me. I'm so moved that you all replied. Your words of encouragement really comfort and empower me. I just wish I had the magic fairy dust that could make you all better. I was late home because this evening I went to a Science Festival lecture about Diabetes. It was held in the opulent Great Hall of The Royal College of Surgeons. A Professor Mark WJ Strachan delivered an overview talk about scientific innovations and how type 1 diabetes, late diagnosis, is increasingly being rediagnosed as type 2 variations via C peptide analysis. Also, slides were shown of marvels of technology like a portable bionic pancreas and pumps that get messaged by cutaneous blood glucose machines. I'm new to trying to figure everything out so some of it went over my head but most of it I understood. These are some of my blood glucose monitor readings. Forgive me if they seem like petty digits compared to what you all have to contend with. Maybe you'd be happy to have these readings. For me, I feel so unwell on these readings.

Seven am (fasting, no food for thirteen hours) 6.6
Three pm (no food for seven hours) 5.8
Ten pm (no food for four hours) 5.6
Next day.
Six am (no food for eight hours) 5.8
Four pm (no food for ten hours) 4.6
Next day.
Six am (no food for thirteen hours) 5.9
Twelve pm (no food for six hours) 6.2
Five pm (no food for five hours) 4.5
Ten pm (no food for four hours) 5.9
Next day.
Six am (no food for eight hours) 6.2
Four pm (no food for ten hours) 5.0
Seven pm (no food for three hours) 5.7
Ten pm (no food for three hours) 6.3
Three am (no food for five hours) 6.2
Next day.
Seven am (no food for nine hours) 6.6

I eat one small slice of buttered toast and two unsugared coffees for breakfast, then eat absolutely nothing all day until early evening, around four or five pm approximately, with some random exceptions. I then eat at that sort of time a full meal of about 1300 calories, limiting carbs as much as possible. I do include in that amount a small token chocolate bar every evening, maybe I should not. I get very empty and burningly hungry but try to distract myself. I could maybe try to break up the big evening meal throughout the day but I'm ridiculous and find that because I'm an eat the whole damn box kind of a person a 'little' lunch would make me lose all control. Sorry if this seemed too long a post, there's probably an etiquette about not writing epic posts. I'll trim it next time. Nice bird by the way! I adore birds. The photo/icon of a crow.

A quick change might be to swap your bread to Burgen, a soy and linseed low carb option, like you I also indulge in a little chocolate after my evening meal but I have a couple of squares of sugar free dark choc with hazelnut that works for me

 

[Madeline]

I find the highest percentage Green & Blacks ok, and Burgen bread in small amounts - just one slice. We are all different though, you might be fine with more.

 

[SueEK]

I have 2 squares of Lindt 85% dark choc, yum

 

[Foetal]

Thank you so much to everyone for the advice you've all given me. I shall definitely change my shopping list. And the advice about walking is invaluable to me. Can I pick anyone's brain about dehydration? I'm not happy with the all day kalihari sand dune dry mouth thing. I try to chuck back gallons of water, even though I'm not that thirsty (weirdly enough, though I've never been a prolofic water drinker). But drinking lots and lots of water these days just becomes a bottomless pit as I pee it all out again within twenty minutes or so, and so keep having to refill. It's beginning to seem futile. I'm guessing that higher glucose in my blood triggers my kidneys to make me pee that out, but because I do so, I end up dehydrated with a very dry mouth, and possibly all my attempts to replenish my water table comes to asnought while my glucose won't let me. So I'm ruminating that I may just have to stop whinging and just live with the dry mouth because nothing short of lower glucose is ever going to correct that dehydration, and lower glucose involves lowering weight, which isn't going to rescue me for a few many months. I'm currently 13 stone, not sure how to convert it to modern assessments, I'm 5.4 in height. I figure I need to zap off at least a stone and a half, if not more. At 1300-ish calories per day, and reduced ability to walk fast, it will take long, slow, time. The GP gave me artificial saliva, spray. It's only useful as a form of masochistically adding insult to injury. It seems I'm stuck with the dehydration and my dry mouth. Maybe I could indulge in unexpected kissing

 

[Madeline]

With your BG levels I wouldn’t expect to feel thirsty because of diabetes at all, it’s usually only once you get into double figures that the drinking/peeing vicious circle kicks in as your body tries to dump the excess glucose. Wondering if something else is going on, like Sjogren's for example?

 

[Foetal]

Thankyou everyone, for your kindnesses. Madeleine I am not sure if my extremely dry mouth and bad blurred vision is caused by anything else. Sjorens sounds miserable since I'd have it for life, presumably. Though the same can be true of diabetes. I shall revisit my GP for a looksee. This morning I feel 'bullied to death by bully boy Death' coming at me from every angle in too many unnerving physical symptoms that I am today finding difficult to tune out with my usual panache. Crying helps.

 

[CathyB]

I also suffer badly with dry mouth, it’s embarrassing when I’m out in public or work and my lips stick to my teeth when I’m talking 😳 This is quite different to the insatiable thirst I had pre diagnosis so I get what you are saying. My bg is under control now soo it has nothing to do with my diabetes, but I do think it’s linked to my hormones.....I went through menopause in my 30’s, I’m now 57 so it’s been a looooong road, most of the pesky symptoms have gone now apart from the dry mouth, so I’m guessing I just have to live with it. Sorry I can’t offer a solution, beware of even sugar free sweets as they can also be high in carbs!

 

[Foetal]

Thank you, Cathy B. It's comforting to know I'm not alone, not that I'd wish the extreme dry mouth thing on anyone. Tomorrow morning I will go to my GP about it as it has become worse now even though I've lost some weight and am sticking to my diet, although tonight I felt so sorry for myself I came back from the shop with desirable foods, not my usual maudlin cabbage. I was at a fascinating lecture about global population explosion, sitting in front row, but I got extreme dry mouth, severe blurred vision and swoony drowsiness. I've been getting that mostly every day. I had peri-menopause around 2002 and so went on hormone pills. Im still on them. I've not got any hot flushes, but I'm sure hormones are part of the picture. Im not sure what's going on but I'm worried it's a whole 'system' thing, like my autoimmune system or central nervous system is packing in. One should not come off major psychiatric meds suddenly as it can cause damage, but I had no choice. Considering all of the things that can go wrong with our bodies it seems inadequate that we only get a sporadic five minute appointment with a doctor, not long enough to untie the proverbial shoelace.

 

[CathyB]

Hi @Foetal , did you get to see your doc?

 

[Foetal]

I'm just catching up with myself, and poor Notra Dame cathedral on fire . I did see not my usual GP. She was dismissive. I'm going to go back on Thursday to see my usual GP. I'll let you know how that goes. A dot of toothpaste on the tongue tricks the mind into forgetting the mouth is dry, but it only lasts for twenty minutes or so. Thank you for your caring.

 

[CathyB]

I'm just catching up with myself, and poor Notra Dame cathedral on fire . I did see not my usual GP. She was dismissive. I'm going to go back on Thursday to see my usual GP. I'll let you know how that goes. A dot of toothpaste on the tongue tricks the mind into forgetting the mouth is dry, but it only lasts for twenty minutes or so. Thank you for your caring.

Good luck on Thursday