Searching for answers

[Davefrommoulton]

Hello everyone, my name is Dave, diagnosed type 2 in 2015.
Having quite a bad year with infections of one kind or another which seem to have thrown my blood sugar through the roof.
my last hba1c was 100. An average of 17.5mmol/l daily so my diabetic nurse informed me. I already take Sukkarto 1000mg twice a day and was on linaglyptin in the morning as well, but they weren’t even touching glucose levels. I’d been getting pains in my chest for about 6 weeks and phoning my GP, but unable to get an appointment. Anyway, during my visit to the diabetic nurse for my review, I told her. She disappeared to see the GP who immediately sent me for a chest X-ray that showed a partially collapsed lung (right).
In the meantime I was taken off linaglyptin and put on empagliflozin to get my blood glucose levels down quickly.
it seems obvious that some infection in my chest, (possibly pleurisy) has caused the chest pains, the collapsed lung and the continually raised glucose levels.
empagliflozin works but causes me two other problems. I have suffered from migraines from the age of 8 and they have been a particular scourge this year. I’m averaging 17 a month with the rest of the days starting and ending with headaches. The medicine is designed to sequester sugar and empty from the kidneys, which it does with amazing frequency, leaving me dry. Not helpful for the migraines so I have to avoid dehydration, also not helpful from a work point of view, having to pee on average 14 to 20 times a day at work. It’s a catch 22 situation.
That’s what I’m dealing with, now the search, two-fold.
Firstly and least important, my drink of choice is soda water flavoured with a little Vimto NAS and it is only a small amount.
What I’m finding is that my blood glucose levels shoot up after drinking it.currently my ‘normal’ glucose level is around 10. After dinner tonight, taking my meds I took a reading 14.6
I settled down to watch TV, drank my soda water. As the evening wore on I felt dry and decided to take a reading 22.8
I take the empagliflozin in the morning so hopefully it’ll come down by then.
Question is, does anyone else have this reaction with Vimto NAS?
The second search for answers may or may not be to do with diabetes, but this one is more of a worry.
A couple of weeks ago, at work, during a meeting to discuss what was going to be happening over the Christmas period, I began to feel my heart racing.
We’d been sat for 35 minutes or so and in the space of the next two minutes my heart rate went from 75 to 178 bpm and stayed there for 15 minutes.
it scared everyone enough to get an ambulance.
The doctor said it was an SVT and looking back over my tracker, I’ve had 6 of them over the time I’ve been diagnosed and can’t remember having any prior to that.
how common is it for diabetic patients to also suffer from SVTs?
it’s not been a very good year healthwise and on top of that, I’ve lost a younger brother to MS and our dog died.

 

[Ljc]

Hi @Davefrommoulton . Welcome to the forum. Sorry to hear you have had such a rough time of it with high BGs (blood glucose) levels and infections. It’s likely the high BG levels are at least part of the cause of the infections.

As far as I am aware Soda water has no carbohydrates, so it won’t be that that’s causing the spike in your BG, I don’t know about Vimeo , if it’s a diet version it should be fine , if not it’s likely that is causing it.

What changes have you made to your diet , ie have you reduced your carbohydrate intake ?

 

[Davefrommoulton]

My weight last December was 15st 10lbs
This morning it’s 14st 6lbs.
I’ve reduced portion size more than anything, and I cook rather than get takeaways where I can.
we, (my wife and I), are both type 2, she is on slimming world to help keep her weight down, we have diabetic cookbooks, Pinch of Nom cookbooks.
I’m doing my part where I can.

Dave

 

[ianf0ster]

Hi Dave, Yes the infections will almost certainly be raising your BG.
Infections, stress, lack of sleep and several medications such as Statins and Steroid amongst others all raise BG in some/many people.
Strangely even drinks with artificial sweeteners can raise BG in some people. Never tried them myself for me it was always a natural sweetener (sugar, honey, syrup) or none at all.

However unless you drink a lot of your Vimto flavoured soda water, it's highly likely that your meals are carb laden.
Blood Glucose can be controlled by cutting carbs and replacing them with more protein and traditional fats. No need to lose weight - though cutting carbs without cutting calories usually reduces both weight and Blood Pressure as a side -effect

 

[rebrascora]

Hi Dave and welcome from me too and wishing you a Happy Christmas. I hope the New Year brings you better health.

You may not have been given the best advice as regards dietary changes when you were first diagnosed but we can certainly guide you here on the forum with what has worked for many people here.

If you give us an idea of what you currently eat on a daily basis.... so what an average breakfast, lunch and evening meal would consist of in terms of food and drink and any snacks then we should be able to see where the carbs are coming from and perhaps make suggestions for changes/swaps.
All carbohydrates (not just sugar) have a significant impact on BG levels as the digestive tract breaks down bread and pasta and rice and potatoes and breakfast cereals and fruit into glucose just like it does sugar.
1 medium slice of bread is about 15g carbs and a spoon of sugar is 5g carbs so one slice of bread will have 3x the impact of a spoon of sugar. Then add in breakfast cereals and pasta and potatoes etc and you start to realise where your high Blood Glucose levels might be coming from and may be responsible for the infections you are suffering rather than the other way around.... or a bit of both
As the others have said, food rather than the Vimto drink is likely the problem but probably not good to be drinking large volumes of soda water with Vimto anyway. Try to alternate with plain water where you can, or I quite enjoy a dash of Balsamic vinegar or Apple Cider Vinegar in my glass of water to flavour it and the acidity is believed to help with managing BG levels.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Welcome to the forum @Davefrommoulton

Sorry to hear about the nasty racing heart - i am not sure how common this is with T2, but it’s not something I see lots of forum members discussing if that means anything?

Like others I suspect the spike after your meal is more likely to be a reaction to the carbs (either the type or the amount) in your meal rather than the trace of sweetener in your soda water.

When it comes to food and diabetes one of the biggest questions is often ‘what can I eat’ and while there are obvious things like cakes, biscuits, sweets and sugary drinks that you will have been cutting out from the start, you might be surprised how much *all* carbohydrate affects your BG levels, including rice, pasta, potatoes, bread, pastry, grains, cereals and many fruits. Some HCPs don’t make this clear at all.

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.

Many members find a systematic method of ‘before’ and ‘2hrs after meal’ Bg checks are the best way to assess and tweak your menu for better levels. This blog post - test-review-adjust by Alan S might really help you find out how different foods are affecting you as an individual.

Good luck and keep us posted 🙂

 

[Annemarie]

I have no advice just my experience, I had to learn that the only reliable fact about D is it’s unreliable. Once that stuck in my head I stopped questioning why a slice of buttered toast doubles my score but a similar slice with cheese or mushrooms and I stay in target. A small portion of fuseli I stay in target, a small portion of spaghetti and it doubles. Advice on here helped me to know I need an hour between insulin and food. I’m the only person with my diabetes as you are with yours. I know find me and the bigD get along much better. I hope that with good medical advice and support on here from real experts (

 

[Annemarie]

those with it) you will soon feel much better and happier

 

[Paulbreen]

Hi Dave and welcome, I would second what Barbara is saying, it looks like you have a lot to do, I love vimto too since I was a child but it really does spike my BG a small glass will cause me to jump 4 points within 30 minutes, I’m lucky I can pop in a bit of insulin to fix it but you however have only the possibility to not drink it, I’m not sure if the diet version is low carb so it might be worth looking at, check the label
As for other foods you need to look at would be all the things you love, potato’s, pasta, rice, bread the list goes on and on, with T2 diet you really have to cut down on these foods because your body makes sugars out of them.
It sounds like you have had a time of it with all the other things going on but your diabetes is effected and affected by these things, I broke my leg quite badly in February and was in hospital for 7 weeks and had terrible BG control for 6 months because of the drugs and a leg full of metal and it was a struggle to get a handle on it.
Here I December the leg is still broken with some small signs of healing which I put it down to 6 months of difficulty controlling my BG
Things are much better now, I try to be low carb as much as possible and the odd glass of vimto or a couple of roast potatoes once a week is a great treat but I also really enjoy eating a steak or bacon and eggs, cheese omelettes and many more things that don’t affect my BG
I wish you well on your journey Dave and everyone here will always try to help you so just ask, ask, ask