Diabetes

[daugen]

I could use some advice before I get an earful from a specialist.
Since many of us are older, the frequency of diabetes among our members has to be significant.
I'm concerned...

for decades my blood sugar was stuck at 99. Just under what I thought was the 100 threshold.
I've now bounced around 102-103. Next blood studies in a month.

At what point does one have negative health effects? Am I already in that category at 102?
I'm 65, pear shaped, and 20 pounds overweight, all nice risk factors by themselves, and horrible arthritis.
And I love fruit and breads. More risk factors. Otherwise I mostly eat healthy unprocessed food and have stopped drinking
diet soda or any sugary drink. Though I do use the yellow stuff in my coffee. And I drink very little alcohol of any kind.
Stopped eating ice cream at night, switched to an occasional bowl of high fiber cereal or an apple.

When did you all start getting treated and what worked the best for you?
thanks. I hope this sharing will help to educate us all.
Definitely a disease I want to avoid if I can.

So first of all, at what number should one be concerned, and what number should open our eyes and frankly scare us?

 

[Buppies]

Mine is inherited from my mothers side discovered when my vision went haywire almost overnight. 20/400 one eye 20/600 other. Cataracts eye doctor recommends having sugar level checked my 60 day average 575. Doctor placed me on 4 pills a day to take care of diabetes lost down to 158 pounds no real change. Eventually pills start to damage kidneys so now on insulin. I believe 120 is where you start worrying. As our bodies age the natural insulin production decreases and our bodies ability to absorb what we make changes as well (pancreas). I never drank that much 2 or 3 drinks a year but fast food may have helped it along. Mother had it her father and brother as well. In your case Drew lose some weight

 

[Buppies]

Frequent urination is also a sign always thirsty. My biggest problem is food good home cooked meals but that's a no no. Carbs always counting carbs, scheduled times for meals 7:00AM breakfast 12:00 noon lunch and no later than 6:00PM for dinner. Studies being done sometimes change how doctors think American doctors subscribe to shooting for daily average of 120 by averaging high and low numbers. European doctors do not like the wide swings and are willing to accept higher numbers. My levels can swing from high of 215 to low of 50 giving me an average of 135 or so a little high. The higher numbers show no real effect but the low numbered really play havoc on your body

 

[mapper]

I have had type 2 for a number of years, I am still on oral medication. The best way to treat it is a good diet and lots of physical activity. I ride an exercise bike 35 minutes 3 days out of 4. My routine currently burns about 310-320 calories, it has taken me about five months to get to this level. I do this as soon as I get up in the morning. I have lost about fifteen pounds since I retired last September, slow steady weight loss is good.
Eat a good diet that is mainly whole unprocessed foods, we cook 95 percent of the time from scratch, this also allows you to control the salt content of what you eat. We also eat vegetarian meals a good deal of the time, a plant based diet is probably best but as a lifelong carnivore I just like meat too much to give it up completely. Avoid processed sugar and fruit juices, fruit is best in its natural form with its fiber which helps to slow the absorption of the sugars in the digestive track. Avoid soft drinks including artificially sweetened ones, they will still cause your body to react in bad ways.
Stay active, and enjoy life.

 

[arkydog]

i have been an insulin dependent diabetic since 1980, type 1. 28yrs 0ld when diagnosed. got sick one day, it knocked me to my knees. that sickness caused my diabetes, went to my pancreas. i was put on insulin shots for 20 years and then a pump in 2002. i have gotten neuropathy, retinopathy, no kidney problems yet, had a stroke 1 1/2 yrs ago that affected my right side(lost total control of rt. side)-(about 80% came back after being in urgent care part of hospital 1 month and nursing home 1 month), takes forever for anything to heal, had at least 5 eye laser surgeries, had back surgery after rupturing 2 disc, that worked but because i was diabetic it took 3 times longer to heal than what the back surgeon thought and ruptured it again while doing physical therapy because it took so long to heal. can't think of what else the uncontrolled diabetes caused but that is more than enough.

for the last 10 years i have volunteered at a diabetic center at the hospital in mt. home, ar and it wasn't until i had my stroke that i really started to take diabetes really serious.

it is ALL ABOUT DIET AND EXERCISE. YOU DON'T HAVE TO CHANGE WHAT YOU EAT BUT HOW YOU EAT IT AND PORTION CONTROL. the best advice i can give anyone with A1c out of the range of 5.0 to 7.0 to find a dietician and go to them and let modify your diet. even if i cost you a couple thousand dollars (which it won't), it is money well spent. you'll live longer, , feel better, and generally be in better health.

its like having high blood pressure, you go to the doctor to get your pressure regulated, only you go to a dietician to get you eating habits regulated. you can still eat pretty much anything you want, you just have to incorporate it into your diet.

i now have A1c's around 6.7 instead of 9,0's to 11.0's

from what i remember your blood sugar should be between 70 and 110. about 2 hours after you eat your sugars should be below 150. if I'm wrong, please chime in and correct me.

good luck with everyone diabetes!!!!!

rob

 

[Ed of all trades]

My mom got it from her meds and had a blood sugar level of 135 until she came to live with us. We fed her a plant based, whole food diet. 75% of what she ate was starch and 25% was veg. Her blood sugar dropped to 80. She had to go to an assisted living place and they put her on a diebetic diet and her blood sugar is back to 135. It is something to think about. Ed

 

[Sawyer Rob]

I didn't read any of the above answer, but my wife is an RN CDE The CDE = "certified diabetes educator" and has been up to date and certified for 25 + years...

HER answers are: Anything over 100 is to be concerned about, as that's considered pre-diabetes.

Stick to NO MORE than three servings of fruit a day.

Figure out a way to get 30 to 40 mins a day of walking or arm chair exercises. You can break it up into (3) 15 min sections a day after meals, if that's better for your schedule to help loose that 20 pounds. IF you get a little more active and drop that 20 pounds, your number will go down to the safe level.

Lastly, you should be scared NOW, get that number down...

There you have it, right from a "certified diabetes specialist" and it didn't cost you even one dime! lol

SR

 

[dmccarty]

I have been trying to loose 15-20 pounds for almost 30 years....

Over the years I have run, yuck!, and slightly modified my diet but the fat would stay.

At the end of the 90's I did Atkins which did loose a good 15 pounds but I gained it back because I had not modified my normal diet.

About 15 years ago, I went to the gym multiple times a week to lift weights, swim, and run on glorified hamster wheel. I did not loose weight, though I lost some fat, despite burning 1,000 calories on the treadmill each session.

Had to quit the gym to build the house and gained back some fat but lost a bit of weight.

After building the house and dealing with a variety of family and work issues I joined another gym where I would row, run and walk. Not sure how many calories I was burning but I was maxing out my heart rate. Again I might have lost some fat but no real loss in weight. I really don't like lifting weights, running or rowing to just get exercise. Tis boring and I have to focus on the work out. I LIKE walking but that is time consuming and who has time...

Family health issues in 2015 caused me to drop the gym membership but I did not really gain fat until Christmas. Normally, I am working on projects on the holidays and last year I had quite a bit of time off I had to take, but when it was not raining, it was finishing raining or about to start raining. While I got some exercise, I sat around too much and put on fat.

One good thing about 2015 was that work has a wellness program that encourages the use of a Fitbit. The simplest Fitbit, which I have, only tracks steps which seems uninteresting but you sync the Fitbit to a website which tracks how many step, miles, calories you have walked. You can see what you did today, this week, and the past month. The website keeps a running count of a variety of metrics. The company actually pays us for the steps. Not much but it adds up over a year. Seeing how many steps/miles you have done, I don't really pay attention to the calories, really does keep me motivated/interested in the walking. :thumbsup:

Last year, I was doing 5,000-8,000 steps a day or about 2.5-4ish miles most days. I was able to do this by just walking a bit more at work. Instead of taking the shortage path to the bathroom I would extend the walk a bit. I would the walk going to and from the office. This year, I decided to walk at least 10,000 steps a day which is around 5 miles. With the exception of the first week or so in January which was before I made the 10,000 step decision, and last Sunday when I had a bad headache, I have waked 10,000 steps/5ish miles every day since then. I don't trust our scale that much but my belt is looser and I am about to start using a hole to tighten up the belt. :thumbsup:

Most days I don't get 10,000 steps at work but I get close so I have to walk a bit at home to make up the difference. I pace back in forth in the house to get in the 10,000 steps. :laughing: Good thing nobody can see this. When I talk to my parents, I pace on the porch, and on Parent Talk Day I can get 13,000 to 20,000 steps done. :thumbsup: Usually it is 13,000 to 16,000 steps. Sunday can be particularly hard to get 10,000 steps so I will walk around the house to get the steps. Sometimes, I will just walk in place or in circles while watching TV or talking to the wife. :laughing::laughing::laughing: It really does not take much time or effort to get the steps in since you have all day to get it done. A low walking speed for me is 100 steps per minute which is 1,000 steps in 10 minutes so when I am home I just go walk for 10, 15, or 20 minutes every once in awhile. Usually when I have to go to the bathroom. To get 10,000 steps is 100 minutes of walking which is pretty easy to do spread across the day.

I LIKE walking like this. I can think and ponder things and since I can get a few minutes here and there it is easy to do and sustainable. Find a 2-3 hours to get to the gym is very difficult. Finding 10 minutes to go think and walk is pretty easy.

But all of the walking is about burning calories and you have to worry about consuming calories....

For years, I have recognized that a "diet" is a waste/waist of time until one has changed one's normal diet so that one is no longer gaining weight. Hopefully, the normal diet allows one to loose weight from time to time. Back in the 90's when I first lost some weight, I stopped drinking beer and would instead drink carbonated water with a dash of OJ for flavoring. I think most people gain much of the weight because of calories in drinks. It is SOOOOOO easy to drink a beer or soda that can have 150 calories. It takes me about a mile of walking to burn off 150 calories... Tis real easy to drink a couple miles of calories during the day. Not so easy to walk/run off those calorie miles...

For the last 5-10 years I have been tweaking my diet to something I like yet balances out my calorie intake/outtake. I really eat very little and I think most of my extra calories was in beer. Sigh. I don't drink sodas, don't really like them, so I drink coffee, water, and beer. No beer just leaves me with coffee and water. Sigh. So I am back to the carbonated water trick. The grocery store has 2 liter bottles that are flavored so that is what I drink most days. I can have a beer on the weekend. I have also start drinking caffeine free tea at night. Much of what we drink or eat can be habit. Having a beer at night was a habit. Sitting there relaxing with a beer is a good thing but having a bit of tea works just as well and has no calories to speak of.

I have a decent size breakfast and then I eat dried fruits, dried veggies, and nuts for lunch and snacks. One of the dried fruits is really dried with sugar so I have greatly reduced eating that fruit. I managed to get a check up this year, first time in years, and the blood work showed a bit of refined carb consumption which was interesting since I don't eat many refined carbs. I used to get a nice, oh so good sweet bun for breakfast but I stopped that quite some time ago because of the calories. We don't eat much pasta anymore, maybe once a month, and I eat a bread like product only a few times a week. So where are the refined carbs? The only place I could guess is.... The Beer. :shocked: So back to C02 water. Dinner is very light and might be a small amount of meat or something and CO2 water. Just not much calories. I am simply not that hungry. In the evening, I will have more CO2 water or tea with a few bites of chocolate.

So far, this is working to loose weight and I will be interested to see the blood work results. My results were pretty good but I think some of the numbers were elevated due to my holiday sloth. Not sure if insurance will pay for new blood work more than one a year but I might pay for it out of pocket since I am curious.

Anyway, this is how I have tried, failed and succeeded in trying to loose weight, cut carbs, and get exercise over the years. Maybe it will help. Simply walking here and there, and using a device to count steps, has REALLY helped me burn calories. The Fitbit is a glorified pedometer and some phones have one built it. My last dumb phone had a really good pedometer but the pedometer apps I have tried were pretty invasive privacy wise and burned lots of battery. The simple little Fitbit is really working for me.

Later,
Dan

 

[MinnesotaEric]

I could use some advice before I get an earful from a specialist.
Since many of us are older, the frequency of diabetes among our members has to be significant.
I'm concerned...

for decades my blood sugar was stuck at 99. Just under what I thought was the 100 threshold.
I've now bounced around 102-103. Next blood studies in a month.

At what point does one have negative health effects? Am I already in that category at 102?
I'm 65, pear shaped, and 20 pounds overweight, all nice risk factors by themselves, and horrible arthritis.
And I love fruit and breads. More risk factors. Otherwise I mostly eat healthy unprocessed food and have stopped drinking
diet soda or any sugary drink. Though I do use the yellow stuff in my coffee. And I drink very little alcohol of any kind.
Stopped eating ice cream at night, switched to an occasional bowl of high fiber cereal or an apple.

When did you all start getting treated and what worked the best for you?
thanks. I hope this sharing will help to educate us all.
Definitely a disease I want to avoid if I can.

So first of all, at what number should one be concerned, and what number should open our eyes and frankly scare us?

Join the Reversing Diabetes Facebook group and read the links at the Diabetes Tool Chest. There are many people in that group who have gone from using insulin to getting off all medication by sticking to a low carb, high fat diet.

The science behind how and why the LCHF diet works, and the boondoggle as to how American Allied forces eventually forgot about it, and continue to (wrongly) reject it is popularly explained by Gary Taubes in his book, Why We Get Fat

How to Reverse Your Diabetes Type 2 - Diet Doctor

 

[daugen]

I know that a fatty diet rarely makes one skinny, but I didn't know until recently that eating sugars
was worse for adding on pounds than fat. Fat has always been the big boogeyman, but with that magic little statin pill
we seem to be able to control that problem. No magic pill for sugar and diabetes. It's called celery...

I agree that "diets" are usually a waste unless they motivate one to change their eating behavior long term.
I'm now trying to eat a salad almost every night, and I'm skipping traditional deserts. Nor do I eat snack food.
It's the breads that I find so hard to give up, the English muffins in the morning, the sandwich bread for lunch.
It may be 18 grain but it's still lots of carbs.

I retired to the South a few years ago. What a huge change, unfortunately not a healthy one, in restaurant menus.
Vegetables seem to always have the magic three added, fat, sugar and salt.
Meat cuts are never trim. It's like, don't waste that good fat...

I get so much exercise walking around my property during the day it's hard for me to think about getting on my treadmill, but I really have to.
In the past I have found that getting exercise, and not necessarily a lot of it either, being careful about what I ate, and drinking extra water helped me lose weight.
So I was wondering if extra water also might help sugar levels. Though i don't think dilution is the solution...