Question:
How often should I test? I ask as I have no real idea, I need to get true readings to take back to my doc. He’s taken me off bread completely and also told me to cut back on other carbs liek potatoes (due to my weight and feels I lose more quickly without too many carbs). Will this affect my readings? I also noticed I have more hypo’s (higher and lower readings) when I;m very upset or stressed, not straight away but not too long after. Is this possible, or am I losing my mind? I fear the worst, but hope for the best….won’t know either way until I see the doc. NHS Direct has told me I *could* be T2, said that I was probably "borderline". Won’t know for sure until I see doc, in a couple of weeks time. Thanks! regards, Tracy
Response:
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – How often should I test? I ask as I have no real idea, I need to get true readings to take back to my doc. He’s taken me off bread completely and also told me to cut back on other carbs liek potatoes (due to my weight and feels I lose more quickly without too many carbs). Will this affect my readings? I also noticed I have more hypo’s (higher and lower readings) when I;m very upset or stressed, not straight away but not too long after. Is this possible, or am I losing my mind? I fear the worst, but hope for the best….won’t know either way until I see the doc. NHS Direct has told me I *could* be T2, said that I was probably "borderline". Won’t know for sure until I see doc, in a couple of weeks time. Thanks! regards, Tracy
Also I keep feeling *really* sick and also getting *very* bad headaches. I feel tired a lot too, is there *any* connection or am I just losing my mind? If the latter, will pay *big* money for new mind! Or better still, new body! Regards, Tracy
Response:
Hi Tracy Lowering your carbs will probably make a dramatic change to your bg’s – they’ll come down! I tend to have pitta bread now when I have my breakfast so the rise isn’t as substantial to the rise I get if 2 slices of white or brown pass my lips! I was on a low carb diet after I got diagnosed (16th November 2001) and I’ve lost a total of 5 stone in weight up to now – still got for the last 2 months and the readings have gone from 4 to an average of 9 now on 2 metformin (I am NOT going back to 3 ever "experiment" with 2 before I see the specialist who will hopefully put me on insulin too – to get the readings back to normal! which usually shows I’m too high because I’m sooooooo stressed!! Yeah stress does affect them – as does illness (a col and suchlike) – but you shouldn’t worry too much about them really! Jackie T – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – How often should I test? I ask as I have no real idea, I need to get true readings to take back to my doc. He’s taken me off bread completely and also told me to cut back on other carbs liek potatoes (due to my weight and feels I lose more quickly without too many carbs). Will this affect my readings? I also noticed I have more hypo’s (higher and lower readings) when I;m very upset or stressed, not straight away but not too long after. Is this possible, or am I losing my mind? I fear the worst, but hope for the best….won’t know either way until I see the doc. NHS Direct has told me I *could* be T2, said that I was probably "borderline". Won’t know for sure until I see doc, in a couple of weeks time. Thanks! regards, Tracy
Response:
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – How often should I test? I ask as I have no real idea, I need to get true readings to take back to my doc. He’s taken me off bread completely and also told me to cut back on other carbs liek potatoes (due to my weight and feels I lose more quickly without too many carbs). Will this affect my readings? I also noticed I have more hypo’s (higher and lower readings) when I;m very upset or stressed, not straight away but not too long after. Is this possible, or am I losing my mind? I fear the worst, but hope for the best….won’t know either way until I see the doc. NHS Direct has told me I *could* be T2, said that I was probably "borderline". Won’t know for sure until I see doc, in a couple of weeks time. Thanks! regards, Tracy
Hi Tracy, IMHO (and it is only my opinion, I’m not a doctor just a T2 diabetic diagnosed for about 4 years) there’s no hard and fast rule about testing. You can test on a regular routine, (before meals and two hours after meals), to get a general picture of what’s happening to your glucose levels. Also, you can and should test whenever you feel not so good. This checks whether something is going on with your levels, and also helps you learn what different levels "feel" like, so you can identify whether you’re high or low. I found that quite difficult at first, because I just felt "ill". Gradually I learned to tell the difference between a high "ill" and a low "ill". The amount of carbohydrate you eat has a direct effect on your blood sugar levels – you convert carbs into sugar, and if your system can’t control that properly through insulin resistance (T2) or pancreatic failure (T1) then you have to do something about it via diet, diet and medication, or diet and insulin. I’m using "diet" in the sense of controlling what you eat, not in the sense of trying to lose weight – there are times when you need to take carbs on board quickly, and other times when you need to limit your carb intake. For T2s it’s usually the latter, unless you are taking medication that stimulates your insulin production, or insulin to supplement your own production. Through testing before a meal you can establish a level, and work out roughly what and how much to eat. Testing two hours after a meal tells you whether you got it right, or need to go back to the drawing board slapping your wrists along the way. You may wish to vary this routine – e.g. I’m pretty confident that my regular breakfast of 14 to 18 grams of carb will not take me too high, but sometimes I need to eat a piece of fruit mid-morning, so I test about 3 and a half hours after breakfast just to check whether it’s one of those days. Please be aware of the Glycemic Index of food, that is, how quickly you convert the carb contained in the food into sugar. You could check Rick Mendoza’s web site, or have a look at http://www.calvin.biochem.usyd.edu.au/GIDB/search.htm for more information. There’s also LOADS of information in this newsgroup’s posts, and plenty of links on the ASDUK web site (www.asduk.bizland.com). In general, use high glycemic index food to combat hypos, and lower glycemic index foods to reduce "spiking" (that’s when you have a sudden high level shortly after eating, followed by a sudden drop again – Yecchhh!) A meal consisting of mixed low and high GI foods boosts your bg immediately, then sustains it over a period. Once you’ve set your levels, and you’re confident in what you’re doing, you can reduce testing to monitoring one or two times a day, just upping the test numbers to deal with unexpected situations or monitor e.g. changes in medication/diet, etc. Stress can affect bg levels, but you also get mood swings, rages, apathy, you name it, as a result of the diabetes, so it works both ways, and you are probably _not_ losing your mind, – but there again, I don’t know you well enough to tell 
Good luck… HTH — Pat, the Idle Plucker Please note subtle change in address thanks to constant attention from spammers That’s idlepluckerATntlworldDOTcom to me mates Old guitarists never die…they just pluck off
Response:
Impressive reply makes absolute sense, even from a T2. Are you sure you’re not a doctor? N
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – How often should I test? regards, Hi Tracy, IMHO (and it is only my opinion, I’m not a doctor just a T2 diabetic diagnosed for about 4 years) there’s no hard and fast rule about testing. You can test on a regular routine, (before meals and two hours after meals), to get a general picture of what’s happening to your glucose levels.
Response:
Changing the diet will affect the readings. You should get a spread of test results *before* you change the diet, and compare those to *after* the change. That way, you’ll hopefully get encouragement from the results and it’ll also show how different types of food influence the bg readings. Foods that affect your bg may behave quite differently if I ate the same, etc. Knowing what is good for you is part of the process.
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – How often should I test? I ask as I have no real idea, I need to get true readings to take back to my doc. He’s taken me off bread completely and also told me to cut back on other carbs liek potatoes (due to my weight and feels I lose more quickly without too many carbs). Will this affect my readings? I also noticed I have more hypo’s (higher and lower readings) when I;m very upset or stressed, not straight away but not too long after. Is this possible, or am I losing my mind? I fear the worst, but hope for the best….won’t know either way until I see the doc. NHS Direct has told me I *could* be T2, said that I was probably "borderline". Won’t know for sure until I see doc, in a couple of weeks time. Thanks! regards, Tracy
Response:
Impressive reply makes absolute sense, even from a T2. Are you sure you’re not a doctor? N
No, honest! (Though you would be forgiven for thinking so if you saw my handwriting.) Just an ex-pro guitarist now thrashing about with Oracle databases… and drilling holes in the ends of my fingers on far too regular a basis for comfort. Glad it made sense, though. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – How often should I test? regards, Hi Tracy, IMHO (and it is only my opinion, I’m not a doctor just a T2 diabetic diagnosed for about 4 years) there’s no hard and fast rule about testing. You can test on a regular routine, (before meals and two hours after meals), to get a general picture of what’s happening to your glucose levels.
– Pat, the Idle Plucker Please note subtle change in address thanks to constant attention from spammers That’s idlepluckerATntlworldDOTcom to me mates Old guitarists never die…they just pluck off
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