It's been over five months since my type2 diabetes diagnosis and in that time I have managed to lower my blood levels from 9.7% to 5.8% Normal blood level is below 5.5. I have lost 4kg as well. Mainly it has been from stopping eating the massive amounts of chocolate but I've also been slowly tidying up my diet.
I am really really terrible with numbers so understanding the levels and food numbers has been a bit of a mindfuck for me.
Among the NHS advice is to keep sugar below 5g for everything that you eat. So when the label says carbohydrates - 'of which sugar' I was making sure it was always below 5g. This doesn't take into account that if there is high carbohydrates in the food it is still going to affect my blood sugar.
The medicine is lowering my blood sugar but it is not stopping the massive dump of insulin into my body when I consume too many carbs. So my blood sugar spikes high and the medicine lowers it. Apparently the high spikes over 7.8 cause small irrevocable damages to your organs which over time contribute to complications associated with diabetes. So even though my overall blood sugar levels are going down, I am still getting readings that are considered too high and could cause damage.
In order to work out the percentage of 'potential sugar baddies' in my food, I was introduced to this formula:-
In 100g of food......Carbohydrates multiplied by 4 then divided by calories then multiplied by 100.
So roughly,
If the result is below 50 it's sort of ok
If the result is below 30 it will potentially stop cravings since high carb fills you up for less time.
Basically, the lower the better
NHS guidelines recommend 180g of carbohydrates a day but in order to lower and maintain blood sugar levels without the eventual need for medication, there is a school of thought that suggests eating around 65g of carbohydrates a day is what is required.
There are a lot of people who believe the NHS blood sugar levels guidelines are too high and is merely maintained with medication but doesn't address the underlying issue of high blood sugar spikes. So diabetics are maintaining their levels way above an actual healthy level which causes longer term health issues. These people manage to lower their blood to non diabetic levels by lowering their carb load.
Right now, there is lots in the mainstream news regarding taxing sugar because they are now beginning to think that although heart disease and failure is the one that's killing, it's sugars that's precipitating the problems.
There is a lot of science that I haven't quite got my head round but for now it means no bread no pasta no potatoes and minimal root vegetables including carrot and sweet potato which although has less than normal potato is still high.
It also means getting back to way more actually real cooking and away from easy ready cooked processed meals that I've slipped back to because they tend to be high in carbohydrates.
It means I'm reigning in even more. Tightening my belt again and buckling down to finally sorting out my diabetes.
It's seriously damn hard especially with kids who won't eat anything I eat and an equally picky husband. The kids are always hungry because they have a very high carb diet. I am going to try for the old if it's not in the house they can't eat it solution, but they get it all at school. In fact I am sure the school already think I starve them because Ellie is always scoffing seconds and thirds.
It's becoming clear the high carb diet problem has been around since I was a child but that also genetically I was high risk.
My brother has completely buried his head in the sand over his type2. He hasn't had an HBA1C for a very long time to check his overall blood health. I'm not sure if he is taking his medicine. He's started getting the peripheral nerve damage associated with diabetes. He is still eating lots of takeaways and drinking alcohol. He doesn't smoke and does do exercise which will help but it's not enough.
I want to say to my him:- "dad got diabetes then had heart failure, then organ failure then died. Stop messing about with your health"
So, when did you last get your HBA1C checked to see how your overall blood health is doing? Have you ever checked your blood sugar levels one hour after eating high carbs/sugar, then two hours to see how your body deals with it?
