I really need some sincere help re diabetes

[Major]

Self help is a good aid to combatting Diabetes.

One needs to voluntarily control ones diet for starters and not wholly rely on prescribed medicine.

Being extremely fat is a no no.

[Rolluplostinspace]

Here was my starting point and it changed my life ........ http://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/categor ... abetes.25/
Anyone reading it will discover why getting a diet sheet off a GP or diabetics nurse is a no no.
I challenged my surgery to be honest with me when I told them I wasn't doing it there way because there way leads to getting fatter and sicker and taking ever more medication or at best just taking medication forever.
I take none.
I was always slim.
Near 6 foot 3 weighing in at 14 stone for twenty five years.
I then had a choelsterol test and was put on statins.
Went through three different kinds and had bad reactions to them and said I'd rather face the future without them thank you.
Fairly recently research is showing they can trigger T2 in people.
My doc reckons that's where mine came from.
Always been very active very strong very physical not into sweets chocolate crisps fizzy drinks or sitting on my arse all day. Not a candidate for T2 at all.
I have as good as reversed it now and eat almost normally but like I say chocolate and sweets and all the usual problems have never been part of my life so don't tempt me now.
First thingh I did was cut sugar from my cups of tea and get used to using sweeteners.
All and any obvious sugar was gone.
Beer and lager went not because they have any sugar in them but because they are very high carb, Carbs are converted rapidly into glucose.
Beer is considered l;iquid bread.
Bread spuds pasta were cut almost completely out for six months.
Fried bread with a good old fashionerd fry up was okay. The fat slowing down the conversion to glucose.
Slowing down the conversion to glucose is important.
Lets say a certain thing converted top a gram of glucose in twenty minutes and eating exactly the same thing converted to glucoase in an hour and a half because it's covered in fat .... the sensible option would be go for the food covered in fat and that way you avoid sugar spikes that can be dangerous and very tiring as you spike and then crash.
Low carb high fat or LCHF as it is generally reffered to.
Fat doesn't make you fat.
Sugar makes you fat.
When food started becoming an industrialised product and the fat started to be removed ... skimmed semi skimmed low fat no fat .... sugars were put in in place and as more and more foodstuffs had this happen to them the obesity curve on a graph rises hand in hand with no fat obesity and diabetes.
So my loow carb high fat diet is what saved me.
But what about the cholesterol and the fat?
Well my bad cholesterol went down after at first ring but stick with the diet and it comes right down and ... the good cholesterol rises.
I take no blood pressure medicine great blood pressure
I take no diabetes or cholesterol medication and after six months my surgery were hoinest with me ... following the NHS or more correctly the NICE guidlines their patients are getting fatter and sicker and scosting more and more money.
I'm the cheapest and healthiest diabetic they have but ... they can't ditch the guieelines and say but we know a guy called Jack.
What they said they had started doing was telling people to drastically reduce the carbs.

[Holly]

Wow Jack, thanks for that, I will actually send your post to my mate, saves me explaining it all to him.
I'm happy to hear you've been doing a good job helping yourself. Keep up the good work. Hope everything else is easing off a bit too for you, like the back.
Oh and I hope you'll find your way down to earth again when ever you're ready

[Rolluplostinspace]

Fry ups for breakfast are good.
Full cream milk.
Full fat yogurt.
Lots of cream.
I have a small piece of bread on my butter .... lots of butter. Cut white bread it's deadly.
You gain weight at first but stick with it and after a week maybe ten days you start to see it coming off and staying off.
The high fat bit is misleading because the way I see it is I'm not sitting here eating lard I'm eating the my family and millions of other in the fifties and sixties ate and we ate normal.
Before the industrial provcesses of removing the fat and adding sugars and sugars come in a million hidden ways now.
Sometimes for breakfast I have a bullet proof coffee.
I'm an instant coffe man but whatever coffe is your choice bung a tablespoon of unsalted butter in it and it's like an illegal drug the instant mental energy you get.
I do this and I have no desire for food till the evening.
How the fat works.
For one irt fills you up so your brain starts to cut down the I need food messages.
The other thing is this ... identical potatoes will give different readings on a meter depending what you do with them.
Take a spud turn it into mashed spud. You have massively processed that spud meaning your body has very little work to do and it instantly starts pumping glucose into your blood stream.
Take the same spud leave it whole and boil it.
Your body has to work at breaking it down .... slower glucose conversion.
Take the spud and turn it into a roastie or even better a chip cooked in beef dripping and it will take your body ages to process ... no sugar spike just a slow release of glucose which your body can handle much better.
Another trick is mashe the spuds and put them in the fridge till tomorrow then fry them.
There's a scientific term for what happens to the glucose in the spud but I can't remember it just now but that nmasjh is really nice but it now reases less sugars because the sugars have changed since yesterday.
The same with pasta. Cook it today eat it tomorrow.
Want a snack eat a tin or two of tinned fish whatever your favourite is.
Vegatable curries can be made very tasty and the carbs are incrediblau low.
For breakfast I mostly have a large bowl of porridge.
This doesn't work for all diabetics.
I mix the porridge in a pan before bed takes two minutes of your life if you forget just make some in the morning takes five minutes of your life. I don't use the microwave packets but do fairly often microwave my porridge .... it's quicker in a pan though.
I use full cream milk someties haklf milk half water.
I chuck three sweeteners in or venture to have a spoonful of a product known as half sugar. Half sugar half stevia .... not in the early stages of your diabetes diet though.
In the bowel I put a heaped teaspoon sometimes more of coconut oil.
The coconut oil is fat.
It must be pure virgin if it isn't you can still eat it but it really belongs in the bathroom cabinet for skin and hair.

[Rolluplostinspace]

Learning to eat too your meter.
A meter is one thing I do get on precription.
The surgery are not quick to give them out when they see someone getting fatter and sicker.
They are expensive and theres no point if the person isn't changing.
My surgery know how serious I am about it and everyone can see the difference.
My meter goes from nought to 27.
I aim to be below 8.
8 is my red line where as far as I'm concerned based on research is where the nerve damage starts happening.
Diabetics who can't really be bothered to put the effort in will ... will start to lose their eyesight and feeling in their legs toes feet.
At some point they will be heading for amputaion and worse.
T2 is a killer disease and it does it slowly taking chunks of you and your eyesight and hearing etc.
You take a reading two hours after a meal.
I'm unhappy if I'm 8 or above. I've done something wrong.
It's not always easy to identify what.
Very very rare it happens to me any more though.
These days I'm floating about between five and seven.
I'll take a reading before a meal. If I'm 6 or 7 then I'm already close to my red line so will settle for egg and bacon maybe with a fried spud which yesterday was a boiled spud.
Anything carby and I'll be shooting over my red line.
If I'm 4 to 5 themn I can can push the boat out a bit maybe even have a beer.
Alcohol: whiskey and vodka are now my choices. Neat or with water.
Alcohol is not a problem with T2 but the liquid bread can be.

[Guest]

Wow Jack, thanks for that, I will actually send your post to my mate, saves me explaining it all to him.
I'm happy to hear you've been doing a good job helping yourself. Keep up the good work. Hope everything else is easing off a bit too for you, like the back.
Oh and I hope you'll find your way down to earth again when ever you're ready

Give him this link tell him not to be shy everyone is in the same boat.
Lots of converstions about alcohol and weed and just about every kind of good habit bad habit bad T2 behaviour people doing well people falling off the wagon.
Moving about .... if you can move about then do it. Walking cycling whatever it helps burn fat and lower glusose levels.
I can't do that anymore so my moving about has become quite limited.
Afraid my back problems won't be getting better. The good news is I'm not obviously getting worse.
It'll be happening but nice and slowly so far.
I recently had to have a medical driving assesment because of the class A drugs I'm on.
Also because I have tumours on my cauda equina meaning I lose feeling now and then in my left leg.
Flew through it and was told I keep my license but have to be tested every three years and with a reccomendation that by the time my next test comes around I should be driving an automatic unless I can perform as good as I did this time around.
My left leg is dodgey so I will be going for an automatic.
I got some insurance quotes to see how this affects things and the minute I told them I'd had a medical assesment I was told to hold the line or they'd phone me back in ten minutes.
Presumably they contact the driving centre and or DVLA and surprise surprise my premiums go down!
Don't quite get that but I'm happy with that.
Looking for a camper van at the moment ... don't you dare Aziz!
If I think of anything else I'll let you know but seriously if he's online savvy get him to at least read ....... http://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/categor ... abetes.25/ ..... it's a big site for T1's too.
Mine of information from and for diabetics.

[Guest]

The blood test readings you mention of 46 and 51 are confusing. Are they his HbA1c readings (which is how Drs track diabetes as day to due fluctuate so the three monthly average reading is used)? If they are the figures aren't bad at all and equates arise from 6.2 to 6.8 ish. They cannot be a pin prick blood sugar reading unless it's not in the UK and the measurements are done differently.

Yes, it seems confusing. Apparently, the readings have changed. What's now 51, used to be a 7...not very dangerous, but already in the diabetes zone....When he was on 46, he was apparently still on a safe level, 51 has put him in the danger zone. It is very confusing for the ordinary person...but it looks like he is starting to adjust. Been shopping with him today....took us over 2 hours studying all the sugar contents on various products. Like we learned earlier...4g of sugar = 1 teaspoon. Loads of products he used to buy once, we put back on the shelf by just looking at the sugar content.

Anyway, we did buy a bar of chocolate ( 90% of cocoa) which has very little sugar and seems to be the healthiest...let me tell ya, forget it, it's horribly bitter and tastes like shit ...go for the 70%.

Check for carbs not just sugar and learn what hidden sugars are.
There are alcohol sugars which you don't see on the labels as sugars.
Look at a box of bnreakfast cereal and you'll see that the carb levels are as high as 90%!
That's deadly.
It's bad news just for an ordinary person trying to lose weight cos they only checked the sugar.
You must check the carb levels.
For snacks I'm into veg tinned fish pork scratching nuts.

[Rolluplostinspace]

Fruit?
No smoothies.
The more processed a food is the quicker it will become glucose and you'll have the spikes and crashes which make you feel pretty grim.
If it ends in berry you can eat a lot of it believe it or not so fancy a pudding?
Lashings of fresh cream (fat) and something ending in berry.

[Holly]

The blood test readings you mention of 46 and 51 are confusing. Are they his HbA1c readings (which is how Drs track diabetes as day to due fluctuate so the three monthly average reading is used)? If they are the figures aren't bad at all and equates arise from 6.2 to 6.8 ish. They cannot be a pin prick blood sugar reading unless it's not in the UK and the measurements are done differently.

Yes, it seems confusing. Apparently, the readings have changed. What's now 51, used to be a 7...not very dangerous, but already in the diabetes zone....When he was on 46, he was apparently still on a safe level, 51 has put him in the danger zone. It is very confusing for the ordinary person...but it looks like he is starting to adjust. Been shopping with him today....took us over 2 hours studying all the sugar contents on various products. Like we learned earlier...4g of sugar = 1 teaspoon. Loads of products he used to buy once, we put back on the shelf by just looking at the sugar content.

Anyway, we did buy a bar of chocolate ( 90% of cocoa) which has very little sugar and seems to be the healthiest...let me tell ya, forget it, it's horribly bitter and tastes like shit ...go for the 70%.

Check for carbs not just sugar and learn what hidden sugars are.
There are alcohol sugars which you don't see on the labels as sugars.
Look at a box of bnreakfast cereal and you'll see that the carb levels are as high as 90%!
That's deadly.
It's bad news just for an ordinary person trying to lose weight cos they only checked the sugar.
You must check the carb levels.
For snacks I'm into veg tinned fish pork scratching nuts.

Wow, you just made me check my rice bubbles, I chose them because it has the least amount of sugar of all cereals, only 2.6g per serv, but they have 25.6 carbs ( 30g )per serv without milk, which is basically 85.4 carbs per 100g. So that is too much, right? That's scary

How do you handle not eating breads, pastas, rice, spuds etc???

I might look into the fatty things, I quite like bacon, eggs, steaks, pork, some fried foods, cream and so on, but can I do without the above things mentioned?? I don't have diabetes , but I wouldn't mind living a healthier lifestyle so that I don't get it one day.

Jeez it's difficult to find the right balance

Anyway, I will definitely pass on your recommendations to my mate, so thanks for that. I will study it with him.

[Rolluplostinspace]

Pasta I have recooked.
Bread I have only the best not a lot and never ever white.
Don't eat white bread.
The less processed a food is the better.
The nearer to nature the better.
I make my own yogurt and shove berries in mostly grown in the garden but also what we call ditch fruit when in season.
I also put honey in my yogurts but a lot of diabetics can't handle that. Not in the beginning anyway.
But I'm now eating almost what the rest of the family eat just not huge portions.
I eat less meat but very high quality from a local butcher.
The meat was smiling at us last week.
A five quid supermarket chicken is nine quid at the butchers. Almost twice the price.
Bacon is wonderful.
Twice the price so I eat half as much and I love vegatable curries.

[Rolluplostinspace]

Is reheated pasta less fattening? And healthier for diabetics?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29629761

[Rolluplostinspace]

Oh yeah a broader link to the diabetes site .... http://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/

[Stooo]

Is reheated pasta less fattening? And healthier for diabetics?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29629761

Tastes like shit, why buy comfort food just to reheat it because it's healthier?

Also, login you old bastard.

[McAz]

I mostly use wholemeal pasta and noodles which I cool down and reheat when needed. I was told (by Jack?) it was better for diabetics, though I don't know why. Taste okay to me.

Oh, and don't eat eggs from Belgium, they've been found to contain an insecticide called fipronil. The FSA says:

"Our risk assessment, based on all the information available, indicates that as part of a normal healthy diet this low level of potential exposure is unlikely to be a risk to public health and there is no need for consumers to be concerned."

So definitely don't eat eggs from Belgium.

[Rolluplostinspace]

I mostly use wholemeal pasta and noodles which I cool down and reheat when needed. I was told (by Jack?) it was better for diabetics, though I don't know why. Taste okay to me.

Oh, and don't eat eggs from Belgium, they've been found to contain an insecticide called fipronil. The FSA says:

"Our risk assessment, based on all the information available, indicates that as part of a normal healthy diet this low level of potential exposure is unlikely to be a risk to public health and there is no need for consumers to be concerned."

So definitely don't eat eggs from Belgium.

Have a look ..... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29629761

Home grown eggs here. Still have a couple of chickens.