My Diabetes counselor does not like my fasting blood sugar? Help wanted. page 2

[sapphire_chan]

Not to enable, but if you're really craving fruit have you tried berries to see what they do to your numbers?

[JimN]

Nice work Jim, glad its working out for you. Avoiding fructose will be your #1 job for the next few months as your hormones re-balance after a time in full on confusion. As you get metabolicly less deranged, a little fruit now and then won't be nearly as much of an impact. I just can't pass up a fully tree ripened summer peach, but I treat is as a special occasion food not a three a week habit. Your diabetes counselor will try to steer you to conventional wisdom of lots of whole grains so watch out for that, it will overturn the progress you are making rather quickly.

Yes, she is not real happy with my diet decision - she is a vegetarian and a firm believer in CW - but she is a very nice lady and is willing to let me do this until I get my labs done in February. At that time I will look at my numbers and see where I will go from there. But right now, this is working for me and I can't see any reason to stop at this time.

As a side note, after I posted that I had not got up the courage to drop my other two diabetes meds, I decided that I might as well do it and let my blood work tell me how I am doing in February. So now I am off all my prescriptions - that will probably really get my Dr. going when I see him next! Oh well, it isn't the first time I have been in trouble with him.

[JimN]

Not to enable, but if you're really craving fruit have you tried berries to see what they do to your numbers?

I have not tried them yet but I had thought of them. Right now I figure I am making progress and am not having any major cravings so I will hold off and use the Fruits and berries as a treat.

Thank you all for the advice and encouragement.

[Karma]

Jim,

BE CAREFUL dropping medications cold turkey. You may want to reduce the dose over time a little bit each week. Seriously, you should be doing so with the approval of your doctor as a trial test, not behind their back. If you have to do stuff like that behind their back, you seriously need a new doctor. Also, your cholesterol may go up a bit on Primal (total) and often the equation used to calculate your levels of HDL and LDL won't work anymore due to triglycerides under 100. My advice would be that when you get the testing done in February, skip all of the BS calculated tests and go right for a VAP test. Search VAP test on this forum and you will see some good stuff about them. Basically, its a DIRECT MEASUREMENT of cholesterol particles and in particular PARTICLE SIZE, and that matters a TON. Best of luck on your journey.

[JimN]

Jim,

BE CAREFUL dropping medications cold turkey. You may want to reduce the dose over time a little bit each week. Seriously, you should be doing so with the approval of your doctor as a trial test, not behind their back. If you have to do stuff like that behind their back, you seriously need a new doctor. Also, your cholesterol may go up a bit on Primal (total) and often the equation used to calculate your levels of HDL and LDL won't work anymore due to triglycerides under 100. My advice would be that when you get the testing done in February, skip all of the BS calculated tests and go right for a VAP test. Search VAP test on this forum and you will see some good stuff about them. Basically, its a DIRECT MEASUREMENT of cholesterol particles and in particular PARTICLE SIZE, and that matters a TON. Best of luck on your journey.

I agree that generally quitting cold turkey would be a bad idea. I made the decision to do so for 3 specific reasons; 1) I am on a very low dose for both meds, 2) my Dr. put me on the cholesterol med to raise my HDL - my overall cholesterol has always been low and the ratio between good and bad is OK but my good cholesterol was running in the high 20s and he wanted it up in the 40s at least. For the last 6 years, the med had not had any significant impact to good or bad cholesterol, 3) My BP (even at 265+ lbs) was generally 130/80. At the 230 lbs that I have maintained since being diagnosed in 2006 and on the BP med, my BP has typically been 117/75. So it has gone down, but I am not sure how much was due to the weight loss and how much to the med. As I am now at 225 and going down, I am hoping that both numbers will be OK for the February Labs.

Bottom line is I do agree with your initial statement, however, I did base the decision on the above facts. I did not put it in my initial posting and I should have because there could be serious complication on certain medications if you don't ween yourself off of them slowly. I would not want someone else to do that and have a major problem based on a lack of information or understanding of the medications and the condition they are treating.

[JimN]

Well it has been 7 days since I first posted my question to the masses. To summarize; By using Grok's eating guidelines, I had stabilized my blood sugars but my morning fasting sugars were running in the 120 & 130. I was informed that the larger quantities of fruit I had been eating could be the culprit so I cut my fruit intake down to 1 a day. This did the trick. I also quit taking my metformin (500mg/day) at the same time based on advice from my diabetes counselor to evaluate how much the metformin was actually helping - she actually suggested trying no metformin and then doubling it (to 1000mg/day) and compare the results. I am happy to report in the last 4 days, my highest fasting blood sugar has been 104 and it seems to keep going down (97 this morning). As a side note, this corresponds with the weight loss seeming to speed up. I am currently down to 223.6 from roughly 233 five weeks ago. My energy levels are good and even when I am physically active, my blood sugar has not dropped below 80 (on the medications I had been on, Prandin & Metformin, I was still experiencing highs of 200 and lows of 60 - sometimes in a 90 minute perriod).

I am planning on staying with the Paleo diet until I am scheduled to get my blood work done in February. There I am very interested in my A1C and cholesterol results.

Thank you all for your feedback and support.

[Karma]

Well it has been 7 days since I first posted my question to the masses. To summarize; By using Grok's eating guidelines, I had stabilized my blood sugars but my morning fasting sugars were running in the 120 & 130. I was informed that the larger quantities of fruit I had been eating could be the culprit so I cut my fruit intake down to 1 a day. This did the trick. I also quit taking my metformin (500mg/day) at the same time based on advice from my diabetes counselor to evaluate how much the metformin was actually helping - she actually suggested trying no metformin and then doubling it (to 1000mg/day) and compare the results. I am happy to report in the last 4 days, my highest fasting blood sugar has been 104 and it seems to keep going down (97 this morning). As a side note, this corresponds with the weight loss seeming to speed up. I am currently down to 223.6 from roughly 233 five weeks ago. My energy levels are good and even when I am physically active, my blood sugar has not dropped below 80 (on the medications I had been on, Prandin & Metformin, I was still experiencing highs of 200 and lows of 60 - sometimes in a 90 minute perriod).

I am planning on staying with the Paleo diet until I am scheduled to get my blood work done in February. There I am very interested in my A1C and cholesterol results.

Thank you all for your feedback and support.

Don't be too upset if your A1C is not as good as you thought it would be, its a poor predictor for folks who are paleo. Your MD won't know this unless you educate them.

http://chriskresser.com/why-hemoglob...eliable-marker

The Paleo Solution – Episode 73

[JimN]

Don't be too upset if your A1C is not as good as you thought it would be, its a poor predictor for folks who are paleo. Your MD won't know this unless you educate them.

http://chriskresser.com/why-hemoglob...eliable-marker

The Paleo Solution – Episode 73

Karma,
I really appreciate the information you have given. Dr. Kresser's link was very informative but my computer did not want to down load Episode 73 but I will work on that. I am hoping to take the information in Dr. Kresser's article as well as the information on the VAP test to him prior to my Feb labs. By reading his article I am Pre-diabetic for fasting blood sugar (97-107), Normal for post meal (<120) and A1C is still unknown (last lab in October it was 6.3 which is Pre-Diabetic). Which considering I WAS in the full blown diabetic catagory in the last few months, this is not bad. In Dr. Kresser's article, he states that fasting blood sugars in low carb diets may be elevated and as long as the Post meal and A1C are in check then you are OK. But he also states that the A1C may not be accurate for the low carb diet also.

Sooo...here comes the question...What then are my target numbers? I was diaognosed with Type II diabetes in 2006 w/ an A1C of 11.2. In six months I had dropped 40 lbs and dropped the A1C to 5.2. My lowest A1C was 4.8 about 1 year after and has slowly been going up (highest way 9 months ago at 6.4). Most of the raise I blamed on poor diet control, reduced work out (initially I was walking 2-4 miles a night after work) and gaining 10-15 lbs back of the 40 I lost. Once again I am in a motivatoinal stage and am working out, eating right, loosing weight and watching my blood sugars closer.

Don't get me wrong - over all I am happy with the treatment my Dr. has given me. Other than the blood sugar levels, I have no other complications associated with diabetes. I realize (based on his and my diabetic counselors information) that it is typical that diabetics will generally require more medication/insulin as they get older and the disease progresses BUT being a bullheaded Dutchman (as my Grandpa used to say), I am not happy with "Oh, well, it has to come to insulin shots sometime, nothing I can do about it." The bigest challenge will be to get him and my diabetic counselor on board with what I am doing. And as long as I can explain the numbers my labs come up with, I think I have a decent chance to do so.

Again, Thank you for the information and thanks to all who have given me advice. In the last 8 days I have made lots of progress on my fasting blood sugars but I would still like them to be in the 80s, this may not be possible with the Paleo diet.

[JimN]

Today is 15 days in since my first post and 5 weeks eating Paleo. I will see my counselor in two hours so we will see what she has to say. My blood surgars have risin a little in the last week, 107 seems to be the magic number give or take a few. The weight loss has sort of stopped so I am going to look closer at my carb intake, morning blood sugars compared to what I ate the night before and also how late I ate. I am also considering adding back the metformin for two weeks to see if that will bring my sugars below 100 consistantly. I will post again when I have more to report.

[nogger]

compared to the standard values from the WHO youre doing very well. im no endocrinology expert but - for a diagnosed diabetic - anything less than 110 fasted is non-pathological in my opinion. if you want to get down those last 7-8mg/dl just to be below 100... well that depends exclusively on your personal goals (for a non-pathological range ofcourse)
in terms of medication: you should never mess around with it without at least speaking to the doctor, but ive seen hundreds of patients in the hospital i work where we just dropped metformin etc. cold turkey for various reasons (e.g. surgery). id encourage experimenting, with the ultimate goal to be completely off drugs, but make sure you are looked after by pros.

also, im interested in what your HbA1c value is.