new to GB
 

Hello all you beautiful people. I am new to GB but not to diabetes. Have been living with type 2 for the past 13 yrs. On metformin 850mg three times daily and also Januvia.

Suddenly I have taken a turn for the worse, as if the medicine has pretty much stopped working. A1C went from 6.1 in August, to an impressive 8.5 in November. Panic!

So I have gone full throttle on everything I can do to avoid injections - changed my diet to raw vegan, monitoring my blood sugars 4x daily, drinking 36oz lemon infused water at the start of each day.... I could go on and on!

I was looking for a good way to record my blood sugars and found this. Love it :)

So happy to find this community attached. Very happy to read your stories.

Heather

Have you considered dramatically cutting carbs?
 

What influences your blood sugar most is the number of carbs you are currently consuming. It is very hard to maintain a vegan diet without consuming a level of carbs that will elevate most diabetics blood glucose level to an unacceptable range.

My own tolerance is between 15 & 20 net carbs in a 3 hour period. My A1C was 7.2 at diagnosis, but I got my blood glucose levels within normal range in 3 days exclusively by changing my diet. I can count on 1 hand the number of times my blood glucose has been outside the prediabetes range since October, and on both hands the number of times it has been outside of the normal range (aside from persistent dawn phenomenon that puts my waking blood glucose in the 100-110 range about a third of the time. Based on the averages of my testing (~4x/day, looking for highs), I expect my A1C to be in the low 5 range.

If you want to consider a low carb diet, you would need to work carefully with your doctor because of the januvia - which dumps a steady stream of insulin into your bloodstream. Insulin that doesn't have carb-created blood glucose to work with can lead to dangerous hypoglycemic spells.

Thanks for your thoughts. I was always on a low carb diet prior to my outrageous a1c result in November. The combo of med's, exercise and low refined carb diet was great for my BS. However, the more I read the more I understood that what I was missing out on was feeling healthy. I was constantly exhausted (naps after work were daily occurrences) and I had horrible CHO cravings. With eating raw vegan for the past two months I now feel healthy, BS has stabilized and mostly influenced by stress now, and I no longer take daily naps. It is working for me so far. Not easy in the beginning, but I am determined to avoid the recommended evening dose of Lantis

Welcome to the forum!

I was on Meds for years. They eventually stopped working for me as well. I'm insulin dependant now. The insulin works well for me.

When you say low carbs - do you mean below 50 or below 150? My daily maximum for blood glucose control is about 50. 150 (which many people consider low) would be a disaster for me.