Joined a forum. Let's see how that goes

Ever since I was diagnosed, I have been looking for somebody in the same situation that I can talk to.

It has been hard. My mom is also a diabetic, but she is not very well following any strong guidelines. If I knew what I know now about two years back I would definitely not have been diagnosed with diabetes. I would have taken steps to stop the progress of diabetes right then and there. All my life I have exercised somewhat religiously or at the very least kept active by engaging in hiking or other forms of strenuous exercise. I have always taken care of what I eat and in general kept away from fast food, kept away from soft drinks, kept her from other sugary drinks and taken care to put good stuff in my body. Not only this, I actually went and talked to nutritionists on how I could lose weight...  I talked to doctors and I, in general tried to make sure that I was in good shape. As I have already mentioned in one of my previous posts I used to exercise vigorously three times a week by running between four and 6 miles. There definitely have been days where I ran lesser and there definitely have been times when I skipped running. However if you look at the general broader scale, I have kept up exercising consistently throughout the last 10 years of my life.

So when I say that I had talked to nutritionist, well, my workspace offers free screenings for usual health conditions once a year. One of those is blood sugar checks as well. So about two three-years ago when my numbers started hitting close to 100, the person manning the health checkup referred me to a nutritionist. I did go to the nutritionist. However every single time when I have gone to nutritionist, I have been given the same advice. Usually the interview would go like this, "you are Indian you must be eating a lot of sweets", "you are Indian you must be eating a lot of Ghee" or even things like "you should eat stuff in moderation eat more fruits eat more vegetables". However, I never truly gathered the severity of the 100 blood glucose mark. I always thought that whenever I would go for a checkup, just like the cholesterol level sometimes would be little bit up or a variety of other factors might be a little bit in non-optimal range, it would not be a big deal and by exercising or by other means I would bring them back into the right range. Well, I thought the blood glucose would be the same thing and that 100 is not something to be worried about and nobody actually pointed out that this is pretty severe and that I should have taken immediate steps.

Now after reading Dr. Bernstein's book I believe that I should have taken immediate steps the first time I got my 100 reading. Not only that I should just have ignored the nutritionists advice which was actually never in line with what I should have been doing. I should have followed Dr. Bernstein's advice and started cutting down carbs long time ago.

Anyways, coming back to the point, what I really am saying is that once I was diagnosed I wanted to be able to compare notes with someone so that I could see what condition I am in and what I could do and whether it correlates with what other people are doing so that I could learn from them or they could learn from me. In spite of everything that I have done, sometimes the blood glucose levels are not optimal. This has been especially true with my morning blood glucose levels which nowadays tend to be somewhere in the range of 100-108. I still exercise pretty vigorously and my postprandial blood glucose levels are usually under 110 at the 75 minute mark, however, the morning blood glucose levels still worry me a little bit. I have read Dr. Bernstein's book a few times and from what I understand it is simply the dawn phenomenon. However, a few months ago I used to get a blood glucose level readings of about 94 – 100 at fasting. So now I do not know why the fasting readings have increased even though my postprandial figures remain the same. To put things in context, I do believe that my blood glucose meter is actually incorrect and gives the readings about 10 points higher. Last time I went for the lab tests, I actually perform a self test with my personal blood glucose meter right before the drew the blood. I wanted to see how accurate my meter was. My meter gave me a reading of 95 and the numbers that came in actually showed a reading of 85 so I have always assumed that I'm that my meter gets about 10 points higher. However I am not certain given that these readings from the meter can have an error margin of 20% either ways. Essentially I do not know if my meter is consistently 10 points over or if it was a one time deal. Would someone else know, I have no idea. Amazon reviews seem to point either ways. Some people say that the readings are higher and others say the readings are lower. So I guess it is hard to figure out which way my meter is tending unless I can read it somehow.

I know that I have changed a few things in my diet for example I eat a little bit less soy products now a days and I eat a lot more vegetables and I still continue to eat the same amount of cheese as I used to do. So I thought that it is a possibility that the effect of soy which events out blood glucose levels is not present in my diet anymore and that might be the one that leads to higher fasting blood glucose levels. However I have no one to turn to, to compare notes.

So eventually, I joined the forums on http://diabetes.co.uk. I think I'm going to follow this for a little for most of my questions. I will try helping other people and in general asses the mood of the forums and see if it truly helps.

On that note, I did help out a lady who was recently and newly diagnosed with diabetes. She was misinformed by her nurse and given the advice that going on a low-carb high-fat diet would be bad for arteries in terms of I cholesterol. However multiple people including me were able to help her and tell her that this is not necessarily so. In fact correlating with my first test I could tell her from my first hand experience that in spite of eating a lot of cheese, as long as I kept my carbohydrate intake lower, my blood glucose levels were even and my cholesterol has in fact been the best that I've seen in a long long long time. In fact is 100% normal.

Exercise is my religion

So, when I was diagnosed, I asked the doctor what could I do. She said that losing weight will help significantly and I told her that I was going to go all gung-ho and start exercising like crazy and lose weight very quickly. Seeing my enthusiasm, she said that she was going to put me on a low dose of metformin, 500mg daily so that I don't become hypoglycemic. 

I have managed it with that for a while but it is getting a bit difficult and the fasting levels are not ideal and now mostly remain in the 100-105 range. The last time I had a lab test done, I tested my meter just before they drew the blood. The meter showed me 95 and the lab test showed a 85. So, it seemed that the meter was measuring about 10 points higher than what things were. If I go by that, then my glucose levels are at about 95. Not ideal, but a work in progress. 

Another issue that I believe I might be facing with the low dose of metformin is that, Exercise has become  pretty much a demanding, in your face fact of life. I need to strenuously exercise everyday. I mean EVERY FRIKKIN DAY! I don't know how others manage it and how doctors say that you should walk 30 minutes a day or so. Walking, even fairly long distance, a few miles, does not do much to my blood glucose. So, for now, I run 6 miles 3 times a week and then on the off days, I do strenuous weight training. By strenuous, I mean that I push reasonably heavy weights in such rapid succession and such high repetition count that I am sweating and panting. Usually, a 30-45 routine keeps the glucose level for that day in check.

This also means, that over the weekend, if I take a lazy day off, the glucose levels start veering off from the optimal range. Sigh.

Next time I meet the doctor, I am going to ask him/her if I need to increase my dosage.

Anyways, here is a small tip that I discovered with experimentation. Sometimes, in spite of all the precautions, post-prandial (after meal) glucose levels are not optimal. There are two ways you can handle it:

• You can ignore it and wait for it to go down slowly with the medicine and passage of time
• You can exercise to bring it back into line fairly fast.

I take the second option. The exercise that helps is just strength training. I was recently travelling where I did not have access to my gym and weights or equipment and the glucose levels were not optimal. In desperation, I just started doing Squats without weights, then I did fast paced pushups, picked a chair and did dips. Even to simulate some weights, I took a tiny bucket with a handle in the hotel room, filled it with water and did some  one arm lifts and then bunch of crunches where my elbows would touch the diagonally opposite knees. In about 25-30 minutes, I was able to drop the glucose levels about 20 points.

Dr. Bernstien says muscles have a different way of metabolizing glucose that does not require insulin and so strength training is better than aerobic exercises. I guess I can agree with that after having experimentally verified that.

Now a days, if I am just a teeny bit over the optimal range, I let it go. If things are more than 10-15 points over the optimal range, I try to find weights or other exercises where I can stress my muscles and try to put it back into the normal range.

Back after a while with mostly good results

So, this is a post after a while and it has been an interesting journey. When I started, I was not sure how long I could hold on, whether I could really make eating a VLC (Very low carb) diet a lifestyle etc...

Well, so far, I have been able to mostly. I have dropped from 186lbs to 145lbs (about 66kgs). That is a whopping 41 lbs. I am 5'6" so I am within a hair of my perfect weight range. I want to get to 62kgs which would be 138 pounds or so, but that is now very slow going. In the initial phases, the weight dropped like crazy.. I dropped the first 30 pounds within 3 months and then it took 2+ months getting the next 15 pounds or so. Now the weight is mostly stable around 145.

Apart from a small timeframe when I visited India and I did  not keep good records, I mostly did keep food and glucose records. Here is what I have learned so far:

• Mushrooms are your friends - they have almost no carbs, but tons of minerals. They do fill you up, so eat up. I get my mushrooms from Costco, where they are to be had for fairly inexpensively. The best tasting mushrooms that I like are the Shitake  mushrooms from Fred Meyer. They are most $6 per pound though.
•  I had one full checkup for lipids and blood sugar, A1C etc. Even with eating crazy amount of cheese to make sure I get enough calories, the cholesterol from the test was the best that I had in years. It was 100% normal. Triglycerides at 98, HDL at 41 (well, that is low, always has been) and LDL at 96. The Cholesterol/HDLC ratio was 3.8, well below the normal range of 5. So, eating tons of cheese with only vegetables and very little carbs, seems to keep your cholesterol in check.
• The A1C was a bit of head scratcher. It turned out to be 6.2%. When I was diagnosed, it was 8.3% so bringing it down in 3 months seems like a great deal, but based on my understanding and calculations based on the extensive logs I kept, it should have been much lower. I guess I will check with the doctor I meet next time on why the discrepancy.

Anyways, On and On.