As mentioned before I am a firm believer of BG testing for Type IIs even if not on insulin. Whilst the HbA1c gives a good indication of average BG it does not show how it was achieved. Research shows that if BG stays in a narrower band the chance of complications are reduced compared to the same HbA1c with wild swings!
Meters and test strips are not prescribed to Type IIs partly because of cost and because where it has been tried many people recorded the results but did not act on it. If your favourite takeaway raises your BG to 20 it needs to be avoided not repeated the next week. Monitoring also allows the effect of different foods to be seen and sensible choices made. Once someone starts to understand the effect of diet and respond to it there is less need to test frequently as Type Is must.
All pharmacists sell BG meters, usually next to the BP ones. They will also run you through using them. However, one thing that must be considered when self funding is the cost of strips. Meters themselves are relatively cheap as the manufacturers make the money on the strips. These vary considerably and have to be taken into account as they are a long term expense.
The meter that is currently proving popular with those self funding is the Spirit Healthcare TEE2. You should be able to get a meter for £10 - £15 and strips are under £10 for 50. Some strips are 150% dearer!
Any questions just ask.
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MichaelJH
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Some Health Authorities - Northumberland for instance - give you everything you need on prescription - BG Monitor, test strips & lancets + needles if on Insulin. Always worth an ask if unsure.
I've said previously that BG Monitors only give you a guide as each is different and can give different results. I mention this as I have 3 different Monitors - one on prescription & the other 2 were freebies. Each gives a different reading and on asking was told this is quite common as there is no set standard - don't forget the Monitors are produced to make the makers money.
Diabetes is classed as a chronic illness - doesn't matter if T1 or T2 meaning a lot of products can be purchased from suppliers VAT free - such as Mobility aids, socks & shoes, adaptations to your home or car etc etc.
I was diagnosed with Type 2 after my heart attack (looked up symptoms and I never had any!) .
I've been thinking about getting one of these, but there are so many it's difficult to know which are OK. It is frustrating waiting to get it checked in 3 months. I've bought a load of books/cookery books on the subject of diet for diabetics and the amount of information out there is huge.
As you say it would be nice to see the effect a particular meal has on your levels, as this would allow you to adjust the ingredients next time to see what makes a difference, or if it's a particular tasty takeaway that you need to steer clear of.
I'm going to go off and add this to my arsenal of medical aids 😊
I'd like to endorse Michael's point. T2 Diabetes is a very common co-morbidity with heart disease, so common in fact that some experts believe that for many people the two conditions share a common cause, namely insulin resistance brought on by years of eating highly processed, carb and sugar rich foods.
For many years I had annual company medicals without any hint of heart disease, I was a bit overweight but not obese, I didn't smoke, hardly drank, my blood pressure was a smidgeon over ideal but the doctors seemed not to be too bothered, there was no family history of heart problems, and even though I did a stressful job with frequent long haul flights my cortisol levels weren't excessive, which suggested I wasn't overly stressed.
Consequently when I suddenly developed angina and was told I needed a bypass operation it came as a shock.
I wanted to better understand what was the root cause of my heart disease, because on the face of it life style changes might not be tackling the real underlying reason why my arteries were becoming blocked.
I bought a blood glucose meter, but initially it seemed to give me the all clear, my fasting blood glucose levels were consistently well below the warning level of 5.5 mmol/L which signals pre-diabetes. Furthermore my HbA1c scores were also below the warning level.
However, my GP has a progressive approach to heart disease and recommended quarterly HbA1c testing. This flagged that I was trending up and was in fact only just below the warning level. Based on that I then had some private tests and these showed I was insulin resistant and probably have been for many years. So even though I didn't technically have T2 diabetes, in fact I wasn't technically even at the pre-diabetic stage, I was certainly heading in that direction, with a surfeit of insulin sloshing around my bloodstream. Too much insulin can damage the delicate linings of the arteries, which is the first stage in heart disease. And it can then foster the second stage by promoting low level but persistent inflammation.
The lifestyle implications I'm following aren't materially different from the standard NHS/BHF recommendations, but I am implementing them with some minor twists that hopefully will yield an additional dividend.
For example this excess of insulin makes it harder to lose weight (and easier to gain weight) so needs a bit more thought when it comes to finding a diet that's going to work for the insulin resistant individual.
Another twist is with exercise, I'm following the recommended 150 minutes of weekly aerobic exercise, but I'm also layering on top resistance training to increase muscle mass that will facilitate long term weight maintenance and better accommodate surplus insulin.
There are many reasons why people get heart disease, so I wouldn't suggest that insulin resistance automatically explains your individual condition. But for me personally it's looking like the most likely explanation. That's a view endorsed by my GP, who says it's probably behind many people's heart disease, and in turn is likely the result of years and years of overly processed foods together with more frequent snacking and reducing exercise levels.
This goes to show how rubbish NHS diabetes testing *REALLY* is.
I don't even remember how many times I had to ask my GPs re. glucose metabolism. Over the past few decades. Each time, normal.
I might consider having it done, privately.
I had some cortisol test privately as I knew NHS ones are a waste of time as your experience also seem to imply.
Mine did show how high it was and I had a private cover back then. I bet these tests available privately are available on other healthcare systems, that are working to catch problems in an early stage. I lived abroad and still have friends who are on their healthcare system. They look after you. The devils in the details! They don't give up after "one-off test" that comes back "normal". In other countries, doctors move onto do more tests! A big difference.
Those free one off NHS tests run by GP only catch only the worst group. If you are only slightly below, you are fit to go.
Had pre-diabetes for many years before I crossed the line, and used a meter religiously in conjunction with diet. My condition appears to be genetic as I have a good diet, non-smoker, healthy weight etc but a family history of diabetes. Years of monitoring made me realise it was hopeless as a control or predictive tool. OK if you are on insulin of course. Good luck with it.
Thank you for that really useful information Michael - unfortunately just become relevant in our household. We're hoping it might be related to my husband's mega statin dose, but that may be clutching at straws!
Hi Michael, having lived with a type 11 diabetic (my mother) I knew the importance of testing on a regular basis, despite what her GP said. Now my husband has been diagnosed following a CA and having received such conflicting advice from diabetic nurse and cardiac team (diabetic nurse suggested the 800 cal diet and the cardiac team said eat what you want we’ll give you more pills for the diabetics) I took the matter into my own hands did a spot of carb checking for a month and bought him a monitor. He checks every morning and is managing very well, I think if he didn’t have the monitor it would be easy to follow the cardiac advice and eat, drink and be merry and take a pill.
Have a look at "How not to die'". He also wrote nutritionfact.org and is a doctor, his suggestions for diet are carefully researched and referenced. Very interesting reading by
Michael Greger MD. Very different approach to eating
I might consider getting that myself, too.
Useful thread.
One private care doctor I saw a few years ago commented on the "high c" results in my blood test, which mildly shocked me. It was done following ingesting soya milk on their complementary coffee. I stopped soya milk completely since then. I stopped full fat yogurt after that, which was also in sync with BHF's recommendation. Cows fat seems to go straight to midriff after passing a "certain age group". I was also a little too naive about how dairy cows were treated back then, too. Horrified.
I never had any high c on NHS tests that GP runs. I always assumed that they were "no good" whatsoever. If you get a free service. . . "thanks very much .. " I have been told that there are different assays, those which are far more "sensitive" than others. Sometimes, it's quicker to measure it yourself over the course of a week if it's so affordable.
My ACE is relatively high, just a tad below "too high" range. Also, I am aware that my glucose swings a lot. It spikes and goes low, sometimes, too low. Again, NHS tests never showed any irregularity.
My INR is also quite low that concerns me but nobody really acted on in recent years since it became known that I had bleeding in one of the vital organs that frightened doctors. I had some anti-coagulant medications in the past. I mentioned this if this could be related to "c" sludging through the vessels.
I noticed that natural "fructose" in fruits is seen as a major cause for high blood sugar (not factory-made fructose added in processed food already known to be bad for you) amongst over 50s and is thought to be linked with the heart disease elsewhere i.e. advanced nations in the world. I have to watch that, too.
Now it has been established that "white meat" being automatically healthy is a myth. Some of us always knew chicken, raised totally cooped up in dark, confinement, never seen any light, store unhealthy fats in their meat.
Thanks, Michael.
• in reply to
Depending on what NHS blood tests you have had, most would not detect the spikes in blood sugars. It is difficult to say what is causing particular blood results and it would not be safe to say that 1 cup of coffee made with soya milk was the reason for and out of range blood result.
• in reply to
I did put quite a bit as I like it milky; didn't know the consultant was checking my C until he told me there was some "issue". I was blindsided.
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And what makes you think that the soya milk was the culprit for the high result?
• in reply to
All the subsequent tests my GP carried out were all negative, including HbA1c.
Just this one, only one, done in a private hospital in London that flagged up C issue.
Your useful replies got me thinking how the body metabolises fats in food stuff in senior years (50+), in mine, anyway . . . I used to use Soya milk a lot without any ill effects when I was much younger. It's slightly scary how body changes so much and reacts to fats differently after passing certain biological life stage.
Having said that, it could have been something else I had at a motorway service. . . I had another "beverage" there.
Mind you, I also suffer from hypothyroidism (autoimmune endocrine disorder) and it could be that, also . . . but then the subsequent NHS tests were all negative.
Any chance they got somebody else's result. Some years ago I had a result way outside range which was fine when my GP repeated it. I have also had results lost including the a lab claiming they had lost a 24 hour urine sample!
I was offered statin by my previous Cardiologist. That was three years ago.
One younger GP offered me statin. Around that time. I gather that it is some sort of oversight by my GP, who only works part-time. I have multiple-valve disease as well. It all suddently started to make sense. . .
I think he documents most of his claims . Have a look at Dr Campbell's book "The China Study" which looked at several hundred thousand rural Chinese, their dietary habits and their mortality rates.
Or have a look at some of the other studies that clearly link western diets with diabetes and clogged up arteries, The Norwegian study, the Austrian study, etc. , or as reported earlier keep taking the pills, and then take pills for the side effects, and more pills because the original pills don't work as well as they used to do, and so on.
One particularly interesting study looked at young soldiers who had died in the Korean war, many of whom showed various degrees of blocked arteries, some as high as 90%, with an average age of 22 years.
Another study showed that if you cut out all animal products, including fish, meat and eggs you will have a 78% reduced risk of diabetes and can remove the symptoms of diabetes type 2 completely and drop blood pressure as well.
I have seen this with my own eyes as a friend of a friend had the fear of god put into him by his Doctor who showed pictures of rotten feet and legs, people going blind, etc. He went on 800 calories a day diet. It worked but needs to be done under medical supervision as medications need to be reduced quite sharply, or removed entirely as the weight comes off.
I am here in the US, so products may be different. One thing to know is all home glucose monitors can be 10-15 % off. Some brands are more accurate than others and cheaper isnt always better. One very basic thing also is be sure your skin is clean as sugary hands make for higher results. I know our government was going to require the manufacturers to develope more accurate monitors, not sure where that is at this point.
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If you use the same meter all the time, that will show differences in readings. Such trends can be important.
I tend to check my meter against the DSN's (diabetes specialist nurse) as they are routine checked. Control solutions (usually Lo and Hi) are available. The TEE2 I recommend has a good reputation for accuracy.
It looks like buying strips for blood cholesterol is not so bad, but adding strips for glucose & Triglycerides can get quite expensive. Could NHS dispense these?
Depends on how many carbs you are eating. Your doc or a dietician can give you a number of carbs you should have daily. That will give you a baseline. Sometimes people arent getting enough exercise or drinking enough water. Some medications can affect your blood sugar. If you are anemic, that will affect your # on glucometer. Alot of variables. Sometimes its the type of carbs one eats. ( high glycemic, low glycemic) plus the body can jack up a blood sugar in response to infection, stress.
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I used to use Soya milk a lot without any ill effects when I was much younger. It's slightly scary how body changes so much and reacts to fats differently after passing certain biological life stage. 
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