Hi I have just joined so I want to say to to everyone.
I have been a diabetic for 5 years now but I only started metaformin 2 months ago as before I tried to control my diabetes with diet but did not succeed. At the same time I went to the doctor to start taking the medicine he found that I also had hypertension (blood pressure of 190/100) and he told me to go back after a month. After a month he found my blood pressure was alarmingly high (220/120) so he told me to take amlodipine. He also said to exercise like for example going for a walk but that is surely impossible as I suffer from plantar fasciitis (very painful condition in the feet )in both feet. My question is how long does the blood pressure medicine take to work? What other exercise beside walking can I do ?
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anuk
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Hi Anuk. I was diagnosed with diabetes, hypertension and sleep apnea 6 years ago after my younger brother died of heart failure aged 48. I had already been to the doctor with my symptoms, but they didn’t take any notice of me until my brother died. I tried to control my diabetes with diet, but need to take 1 glicocide tablet a day to lower my blood sugar. I also have to take 20mg of amlodapine a day to lower my blood pressure, and I also have to wear a sleep apnoea mask at night. I was 50 when I was diagnosed and became very depressed. I also had plantar fasciitis for a while. Now that I have been properly diagnosed, and have had my pain medication sorted out, I have just completed my first Park run, and have started loosing weight. Hope this helps you x
Hi dear Karenfg .Thank you so much for your reply and well done on your first parkrun and goodluck for more. I am 49 years old and I have been suffering with plantar fasciitis for about 5 years now and the pain is excruciating. May I ask what pain medicines do you take for this condition ? Thank you for your help once more.
I strongly recommend attempting proper dietary control before using metformin. Apart from anything else, medication is pointless unless you first address faulty diet (which is what caused your diabetes in the first place). At best, metformin can only delay the inevitable: pancreatic failure and all the associated complications (heart disease, blindness, neuropathy, etc). Your high blood pressure is almost certainly caused by an inappropriate diet, too.
A proper diabetic diet is not unpleasant or hard to adhere to. In fact many non-diabetic people eat that way for its many other health benefits (weight loss, reduction in CVD risk, etc).
If your previous attempt was a low-fat, calorie-controlled diet, most people find that impossible to stick to, and there is no experimental or theoretical basis for thinking that it would help in any case.
That is not true. A strict calorie controlled diet has led to diabetes remission. Please see the following that talks about the research done at Newcastle services.nhslothian.scot/di...
I've just had this debate over in the Healthy Eating thread, so I won't repeat myself. Low-fat controlled-calorie diets have absolutely no effect on diabetes one way or the other, for completely obvious physiological reasons. Most studies take the ADA diet as a baseline (the UK recommendations are similar) and usually end up demonstrating this simple fact as a by-the-by. This is a very well-written example:
Notice the two scatterplots in the results section. The right hand plot is coyly described as "usual care" - i.e., the standard unscientific advice handed out by the ADA and their ilk. As you can see, after one year, some people got worse, some people got better, but on the average, it was a case of "no change".
As regards the Newcastle diet, it's low-carb (in absolute terms). It's just pointlessly low in fat and protein as well, which makes for a high dropout rate, a thoroughly miserable treatment experience, and no clear path to a healthy-eating plan afterwards. After all that pain imposed on the patient, it has a success rate lower than standard eat-to-satiety low-carb high-fat (about 40% compared to 50-60%). Notice this statement in your linked document:
"This [a normal bodyweight] can be achieved by careful portion control and not eating too many foods that are high in fat"
This is utter rubbish. Apart from the fact that (a) fat has nothing to do with obesity and (b) this advice has never worked for anyone, ever, the implication is that the (newly-recovered?) diabetic will be on a diet consisting of 70%+ carbs, which will put him right back where he started within weeks.
Unfortunately, this whole debate revolves around ideology rather than pragmatism (ie., what works best). Diabetics end up caught in the middle of a religious war.
That is not suitable for all. NHS selection criteria- BMI> 30 and has to be done under medical supervision. It is a torturous process with only advantage of faster rate of weight loss.
NHS is moving forward but at a snail's pace. There are thousands of people who have been successfully achieving results following low carb high fat diets. There are currently over 390,000 members in the low carb progamme run by diabetes, co, uk.
We and most importantly NHS have to drop the fear of fat in the diet in light of current research.
I am not suggesting to ignore the Doctor's advice altogether. If blood sugar is very high, take medication what has been prescribed, but change your diet and get rid of medication as conditions improve. Consider seriously TheAwfulToad 's advice.
I was a moderator on diabetes.co.uk and saw at first hand the inability of supporting any regimen other than LCHF. I have had Type 2 diabetes for over 20 years with near normal blood sugars and no complications. I have been nowhere near LCHF.
I never said LCHF is the only way to resolve T2D or obesity. However, we can not ignore the results of improvements following LCHF approach. Yes, there can be cases, LCHF may not be suitable. One has to assess.
Congratulations on your success. Why not share your approach for the benefit of others in similar situation.
Thank you so much for your reply. I tried to stick to a diet where I reduced all sugars and the amount of carbohydrates which generally make your blood sugar spike. I managed for a while but I must say it is not easy to stick to! Now I still watch what I eat as regards sugar ,carbohydrates and fats . I personally am against taking medicine but my sugars were getting to a 25 which is too high so yhere wad no other way then to tske metaformin. As regards to the diet I try my best to control my diet and am really conscious of what eat but my parents both have hypertension and diabetes , so I think it is hereditary!
While you were reducing carbohydrates and sugar, did you add fat to your diet? Without this crucial adjustment, you'll be basically starving yourself. The only two macronutrients your body can use for energy are carbohydrates and fat; as a diabetic, the carbohydrate pathway is broken, so logically you must make up most of your dietary calories from fat.
Most people find that there are 3-5 days of feeling rather uncomfortable, and then the diet suddenly feels "right". Everything just falls into place. If you'd like to give it another go, there are lots of people on the LCHF forum (including some ex-diabetics) who can give you some support.
There may well be a hereditary factor, but it's more likely that you've just unconsciously followed your parents' eating patterns. In any case, heredity isn't destiny. You probably have some physiological damage to your pancreas that can't be repaired, but you have a very good chance of working around that - to the point where you can live a normal life without drugs. As noted in my reply to Osidge, the success rate (that is, complete or almost-complete remission) is well above 50%. Commercial treatment programmes in the US boast 94% of patients reducing their drugs via dietary changes alone.
The Newcastle diet was a great success for the participants in putting diabetes into remission or causing a remarkable decrease in medication. diabetes.co.uk/news/2017/de.... Of course, like all treatment, people have to be compliant.
You are right about ideology. I have seen it at its most active in the LCHF camp.
Hidden , shahzam : come on guys. Enough with the negativity. This is supposed to be a support group.
If you personally are content to slide slowly downhill, taking an ever-larger number of pills that don't do anything useful, go right ahead. But what on earth is your motivation for coming here with the explicit intent of pulling others down with you?
There are simple and effective lifestyle interventions for both diabetes and hypertension. These conditions might not be curable in the strict sense of the word, but it's possible to achieve a "close enough" result.
There's no reason at all to discourage others from trying to help themselves.
You can see from the scatterplot in "results" that about half the subjects ended up with HbA1c at or near the normal range.
I quoted that one because (unlike most dietary studies) it shows exactly what happened to every single subject: the ones who got better, and the ones who didn't. It also takes a whole load of other measurements not directly related to diabetes: blood pressure and blood lipids improved in the intervention group, indicating that the intervention made people generally healthier, in the broader sense.
The intervention is basically this: eat proper food - vegetables, meat, eggs and dairy - and dump the rubbish. I think it's an indication of how utterly messed-up western ideas about diet have become that real food is now considered dangerous or useless.
Of course if one has lived with diabetes for many years, a cure is impossible. But look at the lower left corner of the results chart: those who started off diabetic but not disastrously so had an excellent chance of being essentially "cured".
There are commercial clinics boasting something like 60% remission (ie., drug therapy stopped entirely). The NHS is achieving about 47% remission with dietary advice alone. This is entirely consistent with published scientific results.
Having spent several months in this group, I've noticed that 90%+ of the people popping in for advice aren't interested in even trying to help themselves; they come here mainly to gripe about the side effects of their medication.
I hang around because there are one or two who are a bit more proactive.
Yes, it's nice that the NHS are finally (albeit at the expected glacial pace) basing their approach to diabetes on known biochemistry and an avalanche of experimental results.
As for the financial interests ... I think it's pretty well accepted that chronic diseases that can be "managed" are far more profitable for the pharma industry than acute conditions that people expect to be cured. Keeping a patient barely alive and dependent on pills represents a good outcome for everyone except the patient.
The invention of hypercholesterolemia was a master-stroke. A "disease" with no signs, symptoms, or consequences except high total cholesterol, but which virtually everyone "has" if you set the testing bar low enough. Awesome. I bet they still can't believe they actually got away with that one.
It just never ceases to amaze me how readily people are prepared to go along with it all.
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