Intro from Va Beach
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Hi and welcome to the Forum. I was also dx'd almost 5 years ago at the age of 56. Unfortunately I was already a full blown D with an HbA1c of almost 11. Now almost 5 years later my bgs are pretty much normal and I am 30 pounds lighter, actually quite thin. I practice a Low Carb diet, exercise at least an hour a day and take metformin. Life is good and I feel very healthy. Although I hate Diabetes it has forced me to face the fact that I was heavier than I need to be. It is nice to be your college weight again. Again, welcome to the forum.
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Hello there,Hello,
I am a 56 yo male with pre-diabetes and want to prevent it from turning into Type 2.
I see that I have a lot to learn but this appears to be the place to learn about diabetes and BG control.
Welcome to the forum. JWAGS has basically said it all and now is the time to grab your blood glucose and nail it down. Great place to look is Blood Sugar 101. That site discusses the concept of managing the carbohydrate level of your diet in a way that makes sense even to British folk like me! It's well worth an hour or two.
One investment I think you should make is to buy a Blood Glucose meter. I believe WalMart do an inexpensive version which seems to be just as good as the fancy branded types. Get one and use it to monitor your figures as discussed in Blood Sugar 101. That way you will hopefully never have to join us as a "full member"
Good luck, John
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Hi there & welcome, what a great opportunity you've been given to be pre warned, you may find diet & exercise are all you need to keep it in check.
There's lots of great advice on this forum with lovely & highly informative people who will be only too happy to help
Good luck
Sent from my iPhone using Diabetes
There's lots of great advice on this forum with lovely & highly informative people who will be only too happy to help
Good luck
Sent from my iPhone using Diabetes
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Welcome to the forum and good luck, if all you have to do is diet and exercise stick with it, I know people that didn't
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"One investment I think you should make is to buy a Blood Glucose meter."
The doctor prescribed one for me and it was free at my pharmacy. Just have to buy strips and lancets. Not sure what you mean by fancy. Mine stores I think 400 readings. I can walk back thru them. It beeps when complete. My doctor said just bring the meter with me next visit but I am keeping a writen record in the log that came with it. One thing she didn't tell me was how often to test. Pharmacist said at least twice a day. I am new too but from what I have been reading you can use it to see how different foods affect your bg levels.
The doctor prescribed one for me and it was free at my pharmacy. Just have to buy strips and lancets. Not sure what you mean by fancy. Mine stores I think 400 readings. I can walk back thru them. It beeps when complete. My doctor said just bring the meter with me next visit but I am keeping a writen record in the log that came with it. One thing she didn't tell me was how often to test. Pharmacist said at least twice a day. I am new too but from what I have been reading you can use it to see how different foods affect your bg levels.
Yes - in order to learn how individual foods affect your blood sugar, you need to test before you eat. Then you test one hour after your first bite & record the number. At two hours after that first bite, you test again, and that reading should be dropping back down into the neighborhood of your pre-meal reading. The one-hour reading will usually be higher, and if it is too high, you'll need to evaluate what you ate & eliminate the carbier components that caused the spike.
After you've been testing & culling foods from your menus for a few weeks, you'll wind up with a tailor-made food plan for your own individual needs. Obviously this requires much more testing that the doctor advised, but once you're well acquainted with what foods you tolerate, and how your body reacts, you can back off testing unless you introduce something new or are eating someone else's cooking - either in a restaurant or somewhere else.
After you've been testing & culling foods from your menus for a few weeks, you'll wind up with a tailor-made food plan for your own individual needs. Obviously this requires much more testing that the doctor advised, but once you're well acquainted with what foods you tolerate, and how your body reacts, you can back off testing unless you introduce something new or are eating someone else's cooking - either in a restaurant or somewhere else.
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"Fancy" - has a complex software interface to computers so that the data held can be uploaded and reported.
You put your finger on the issue with the "400" (mine only does 200
). If the battery goes (and they do), so can your data. I log the readings in a little notebook and then copy the information on to a database on my computer and then I create a pretty report - in French - for my doctor. As a systems analyst, I have to frown on my failure to eliminate the transcription errors inherent in the two manual transfers, but until I find a decent built in reporting tool (by decent - I mean one that fits MY requirements), I'll live with it.
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