sugar levels

Anything with carbohydrates in it will raise your sugar level. Things like plain meat and eggs and certain veggies have none so you could eat all you want and your sugars wouldn't change. It's the carbs that raise your sugar. Hope this helps you! Robyn

I have something called the good health eating guide poster pin-up. It is a great chart with all sorts of food and their serving size and carb counts. I got it from the dietician at the diabetic clinic. Maybe if you see a dietician you could ask for one, it's way too big to try to type everything in for you. Just to give you an idea some things that don't have carbs are poultry, eggs, ham, bacon, ground meat, eggs, fish, lettuce, cucumber, celery, onions, mushrooms, and lots more. But you should definitely try to see a dietician, they can teach you everything you need to know about serving sizes and carb counting. Good luck! Robyn

http://www.diabetes-and-diabetics.com/diabetic-diet/index.php

This site has the food pyramid which helps plan eating. Just put your cursor on the words diabetic diet at the top of the page. A list of subjects will appear below, click on each in turn and read. Hope this helps.

Wow! What a great bunch of helpful people you all are! I think I'm gonna retire as mod! I had to go out of town and you guys are just super to keep everyone filled in on what they need to do. Thank you for being so helpful to new members.

That email is wrong. sharij is the part before the @ sign and raex.com is the part that comes next.

(Shari- Jeannie here. I deliberately broke up your email so the spam spiders can't harvest it and inundate you with tons of junk emails. Another way to let people know your email is to put it on your personal page and when people click on your name they can read it there. The personal pages are protected from the spam robots and only viewable by members. Hope you don't mind.. just trying to be helpful here.)

Post Edited By Moderator (Jeannie143) : 9/18/2005 1:00:43 PM (GMT-6)

Derek,

You need some help from a diabetes educator. Call your doctor's office and speak with the receptionist or office nurse. Ask who the doc sends people to for diabetic education. Then have them order up a class for you (so it's covered by your insurance). You need classes that will clarify what each kind of food is and how it affects your blood sugar. Some of this information can be learned from books but you need hands on training about portion size, food choices, blood sugar monitoring and exercise routine.

This is a lot to take on all at once by yourself. Do you have a significant other, spouse, friend, brother... someone with a level head who can help you learn this new stuff and get your life control back? Diabetes is all about choices. Right now you need to CHOOSE to learn about how to eat and what to eat. You need to find out what your allotment of carbs for the day should be and how to spread this over your meals and snacks. You need to learn about excellent nutrition and ways to get good food into yourself without overdoing. But you have to sit down with yourself and decide that you are going to do this thing.

If you were faced with a flat tire you wouldn't throw up your hands and never drive your car again. You would figure out the steps needed to get the vehicle up and running again. You would make a plan, get the tools and materials needed to change the tire and fix the tire and you would proceed. This is what you need to do with diabetes.

Your food processing system is broken. You need to find out what tools and supplies you need to help it run better. This is your choice. No one else can do this for you unless you can afford to hire a full time eating coach like Oprah... You have to learn this and make it part of yourself. If you learned to drive a car... assemble a bicycle, or make a campfire you can learn to handle diabetes. YOU CAN DO THIS! I just think you are overwhelmed and want it to just go away... Hang in there and let us know about your progress with your diabetic education. We are all rooting for you.

Diabetes will not kill you faster, but it will kill you, most assuredly, if you don't take the bull by the horns and control it.

First, get a glucometer. If you have no insurance coverage for the strips, buy the cheapest one you can find. Usually drugstores carry their own brand and are quite reasonable. Check out the price of the strips before choosing a meter.

Second, check your blood sugar before each meal and 2 hours after each meal and before bed for about a month. Later, you can reduce the amount of checks, but this will give you an idea of what kinds of foods raise it and what doesn't. It should be below 110 fasting and below 180 (or better)two hours after a meal.

Stay away from simple sugars and white flour, rice, instant hot cereals. Stick with foods that take longer to digest. Eat as few foods from the carbo group and when you do have them, eat whole grain, sweet protatoes rather than white potatoes. Do some investigating on the internet into glycemic index. Foods with a lower glycemic index will have less impact on your blood sugar than foods with high glycemic index. There are no free foods, except maybe lettuce. Even protein can only be eaten in certain amounts, though it wont have the impact that a bowl of cereal has.

Try to eat the same amounts of food at each meal, so your glucose can become predictable. Try to do your exercises at the same time every day as that will have an impaact on your blood sugar, too.

Bugsy, your borderline diabetes was probably there before the high cholesterol. Excess blood sugar is converted to fat by the liver, so you will have high cholesterol and triglycerides. Control the blood sugar and the rest will fall into place. Take your meds, and be proactive. Don't wait until someone tells you you're in kidney failure or you notice one day that your vision has changed. These things dont give advanced warning and are sometimes irreversible. I spent many years in denial and now I cant see out of one eye, so I speak from experience. And my blood sugars were never extremely high, just "borderline" as one might say. Im only 47, but I have complications of someone much older, so don't think it can't happen to you. Denial is a very dangerous place to be.

Derek, good luck. Try to take it on as a challenge, rather than be down about it. You can't change it so you might as well kick it in the butt!