Unmedicated type 2 -trouble with extra wt.!

I just started on this forum and I want to beg all diabetics, if they haven't already, to please go to the library or bookstore and get "The GI (Glycemic Index) Diet" by Rick Gallop.  This book was recommended to me by my diabetes doctor and diabetes educator and it is already changing my life for the better.  The book explains the way glucose works in the body......that all foods have a glycemic index number, the rate at which glucose is released into the body by each food.  If you eat the right foods (those low on the glycemic index), you WILL lose weight.  Foods that I had been eating, thinking they were healthy (watermelon, canteloupe, baked potatoes)  were in effect, killing me.  I lost 7 pounds the first two weeks and so far two pounds this week.  My sugar has gone from 341 to 109 fasting, with this diet and medication, in three weeks.

Get the book and read it.  You won't be sorry.  It is very, very easy to follow.  I don't understand why every diabetes doctor doesn't recommend this book, but I'm sure glad mine did.  I look forward to a healthier and long life!

wa,

Just a suggestion but it worked for my dogs.. might work for you. Our Lab and Dalmation were pudgy. We used to feed them once a day. Cut the food back a bit... no wt. loss, longer exercise time... no big results. Got busy with daughter's wedding....Her boxer came to stay while she did the wedding/honeymoon thing. In that three weeks we had to put our dogs on the boxer pup's schedule of eating. She ate twice a day because she is just a year old and still growing. We took our dog's usual amount of food and divided it in half. Fed them the exact same amount as always but in two feedings. In three weeks they became new dogs! Quit looking like sausages and started to get ribcages!

Went to the vet for shots and mentioned the wt. loss. Asked him. He said, "Oh yeah! Same amount of food... but feed a little at a time, more often, and they will lose weight! We dont' know why, but that's what happens." I don't need to know the biomechanics of the thing, just that it works, and I remembered when my mom had to lose weight for surgery her doctor put her on 6 small meals a day. Total calories was about 1200-1400 but she lost weight like crazy! Inconvenient? You bet! Nutrition juggling act? Oh, yeah! Not like dog chow that you can just scoop into a bowl. Worth it for her? Yes. Worth a try?

Matt,


Jeannie is right on with this one. With many type 2's there is a genetic predispostion to the disease. I was 5'11, 175 lbs, 6% body fat with normal cholesteral and BP when diagnosed and my sugars were in the 350-425 range. Was my diet poor. With 6% body fat you can't have a poor diet and exercise regimin. So what accounts for the insulin resistence?? Its called a DISEASE!!! and nothing I could do short of medication was going to help it. So lets not be so myopic as to look at your own situation and assume that everyone that is a type 2 diabetic got there from abusive diet or exercise patterns or that this "disease" is curable through something as simple as changing your lifestyle. If such were the case, I would never have been diagnosed with this disease.



Warren

People that have bgs of 300-400 mg/dl ...seems pretty extreme, this must be frightening.......I have seen several folks like that ....of course its truely none of my business so I don't normally intrude...unless asked....but it would seem that this is a little like type 1 (except I think type 1 don't make insulin) but insulin is still being produced. Just to understand our own "condition" , those of us who can control with diet and/execise, and anticipate the possiblity or probability(unknown) that our condition could progress to this point with or without medication(?).

Does diabetes always progress this way every time? Seems like some people turn this around without meds(but for how long?), and I have followed a very few who have quit medicating(specifically 2 nurses) and are now normo-glycemic, but probably do not see this that often. Seems most of the medicated diabetics that I know are sort of stable but depressed and long term seem to get slowly worse(my mother for exaple, my best friend,...). I really don't want to see this, but I see no exceptions and I fear there is something terribly wrong. The more support groups that I go to, the more obvious it becomes.

Sometime I consider myself in denial of my diabetic future, but it makes no sense to me to give up on the non-medicated control to begin exposing myself to the side effects(hypoglycemic and other unknown effects)....when I stand back and look at the apparent concensus of the effects of the two approaches.....I can only see one that seems to make sense for improved quality of life without accidental hypoglycemia.

Weight appears to be my overwhelming enemy and common too so many in the groups I go am involved in. Hypergycemia, a physiological side effect seems simple until you throw in the massive complications of trying to control the delicate highly complicated interdependent human physiological systems(pathways?) by adding non-physiological substances.
Also, when we get ill our Bgs go up and out of control.....so is it out of reason to think that this might indicate infection? or toxicity(one of the products of infection too!)

Detecting infection....does seem an exact science either...does it? If toxins from infections cause the liver to dump sugar into the blood(high BGs)....why not infections...toxins instaed of insulin resistance? Just a recurring question...