My Wife Has Diabetes & We Can't Get her Sugar Under Control

Hello...My wife is 36 years old and has diabetes. She has been prescribed several medications in the past...some of them have helped for a while, but then they stopped working. Some didn't help much at all. She currently takes Metformin 500 MG 3 times daily...She also injects Humalog Insulin 35 units before breakfast, lunch & dinner. And she injects 90 units of Levemir at bedtime. Her blood sugar averages 230 - 280 in the morning and it doesn't seem to get much lower than that throughout the day. She is on a diabetic meal plan, but the combination of diet & medication hasn't worked. Does anyone have any feedback that might be able to help us? Thank you for any information you're able to give.

I'm about that age and type 1. I have a similar problem, but I inject half of what you just wrote, and my doctor tells me I'm already injecting twice as much as other diabetics on average. I do have insulin resistance and am trying to figure out how to get rid of that. Exercise would do good for me, but I still don't exercise enough. Exercise itself lowers blood glucose and might also lower the level of insulin resistance for me. I don't take Metformin.

I don't know what a diabetic meal plan would consist of, other than avoiding sweets. For me it's about roughly sticking to a set plan discussed with a therapist. I'm also trying to lower the amount of "whites" in food. So, I still eat certain types of fiber-rich breads, and I do eat maybe a half or at most a full potato on lunch, but also eat plenty of vegetables for balanced meals. Eating less potatoes, rice, pasta and bread did help me in lowering hba1c on long term while keeping the amount of injected insulin about the same.

Lately I've been reading on curcumin as a potential ingredient in reversing insulin resistance, but I'm not sure about that because it's mostly the marketing people that seem the most enthusiastic about the supposed effects of curcumin now... However, there was a paper released by Korean scientists in 2008 on curcumin being fed to mice and this having an effect on the glucose levels of the mice. I could start eating south asian cousines or something, but then I would also be eating rice that is full of carbs.

Oh and my body was never overweight, but it sure seems to act as if it was...

Hi, My husband has had type 1 for almost 34 years, he also got a pump about 4 years ago and wow, what a difference it has made in our lives. He also had out of control blood sugars, no matter what the endoc. put him on. Please go to an endocrinologist if you don't already. Alot of md's say they know diabetes, but they don't specialize in it. He also has a minimed pump. Find one that knows about insulin pumps, it will make a big difference. I don't know what area you are in but if you are in the st. louis mo area, Dr. Thampy is one of the best insulin pump endocrinologist in the country. Good Luck and take care of yourself.

Welcome to the forum, loving life.  My only advice is go back and see your endocrinologist (I'm presuming you have one.  If you don't, you need one.) immediately.  Get an appointment today.  Your levels should not be all over the place like that with a pump.  High levels like that can lead to damage to various organs over time.  Change doctors if your present doctor cannot help you further.

Hi. My husband has diabetes, type 2. He was diagnosed in 2009 and we've been fighting it ever since. Tried huge amount of diabetic tea mixtures, extracts (karela, fenugreek, turmeric, amla - we live in India and here all this plants are concidered to be helpful in reducing blood sugar). What I understood is that there are two ways in which all the medicines for type 2 diabetes (alopatic, herbal) work: "kickstarting" pancreas and making it produce insulin or decreasing absorption of sugars in the interstain. All diabetic cases are different so the same treatment will lead to different results. For my husband all the medicines that reduce absorption of sugars (biguanid category: metformin and all the herbs) don't make much of a difference. The sugar does not reduce or reduces slightly. The first category, which increases the production of insulin (or sulfanilamids) helps much better, I would say even better then insulin shots (we had to do that for a while). And also exercises and diet, medicines won't help much without it.
I've also read about new category of medicines - alpha glucosidase inhibitors, which slows down the breaking up of carbohydrates so that sugars won't be absorbed in the digestion process. But it didn't reach India yet, so we didn't couldn't try it, but it sounds promissing.