Before I was diagnosed (in 2004 at age 62) I had for some time been
moving my diet in a low-carbish direction because I suspected I had a
problem with wheat products, and a lesser problem with dairy
products. Greatly reducing wheat products in my diet must have reduced
my general carb count. It probably also helped to control and slow
down the development of the diabetes/pre-diabetes I was suffering from
without realising it.
Neither I nor my doc realised it because when I asked him about
diabetes, as I did now and then because my mother had developed
diabetes in her middle age, he would test my blood, and sometimes also
do an fbg. My A1C was always under 6, which was considered fine for my
age, and my fbg was a bit higher than normal but "nothing to worry
about," "we'll keep an eye on it," and that very telling remark which
I very stupidly didn't look at with greater suspicion, "It's ok,
you're not diabetic yet."
Then came the fateful day in the Spring of 2004 when I acquired a
cheap BG meter out of curiosity and tested the effect of my favourite
healthy breakfast of a bowl of muesli and milk topped off with a
sliced banana. My BG rocketed past 200!
I took the BG graph to my doc. It so happened he'd just returned from
a conference about diabetes where he'd learned about those odd rare
diabetics who got missed by the usual A1C and fbg tests and required a
GTT for diagnosis, so he was rather pleased to have one of them turn
up in his office :-)
My HbA1c was then 5.6%. My BP was 80/150. Haven't a note of my trigs
but they were apparently high enough to be worrying and warrant a
statin to bring them down. I later worried my doc by deciding to stop
the statin because it seemed to be causing me some confusion and
memory problems. By that time I'd learned enough here to hope that by
keeping my BGs mostly below 140 pp, lowish carbing, losing weight, and
taking more exercise, I could get the trigs and blood pressure down.
I was due to retire at age 67, and all my financial plans made that
assumption. I took early retirement in the summer of 2004 in order to
spend less time at a desk and more time on my feet out of doors. I had
decided that swopping my health for a larger pension was a really
stupid thing to be doing.
I now seem to have reached a plateau with my current d&e regime, which
is mostly diet for BG control, and irregular exercise which improves
general fitness and strength but is too irregular to play any part in
local daily BG control. The regime consists of trying to avoid any BG
spike at any time of over 140, and being mostly but not entirely
successful. I still succemb to the temptation of the occasional carby
treat when I feel low, which usually pretty much ruins my BG control
for the rest of the day by setting up a cycle of hunger and snacking.
My last two HbA1c readings have been 5.4%. My trigs have very slightly
dropped but not enough for my doc to stop worrying. My LDL/HDL ratio
has improved a bit and is now 3.7. My BP seems to have stabilised now
at around 65/150. a drop in the diastolic but not the systolic. I've
dropped my BMI from 23 to 20.5. My doc and my wife both think I'd be
healthier if I put on a bit more weight, but my view is that I'm still
an overweight skinny person who could do with losing a bit more round
the waist, that nasty visceral adipose tissue.
Apart from clinical measurements I feel a lot better. I'm stronger and
fitter, have pretty much ceased to suffer from occasional
uncomfortable episodes of irregular heart beats, and have got rid of
most of the neuropathy in my feet. But all those things too have
stabilised and no further improvements are happening.
Bother! If I want to get off this plateau and make further
improvements I'm going to have to eat less carbs and take more
exercise. So this is by way of a public announcement that dietary
discipline and BG monitoring are going to tighten up, and my various
slightly too high clinical parameters are going to drop a bit
further.
Every bit of embarrassment helps with the self-discipline :-)
--
Chris Malcolm
cam@infirmatics.ed.ac.uk DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[
http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]
Long term progress 
Be nice if you could get that systolic down, too. I keep
Linear Mode
