Guest guest Posted March 31, 2000 Report Share Posted March 31, 2000 >She said that even if I had had a 9 or a 10, but only did things >like that ocassionally, then it wouldn't really matter in the grand scheme >of things> ****I thought there were findings that anything above 126, however brief, could cause damage. Would love a definitive answer also. Thanks, Barb -------------- RAINBOW FARM UNLTD. Breeding Premium Oldenburgs, and fancy sport ponies. http://www.rainbowfarm.com More low-carb success > >Since starting low-carb (30-40g/day) in Oct.99, I was able to go off >Glipizide in Dec. Now, 20-lbs. lighter, my doc has halved the >Glucophage to 500mg at evening meal. While I'm ecstatic about this, >I'm feeling a great deal of pressure because now I absolutely MUST >eat properly, ie low-carb. This usually isn't a problem, but what >happens now if I wander a bit? Will an occasional high spike do much >damage down the road? And how fast should that spike return to >normal range? Thanks. > >Sandy > >Visit the British Saloon Car Club of Canada >http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/7967 > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ >Get a NextCard Visa, in 30 seconds! >1. Fill in the brief application >2. Receive approval decision within 30 seconds >3. Get rates as low as 2.9% Intro or 9.9% Fixed APR >Apply NOW! >http://click./1/975/1/_/529507/_/954560469/ >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >Public website for Diabetes International: >http://www.msteri.com/diabetes/ > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 1, 2000 Report Share Posted April 1, 2000 : Thank you for the post to Elva...good info and thoughts (all the way through). Kandy ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 1, 2000 Report Share Posted April 1, 2000 Elva You wrote (Saturday, 1. April 2000 05:39): > She said that even if I had had a 9 or a 10, but only > did things like that ocassionally, then it wouldn't really > matter in the grand scheme of things. .... . She said > - even if it happened once a month it would be ok. > I was surprised at that, I must say. I do wonder at the > accuracy of that as she does not like the idea of low > carbing, as many DE's don't. Aspect 1: If you use one of the simple diabetes computer programs to evaluate your BG readings (what else are you going to do with them?) you can test that idea for yourself. After you have entered a whole month of normal wake-up and three before-meal BGs a day and then derived the weekly mean BGs and their standard deviations, try entering a few really good peaks and see how many you need before you see any significant effect on the mean value or its SD. It takes quite a few. Aspect 2: I don't believe that you will be able to find any studies demonstrating that peak BG values have any correlation with diabetes complications for somebody with a stabilized metabolism (or if you do, please let me know because I can't find anything). So far as I understand it, the glucose that sticks to your haemaglobin from time to time gets converted into a different form at the end of the day, the form that gets measured by the HbA1c test. Until then you can strip it off again by exercise or any other sort of energy use. That is quite apart from the averaging aspect. > I do wonder at the accuracy of that as she does not > like the idea of low carbing, as many DE's dont. > She is a smart woman and I have learned a lot from > her, but she definitely goes by the text book she learned > from! Aspect 3: How many 'diabetic educators' do their own fundamental research? I imagine that it must be very few, otherwise we would have plenty of experimental data and I don't see any sign of that. And yours would be too busy to talk to you! So they are just reading the information they have found (admittedly in a systematic way and knowing what they are looking for and understanding it when they find it) and then passing it on in the short form that you get to hear. You are never going to get to hear it from the horse's mouth so if I were you, I would give up waiting for that to happen. Think positive - you are lucky to have found a > smart < diabetic educator - I bet that there are some dumb ones about. If she were to pass on to you even half the unconventional diet schemes that are out there, you would be in for a rough ride. Not even Bernstein claims that lo-carb is for everybody. > I think that we wont know how these things affect us > til we do get down that road and can look back at the > choices we made " way back when, " and then it's too > late to change what we did. Aspect 4: Even then you are still not going to > know how these things affect us <. Even if you could read the report of your own post-mortem examination, you still won't know that. Your Chinese meals were not eaten in a clinical environment so there is no possible way that reliable data could be collected about your particular meals and their effect (if any) later on your particular vital organs - I bet you don't even keep the tabs or a record of what you ate and when! The only way is by collecting statistics about a significant number of people and trying to establish a correlation beween the incidence of some particular complication and their sufferers having eaten in Chinese restaurants over the years compared with others who never ate in one and still had that complication (and excluding all other possible exposures). And then all you would get is a risk factor and not a cause-and-effect mechanism. I would have thought that the primary risk factor from eating in a Chinese restaurant (outside China, that is), is the one that comes from ingesting monosodium glutamate. That risk is well documented and has nothing much to do with diabetes. And, by the way, if Chinese meals are the only things in your life that you come to regret when > it's too late to change what we did < then you will be very happy in your old age when it comes. I bet there are quite a few people on this list who have much bigger things to regret than that. And you are hearing from one of them right now. > I have a long time to deal with this, being a younger > victim of diabetes, and I dont want to spend the next > few decades depriving myself of everything! Aspect 5: One of the psychological complications of diabetes is the feeling that you did something wrong in the distant past that you could have avoided and that therefore you yourself are to blame for having acquired diabetes. Feelings of guilt are very unproductive and can spoil the lives not only of the people who have them but also those of the people near to them. You seem to be one step ahead of the game, Elva, and to be already suffering feelings of guilt for things that you haven't even done yet. That is not good. The remedy is to think positive and think long-term. Aim at keeping a stabilized metabolism even if you are diabetic and you can be fairly sure that you are doing all you can - there just isn't anything else you CAN do. Eating in a Chinese restaurant once a month never de-stabilized anybody's metabolism, so relax. > So since I rarely eat in restaurants, I am not going to > worry about it Most people who announce that they are > not going to worry about < something are transmitting the message that they ARE worrying about it right now. I believe that this is some kind of a safety valve. Hardly anybody is going to read all this stuff I am writing but one person is getting a big benefit from it - me! So you can guess how much I have been worrying about these things recently! This is something like whistling in the dark! Keep posting, Elva - it was good to hear from you. Regards Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 1, 2000 Report Share Posted April 1, 2000 Barb You wrote (Saturday, 1. April 2000 04:49): > ****I thought there were findings that anything > above 126, however brief, could cause damage. > Would love a definitive answer also. If that were true then most of us on this list would be in a bad way. When you eat something that contains carbohydrates, as you must, you will be able to measure the sugar in your blood as it rises, quickly or slowly, to a maximum and then falls away again as your natural insulin and/or your medication starts to take effect. The exact amount you might measure at the peak (if you take enough closely spaced readings) is not particularly relevant to any damage, at least I have been searching for the > findings < you mention but have never found anything. The time to worry is when it goes up high and then doesn't come down again but stays up there. After several hours of that, it would be time to start getting worried but just going up and coming down again does not apparently do any known harm. Another time to worry is when it is erratic and the rises are not directly related to something you have eaten or when it goes up high but returns to an elevated value which gradually becomes the steady value you get when you haven't eaten anything for many hours. You have many bodily functions that, if you could monitor them quantitavely would show short-term values outside the conventional 'normal' ranges but that is what all the regulation loops are for. Clinical measurements are usually made when the system is stable, not while the regulation is still in progress. In short, going up and coming down again is good, going up and staying up is bad. Barb, this is all second-hand information that I have picked up in various places. But if there is information out there to support your statement then it is being kept well hidden. Regards Thornton Pforzheim, Germany -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: Barb Young An: <diabetes_intonelist> Gesendet: Samstag, 1. April 2000 04:49 Betreff: Re: spikes > >She said that even if I had had a 9 or a 10, but only did things > >like that ocassionally, then it wouldn't really matter in the grand scheme > >of things> > > ****I thought there were findings that anything above 126, however brief, > could cause damage. Would love a definitive answer also. > > Thanks, > Barb > -------------- > RAINBOW FARM UNLTD. > Breeding Premium Oldenburgs, > and fancy sport ponies. > http://www.rainbowfarm.com > > More low-carb success > > > >Since starting low-carb (30-40g/day) in Oct.99, I was able to go off > >Glipizide in Dec. Now, 20-lbs. lighter, my doc has halved the > >Glucophage to 500mg at evening meal. While I'm ecstatic about this, > >I'm feeling a great deal of pressure because now I absolutely MUST > >eat properly, ie low-carb. This usually isn't a problem, but what > >happens now if I wander a bit? Will an occasional high spike do much > >damage down the road? And how fast should that spike return to > >normal range? Thanks. > > > >Sandy > > > >Visit the British Saloon Car Club of Canada > >http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/7967 > > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >Get a NextCard Visa, in 30 seconds! > >1. Fill in the brief application > >2. Receive approval decision within 30 seconds > >3. Get rates as low as 2.9% Intro or 9.9% Fixed APR > >Apply NOW! > >http://click./1/975/1/_/529507/_/954560469/ > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > > >Public website for Diabetes International: > >http://www.msteri.com/diabetes/ > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > LOW RATE, NO WAIT! > Get a NextCard Visa, in 30 seconds! Get rates > as low as 2.9% Intro or 9.9% Fixed APR and no hidden fees. > Learn more at: > http://click./1/937/1/_/529507/_/954560740/ > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > Public website for Diabetes International: > http://www.msteri.com/diabetes/ > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 1, 2000 Report Share Posted April 1, 2000 , this post was not to me but I think you're great. You certainly have given a lot of thought about this predicament we are all in. I appreciate your comments. Hang in there Kiddo, Tootie Re: spikes Elva You wrote (Saturday, 1. April 2000 05:39): > She said that even if I had had a 9 or a 10, but only > did things like that ocassionally, then it wouldn't really > matter in the grand scheme of things. .... . She said > - even if it happened once a month it would be ok. > I was surprised at that, I must say. I do wonder at the > accuracy of that as she does not like the idea of low > carbing, as many DE's don't. Aspect 1: If you use one of the simple diabetes computer programs to evaluate your BG readings (what else are you going to do with them?) you can test that idea for yourself. After you have entered a whole month of normal wake-up and three before-meal BGs a day and then derived the weekly mean BGs and their standard deviations, try entering a few really good peaks and see how many you need before you see any significant effect on the mean value or its SD. It takes quite a few. Aspect 2: I don't believe that you will be able to find any studies demonstrating that peak BG values have any correlation with diabetes complications for somebody with a stabilized metabolism (or if you do, please let me know because I can't find anything). So far as I understand it, the glucose that sticks to your haemaglobin from time to time gets converted into a different form at the end of the day, the form that gets measured by the HbA1c test. Until then you can strip it off again by exercise or any other sort of energy use. That is quite apart from the averaging aspect. > I do wonder at the accuracy of that as she does not > like the idea of low carbing, as many DE's dont. > She is a smart woman and I have learned a lot from > her, but she definitely goes by the text book she learned > from! Aspect 3: How many 'diabetic educators' do their own fundamental research? I imagine that it must be very few, otherwise we would have plenty of experimental data and I don't see any sign of that. And yours would be too busy to talk to you! So they are just reading the information they have found (admittedly in a systematic way and knowing what they are looking for and understanding it when they find it) and then passing it on in the short form that you get to hear. You are never going to get to hear it from the horse's mouth so if I were you, I would give up waiting for that to happen. Think positive - you are lucky to have found a > smart < diabetic educator - I bet that there are some dumb ones about. If she were to pass on to you even half the unconventional diet schemes that are out there, you would be in for a rough ride. Not even Bernstein claims that lo-carb is for everybody. > I think that we wont know how these things affect us > til we do get down that road and can look back at the > choices we made " way back when, " and then it's too > late to change what we did. Aspect 4: Even then you are still not going to > know how these things affect us <. Even if you could read the report of your own post-mortem examination, you still won't know that. Your Chinese meals were not eaten in a clinical environment so there is no possible way that reliable data could be collected about your particular meals and their effect (if any) later on your particular vital organs - I bet you don't even keep the tabs or a record of what you ate and when! The only way is by collecting statistics about a significant number of people and trying to establish a correlation beween the incidence of some particular complication and their sufferers having eaten in Chinese restaurants over the years compared with others who never ate in one and still had that complication (and excluding all other possible exposures). And then all you would get is a risk factor and not a cause-and-effect mechanism. I would have thought that the primary risk factor from eating in a Chinese restaurant (outside China, that is), is the one that comes from ingesting monosodium glutamate. That risk is well documented and has nothing much to do with diabetes. And, by the way, if Chinese meals are the only things in your life that you come to regret when > it's too late to change what we did < then you will be very happy in your old age when it comes. I bet there are quite a few people on this list who have much bigger things to regret than that. And you are hearing from one of them right now. > I have a long time to deal with this, being a younger > victim of diabetes, and I dont want to spend the next > few decades depriving myself of everything! Aspect 5: One of the psychological complications of diabetes is the feeling that you did something wrong in the distant past that you could have avoided and that therefore you yourself are to blame for having acquired diabetes. Feelings of guilt are very unproductive and can spoil the lives not only of the people who have them but also those of the people near to them. You seem to be one step ahead of the game, Elva, and to be already suffering feelings of guilt for things that you haven't even done yet. That is not good. The remedy is to think positive and think long-term. Aim at keeping a stabilized metabolism even if you are diabetic and you can be fairly sure that you are doing all you can - there just isn't anything else you CAN do. Eating in a Chinese restaurant once a month never de-stabilized anybody's metabolism, so relax. > So since I rarely eat in restaurants, I am not going to > worry about it Most people who announce that they are > not going to worry about < something are transmitting the message that they ARE worrying about it right now. I believe that this is some kind of a safety valve. Hardly anybody is going to read all this stuff I am writing but one person is getting a big benefit from it - me! So you can guess how much I have been worrying about these things recently! This is something like whistling in the dark! Keep posting, Elva - it was good to hear from you. Regards ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PERFORM CPR ON YOUR APR! Get a NextCard Visa, in 30 seconds! Get rates as low as 0.0% Intro or 9.9% Fixed APR and no hidden fees. Apply NOW! http://click./1/2121/1/_/529507/_/954583421/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Public website for Diabetes International: http://www.msteri.com/diabetes/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 2, 2000 Report Share Posted April 2, 2000 Vicki You wrote: > I would qualify that, ...the spikes can definitely > affect one's A1C, as I well found out with my last A1C I hear you, Vicki, but that deduction is not supported by the professionals, from what I have read. From the very little that I have learnt about the physiology of diabetes since Christmas, it doesn't seem very likely from a physiological point of view either. > My premeal and postmeal BGs were pretty good > -- but all over the place in between. And my A1C > was a miserable 6.7. Wow! If you are measuring all your pre- and post-meal BGs and several times in between, that makes at least 9 measurements a day, Vicki! You must have a mass of data but you might have difficulty evaluating it because that >but all over the place in between< points to an unstable metabolism (that's a new buzz phrase I learnt last week) and in that condition it is impossible to correlate BG and HbA1c effectively. You might well have spot BG readings that are difficult to predict or relate to anything you just ate and you might well have in increased HbA1c, however, from what I have read, those are not cause-and-effect but both of them are symptoms of lack of close control and and hence of an unstable metabolism. To quote from a Swiss medical lab that I found on the WWW (translated from German): 'The degree of glycation of haemoglobin is dependent upon the amount of glucose in the circulation. As a result, provided the metabolism is stable, the proportion of HbA1c reflects the mean blood sugar concentration for the previous two months. When interpreting the status of an unstable metabolism, however, it is necessary to consider the period in which the measured HbA1c was formed (in vivo): 2/3 of the HbA1c will have been formed during the last 4 weeks. It has been shown practically, that the correlation between the HbA1c values and the mean blood glucose values varies markedly between individuals and cannot be related by means of a generally valid rule.' > And my A1C was a miserable 6.7. > That's why I'm working out a new plan! Knowing what I think I know now, Vicki, if it was me I would set out to stabilize everything that I could control (which, in fact, is what I already did). I would set myself fixed mealtimes, just three meals a day at set times and stick to them - nothing, but nothing - zilch, in between. At least 5 hours between meals to let one process finish before the next one starts. And then eat more or less the same thing each day - a sort of fixed menu, repeated every day. Then I would take my medication at the same time each day and make my measurements at the same time each day. Monotonous as hell but, boy, is that STABLE! According to my very unscientific opinion, the human metabolism has some kind of a memory - based on experience, it tries to anticipate what is going to come down the tube next and make preparations. If it (especially if it is a diabetic metabolism) gets hit with scrambled eggs one day and then next day at the same time banana pie comes down, it could very well become slightly unhinged after a few months. Keep up the monotony for two months then have a new HbA1c taken. If your situation is anything like mine, you will see an improvement - and have a stable metabolism, and hence have a good BG-HbA1c correlation. I had HbA1c of 7.1 on 11.01.00 after a nutritionally chaotic Christmas and measured BGs >all over the place< just like you, then stabilized everything I could as described above, had a new HbA1c on 07.03.00 and it was 5.6 so that plan paid off for me. All that stuff you read about having a varied diet does not mean having something different every day but having something of everything that is good for you, the full balanced nutritional spectrum, spread over a few meals each day. I would add: 'but keep it uneventful - no surprises'. From an engineering point of view it is very much the same. If you have to operate a system that must accept a wide range of input values and with a good dynamic response, it needs to have a powerful regulation mechanism otherwise the system could easily get overloaded or find itself undersupplied. If you inherit a system with an intrinsically weak regulation and a poor dynamic response then you have to pre-process the input so that it remains within an appropriately limited range. As I understand diabetes, it represents the failure or weakness of one or more regulation loops within the body. Not exposing it to a wide range of erratically timed inputs is the least that a diabetic can do for his/her impaired metabolism (which is not much more than a food-processing machine). If it 'ain't already broke', it will reward you with predictable behaviour, i.e. you will have achieved close control. Best wishes for your new plan, Vicki, whatever it is! -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: An: <diabetes_intonelist> Gesendet: Sonntag, 2. April 2000 00:34 Betreff: Re: spikes > In a message dated 00-04-01 05:56:45 EST, you write: > > << > In short, going up and coming down again is good, going up and staying up is > bad. > >> > > I would qualify that, ...the spikes can definitely affect one's A1C, as > I well found out with my last A1C. My premeal and postmeal BGs were pretty > good -- but all over the place in between. And my A1C was a miserable 6.7. > That's why I'm working out a new plan! Vicki > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > GET A NEXTCARD VISA, in 30 seconds! Get rates as low as 2.9% > Intro or 9.9% Fixed APR and no hidden fees. Apply NOW! > http://click./1/936/1/_/529507/_/954628504/ > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > Public website for Diabetes International: > http://www.msteri.com/diabetes/ > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 2, 2000 Report Share Posted April 2, 2000 In a message dated 00-04-02 14:25:41 EDT, you write: << Wow! If you are measuring all your pre- and post-meal BGs and several times in between, that makes at least 9 measurements a day, Vicki! You must have a mass of data but you might have difficulty evaluating it because that >but all over the place in between< points to an unstable metabolism (that's a new buzz phrase I learnt last week) and in that condition it is impossible to correlate BG and HbA1c effectively. You might well have spot BG readings that are difficult to predict or relate to anything you just ate and you might well have in increased HbA1c, however, from what I have read, those are not cause-and-effect but both of them are symptoms of lack of close control and and hence of an unstable metabolism. >> It's absolutely true that I had a mass of data that was really useless because of some bad assumptions. Here are some of the things I've learned after one week intense one-to-ones with Ron S. ..The H was I thought was basically done working in 5 hours for me finishes more like 7 hours. Which had a major impact on my metabolism. My insulin-to-carbs ratio was way off -- I'm embarrassed to say how off it was, only to say it's corrected now. For most people H starts working in 15 minutes but it's 25 minutes for me. I've made a some changes based on these corrections and expect to make many more. ..But I'm spending an incredible amount of time doing food calculations! Can hardly wait until I get this part under control. It's like being a new diabetic all over again (I'm two years post diagnosis) - except there's no denial or anger at this point I'm diabetic, darn it, but that's the way it is. At least I had 60 years of eating anything I wanted. Vicki >> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 2, 2000 Report Share Posted April 2, 2000 Vicki > But I'm spending an incredible amount of time > doing food calculations! That's bad! There must be a simple computer program that would help or a web site that will let you fill in the blanks and then will return the answers. I have been saying for some time now that nothing will improve much until Bill Gates gets diabetes and then we will get Microsoft Diabetes 2000 to swear about. Maybe there is already an Excel template for the job available somewhere? I will have a look around - but don't hold your breath. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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