I've been T2 for 15+ years and started keeping tight control on my BG 3 years ago. I stay in the 5.8-6.0 range for a1c. There are a couple of things that I've noticed affect BG levels - especially fasting. Certain medications (anything with steroids) will raise my numbers overall. Also, right now I'm fighting a sinus infection and my fasting # is 20 points higher than normal. When I don't sleep well or enough my fasting number is higher. And high stress life situations raise numbers.

mrron2u wrote: »

QQ and maybe someone following this thread will have a good idea of how to answer. How long theoretically does it take to lower Triglycerides when you use proper diet and exercise? Like say I'm fairly certain if I went in and had blood drawn today that due to poor diet and exercise I would probably show elevated Triglycerides. If say I had a blood draw in 2 weeks and spent the next 2 weeks eating way better and getting in 30-40 minutes a day of exercise would that draw show better triglyceride levels? Just wondering as I know A1c takes much longer to change (like 3 months or so).

I just started reading the book suggested above (The Glycemic Load Diet by Dr. Robert Thompson MD.) and am trying to work on the behaviors he's outlining. I know I see my doctor in about 3 weeks for normal Diabetes 3 month check up and so I know a blood draw in 2 weeks will be interesting.

Last doctor's visit my Trigs. were through the roof as was my A1C. As I understand it, lowering the A1C will help lower Trigs. However, I am also looking for this info so hope others might chime in here!!!

I am on week #3 LC and I have finally gotten my BS out of the 200 range! Its working but not overnight. Follwing the Thompson book for the most part. Exercise really helps!!!

stephenrhinton wrote: »

Here are some articles that reference the parallel glucose uptake mechanism in contracting muscle tissue. The first two just confirm it's existence. The last actually explores the mechanism in greater detail, but the main conclusion seems to be that we don't entirely understand it yet.

http://www.diabetesforecast.org/2011/jun/understanding-insulin-resistance.html

http://www.medscape.org/viewarticle/438374

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/iub.179/pdf

It's taken a bit longer than I expected to get back to this. Your links provided some useful search terms. Most of the results I found were at best non-definitive. This is what I found most useful.
http://jap.physiology.org/content/108/5/1106

At that point I turned to my son. Some background: His BS and PhD are from Cornell in Animal Science. For the past 6-7 years he has been a researcher at Michigan State in the biochemistry of cattle reproduction. His comments on my link & querry:
"Well, short story is that yes exercising about an hour after eating will probably lower your blood glucose spike due to eating.
The question would be then is if you would need to eat more carbs during the meal before you exercise. Since you are lowering your carb intake pretty dramatically I wouldn’t want you to drop your blood glucose too low. So I guess I would say it is probably a try it and see what happens because the problem with trying to apply a basic science experiment to real life is that there are other systems that interact. For instance I do not know how exercise and lactic acid buildup are going to affect the livers production of glucose or glycogen. So it may have the same effect as seen in isolated muscles or the complete opposite.

The interesting thought is that this is not actually a back door, it is a different way of activating the Glut4 GS pathway. So more like same door different lock.
I don’t know then if it would be affected by the desensitization of the insulin pathway that occurs in diabetes."

The tweak about back doors is aimed at me not you. My education, undergraduate and graduate, is in physics and math. I have long maintained that chemistry and biology can be divided into parts, the part which is not understood but is described in great detail and the part which is applied physics. My reward for this is two kids with degrees in biology, one with a degree in accounting and one who hated school but seems quite successful in business.

Re: the Dawn Phenomenon..

I got a Fitbit and I was tracking steps, etc etc. And in tracking my sleep, I found a correlation between
nights where I was restless/ had trouble sleeping/ woke up too early/ had to get up at 3am to use the bathroom... and wickedly higher blood sugar numbers in the morning...

NO MATTER WHAT I HAD EATEN the day/ night before.

That was news to me.

Good luck. It is such a frustrating disease; only those who have it know how totally frustrating it is to stay "legal".

KeithF6250 wrote: »

CrisEBTrue wrote: »

Re: the Dawn Phenomenon..

I got a Fitbit and I was tracking steps, etc etc. And in tracking my sleep, I found a correlation between
nights where I was restless/ had trouble sleeping/ woke up too early/ had to get up at 3am to use the bathroom... and wickedly higher blood sugar numbers in the morning...

NO MATTER WHAT I HAD EATEN the day/ night before.

That was news to me.

Good luck. It is such a frustrating disease; only those who have it know how totally frustrating it is to stay "legal".

That is a very interesting observation, I wonder if it is generally true. I have had trouble relating the Fitbit sleep reports to anything but you may be onto something.

Last night we had huge thunderstorms. Scared the dog, who woke me up, then one of the kids got scared. I ended up sleeping horribly. The past few days my fasting numbers have been under 100. This morning it was 123. Looking at my Fitbit recording of my sleep, you can see that I was awake/restless for about 45 minutes overnight.

So here is a weird thing (to me at least). I've been LCHF for the past 10 days or so. The last time I stuck with LCHF I noticed that I would just pop right out of bed nice and early ready to go. Well it started happening yesterday again. Pleasant surprise to me. I really need to be getting up early so this is awesome news for me. I never attributed it to the idea that eating LCHF could be causing that. Is this a common thing for people who do LCHF?

They call it "Dawn Syndrome" but awhile back I'd read that it's (possibly) due to an extra rush of adrenaline...
the instinctive, automatic "fight or flight" bodily response to awakening too early or unexpectedly.... or other unexpected events... some bozo cuts you off on the highway, a branch falls in your face when you're out for a walk.. you get shaky and your heart starts pounding--and your blood sugar goes up.


It makes sense. Our glands are all inter-connected (duh) and if the adrenal glands react, it makes sense that it would affect diabetics in a negative way. And especially in the instance that you mentioned of waking up with a start because of a thunderstorm. Boom, your body pumps extra glucose into your system to get you ready for *whatever*.

My numbers have always been high first thing in the morning. I swear, I think I could go for days without food and nothing would change.


I have been on Bydureon for 8 weeks and my numbers have gone up. *whine*
How depressing. Now, I am seriously cutting carbs.
As a result, today MFP told me I'm not eating enough.

Annoyinggggggg and depressing. Give up everything, and what... Pffffffbbbttthhhh

Good morning all! I did go on Levemir flex pen and for me it was a good decision.And watching my carbs no more than 100 a day as recommended by my Endo's nutritionist helped a lot. A1c went from 7.5 to 6.2 and hoping to get it into the 5's by next visit. I always have a protein snack,or I have 1 fruit a day with a little protein like 10 almonds or a low fat cheese stick,this will help keep your #'s down. Diane

CrisEBTrue wrote: »

I'm going to see the Dr. today to talk about tweaking my meds. (I'm a 65 year old
type 2)
I've been reading about the LCHF diet... sounds interesting.

Thanks for mentioning that.

I will confess that I am a bread lover. I've cut WAAAAY back. I'd still rather have a hunk of crunchy sourdough with some butter, than a piece of cake... but that's all just a memory now.

You're welcome to look my diary it's open. My diabetes log is there too. I do LCHF.

Dakota106 wrote: »

Good morning all! I did go on Levemir flex pen and for me it was a good decision.And watching my carbs no more than 100 a day as recommended by my Endo's nutritionist helped a lot. A1c went from 7.5 to 6.2 and hoping to get it into the 5's by next visit. I always have a protein snack,or I have 1 fruit a day with a little protein like 10 almonds or a low fat cheese stick,this will help keep your #'s down. Diane

Thanks fr the post. Did you find that Levemir maxe you gain weight?