ben_100 wrote: »

Thank-you for your contribution, and accepting my friend request on MFP - your experience and knowledge is a real eye opener.

Caveat - I have been informed that I am an auditory thinker, so these posts, reading them and writing them are a great benefit for my process - I do not mean to offend or steal time from the reader as I imagine this is can be a bit selfish..
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Being a T1.5 is as I understand a late stage T1 - but it seems if you are metformin only, that you are still producing insulin - and that is certainly better than a T1 autoimmune non-insulin producing diagnosis. I would be interested in knowing more as to that - for it seems to me that id someone is diagnosed a T2 follows standard medical protocol they may be headed to T1.5 - wow seems like medical and pharm industry keep slapping this back on the individual..

I believe we are on the same page with respect to lifestyle, diet and approach by the physician.

To where it impacts no one size fits all is again another insightful thought..

I took the opportunity the other day to plot out all the blood panel I have had for one reason or another, which was from 2015, 2017, 2018 then a gap and 2021 where I was diagnosed with what appeared to be a sudden onset of T2- it was insightful.

With this knowledge I could definitely see BG rising as I aged and work, diet, lack of exercise and weight all skewed in very negative ways - even back in 2015 I was bordering on pre-diabetic, I have no data for 2018, 2019 but I am hopeful that I was not diabetic then, but certainly could have been - what is key after 2015 was additional hormonal issues with work stress, and estrangement & isolation and poorer quick fast foods - heightened long term cortisol levels - which I understand now can impact heavily on effectiveness of insulin.

The sudden onset was frequent urination, and yet there was some very recent items - a several week stress event - cortisol through the roof - coupled with sweets and extreme over eating.

The immediate blood panels were through the roof - A1C of 11 and Fasting BG at 14 and other markers indicating Liver and Kidney damage.

I am very hopeful to reverse all this and I honestly believe I can - but l guess what we are saying is at best I will be able to manage this...

But let's look at this another way;
Modern diets and offerings available are sugar loaded - and much more so than 20 years ago and beyond. The average diet back then was healthier than today's offerings. Diabetes was as I understand less prevalent then as well.

So a diet back then would entail that one was simply not taking on as much sugar.
And BG levels would be normal.

Looking diet alone Overloading with dietary sugar is one contributor to my diagnosis.

By eating a healthier diet which is reverting to a diet of yesteryear will entail that I my BG will lower so BG levels would be normal.

So it seems to me that I am the same as an earlier era - so why be tagged with a T2 label as the system seems to indicate.

I guess the real test would be to measure insulin - not BG, and for a layman test, I guess the difference could be to still use the BG monitor as a measure and do the glucose drink test - and over load in a controlled manner can you recover like some one who never had compromised their beta cells in the pancreas..

I am hopeful that I had temporarily exceeded my Fat level (threshold)- and that once I get all excess visceral fat out and out of the pancreas that I will have enough remaining functionality in beta cells and a lesser load for insulin to take on, that I will in fact be a be 'normal' for me.

I wonder and at the risk of being to frank, that I am afraid that your body type and your father's may have been such that you had a lower fat threshold - that fat may not have necessarily been stored to the extent of others in adipose tissue but actually found its way as visceral fat that simply was not evident. If your father had the knowledge we had now, perhaps that situation would have been different for him, and by direct knowledge for you....

I agree with you, and am equally dumbstruck by our physician's jumping on the metformin - in your case wanting to prescribe more when you are creating normal BG on your own efforts..

My physician is a T2 and we are the same age, but he believes this is a disease and it is non-reversible and progressive - he made zero recommendations for diet and lifestyle - I have not touched the medicine he prescribed and I was scared silly that I was making a mistake - but with evidence of liver and kidney damage I wanted to try a natural path first before subjecting those organs to meds - my lifestyle, diet and exercise changes are overwhelming effective as noted from monitoring my BG.

Exercise was very slow to start as I realized i also have hypertension and bardycardia - my brother had arrhythmia and Uncle and cousin both died of cardiac arrest and at 256 lbs I was worried about cardiac issues but its working - BG was terrible for the first week and a half -
but now through logging healthy meals on MFP, and sticking to it, I have some regular exercise and HRM as well as BP monitoring [picked up on your use of acronyms ] I have lost 24 lbs to date ( with some yo- yoing) and I have had 94% in range BG levels for the last while now - now those levels are measured for diabetics - which are a bit higher than non-diabetics but I am really hopeful I will get there...

I enjoy a challenge - unfortunately my approach to problem solving has involved intense focus, at a high cost of high stress and as I received excellent results for my efforts in the form of success in work - I did not stick my head up to see the cost - now I have a challenge and realise I am my own worst enemy - well I accept that challenge and will work with focus to (calmly) turn this into a positive...

Training for a 5k using a Garmin Coach program - and to think I never thought I would run again...

Thanks for sharing.. and much appreciate your input .

Cheers.