DIABETES

trade her in for a younger model ...

It was a serious question, Delta, why not keep your inane comments to yourself

Type A is pot luck I believe but Type B can be helped by taking more exercise and eating a better diet
I believe reducing carbs that turn to sugar is an important part.
There is loads of info available now though due to the increase in diabetics nowadays

delta i would not swap her for  a lotto winner plus a euro millions winner and yes its a serious question

Serious answer. Do whatever the doctors say. There can be serious side-effects like blindness.

Later on, if she is diabetic, your missus can join support groups or Diabetes UK and compare notes on strategies with other diabetics but right now is the time to listen to the experts.

Presumably it's Type 2, which can be controlled with medication,and sensible diet.

artie is spot on. I've got type 2 and have medication for it  but by far the best way to deal with it is exercise and diet.

I have been a diabetic since the late 1990s & did not take it too seriously until recently
Lately im suffering badly from poor eyesight, feet & finger numbness & other personal problems
The point im trying to put across is please take this condition v seriously otherwise
its v hard to control as time goes on & it will damage ur long time health

Although artie & bigmo are correct, I take a daily cocktail of tablets & insulin
which is not clever or easy & wont last forever as a solution

She's exhausted her pancreas. should look up Dr eric berg on youtube - he explains diabetes  in simple terms.

I've cut out most sugar from my diet after watching him.

He maintains that potassium is what the body wants but you have to be careful - overdosing on potassium is very scary too. Worth a watch.

Diet and exercise

I have diabetes 2

and do neither, oh well.

I had the condition ph (type 2) and managed to get rid of it in less than a year.
My levels were very high but I cut out all sweets, reduced my meal sizes and started exercising (nothing more strenuous than long walks though).
I was originally put on medication (can't remember the name of the pills) but eventually came off them because of side effects.
That was 2 years ago.

Well done akabula

I did try to begin with but have largely given up now

there was a nasty story on the bbc website not long ago about a woman's account of not taking diabetes seriously.
Apparently she didnt do what she was supposed to do and during her early 20s carried on regardless.

The blood vessels at the back of her eyes deteriorated to such a point that new ones grow but are very prone to collapse.

She said she remembered seeing a ribbon of blood in her vision, she went totally blind not long after.

Take heed.

If only I could read your post I might take heed dusty....its all black now

give over ebul you are better than that.

truly dreadful outcome going blind

VR just about to launch too ffs......

Get a second opinion because the toubib gets a kickback for diagnoses of diabetes.

An independent second opinion.

One or two bananas a week should solve most potassium deficiency problems.

Hi Peterh, sorry to hear about your partners diagnosis. I am no expert but here are my views. There is currently a worldwide type 2 diabetes epedemic down mainly to our diets (carb laden) and lack of excersise. My advice is a to follow a very low carb diet (carbs are addictive and keep spiking your blood sugar eventually causing insulin resistance = type 2 diabetes)and increase excersise. I am not promoting this site but I urge you to check out dietdoctor.com - loads of great, free information includuing 'Reverse Diabetes' with many success stories.
It seems to be working for me! Good Luck to you and yours.

brown pasta and rice rather than white

Don't worry dusty, they give me an eye test once a year

I was not mocking blindness.....I have a poor sense of humour at times.

Interesting small scale studies in to calorie restricted approach to Type 2 diabetes. I think they are doing a larger scale study at the moment:

What do we know already about low-calorie diets?

In 2011, a Diabetes UK research trial at Newcastle University tested a low-calorie diet in 11 people with Type 2 diabetes, which helped us to understand how Type 2 diabetes can be put into remission.

After the 8-week diet, volunteers had reduced the amount of fat in their liver and pancreas. This helped to restore their insulin production and put their Type 2 diabetes into remission. Three months later, some had put weight back on, but most still had normal blood glucose control.

An MRI scan of the liver shows high levels of fat in green (left) and a sharp decrease in liver fat achieved using a low-calorie diet (right)

This study was only a first step. It was designed to tell us about the underlying biology of Type 2 diabetes, and it followed the participants for only three months.

Another study, published in 2016, confirmed these findings and showed (in 30 people) that Type 2 diabetes could be kept in remission 6 months after the low-calorie diet was completed. It also suggested that the diet was effective in people that had had Type 2 diabetes for up to 10 years.

Both of these studies were very small, and were carried out in a research environment. We don't yet understand the long-term effects of these diets, or how a low-calorie diet might be used to bring about and maintain Type 2 diabetes remission in a real-life setting, as part of routine GP care.

What I wish I’d told my father about diabetes
Dr Michael Mosley
Published at 12:01AM, March 8 2016 (The Times)
Yesterday, the government launched One You, a huge campaign that hopes to encourage middleaged people to take more responsibility for their health in later years by adopting a better diet and leading a less sedentary lifestyle.
The news stories reminded me of a documentary I saw recently called Fixing Dad, which told the moving story of Geoff Whitington and his two sons, Anthony and Ian. Geoff, an overweight security guard, developed type 2 diabetes in his early fifties. Although he was on medication, his condition got worse. Within a few years he had become depressed, with loss of sensation in his fingers and an ulcer on his foot that wouldn’t heal. There was talk of amputation. Then his sons came across research that showed that putting people on a rapid weight loss diet could reverse type 2 diabetes. They persuaded their dad to give it a go and to let them film his transformation. In his first two weeks on the diet Geoff lost 18lb (8kg). In all he lost a staggering 6½st (42kg). His diabetes is a thing of the past. This year he will compete in the Ride LondonSurrey100; a 100 mile bike ride through the capital and into the countryside with plenty of lung testing climbs on the way.
I find Geoff’s story particularly moving because his sons were able to save their dad while I, despite my medical training, was unable to save my own. Like Geoff, my overweight father developed type 2 diabetes in middle age. At the time I was in medical school, so I told him what I was being taught (and which is still taught): that diabetes is an irreversible disease that you must learn to live with.
The best way to delay the inevitable progression to heart disease and stroke is to take the medication and try to lose a bit of weight by going on a lowfat diet.
So my dad took the pills and started the recommended diet, but neither helped. He put on weight, went into heart failure (heart disease is twice as likely if you have diabetes) and started showing signs of dementia (also nearly twice as common in diabetics). He
died early from complications of the disease, 12 years ago. My father left me money, some baggy suits and warm memories of a cheerful, gregarious man. He also bequeathed me a few dodgy genes, which predispose me to obesity, heart disease and diabetes. At his funeral his friends commented on how like him I had
become. I could easily have gone down the same road as my father, but I was saved by television. A few years after my dad’s death I was making a documentary about weight loss. As part of it I had a scan in an MRI machine. Afterwards, looking concerned, the doctor who had done the scans showed me the images. They made grim viewing. My internal organs, including my liver and pancreas, were
coated with white fat. It turns out that the reason I didn’t look particularly overweight at the time was because I was a TOFI — “thin outside, fat inside”.
The expert told me that the build up of internal fat meant that I was at high risk of metabolic syndrome, a condition that includes heart disease, high blood pressure and high blood sugars. Despite his warning I did nothing much about it until two years later, when I had a blood test that showed I was a type 2 diabetic. I was finally shocked into action. Rather than start on medication, as my doctor recommended, I began looking for alternative approaches. I soon came across something called “intermittent fasting”. The idea of intermittent fasting is that by cutting your
calories a few days a week you can shock your body into better health.
There was a lot of good science behind this claim so I decided to make a documentary about it, with myself as the subject.
While making Eat, Fast and Live Longer, I invented a new diet that I called the 5:2 diet. Five days a week I ate normally, but on the other
two I cut down to about 600 calories a day. Within 12 weeks of starting the 5:2 diet I had lost nearly 20lbs (9kg) and 4in off my
stomach. Even better, my blood sugar levels went down to normal, where they have stayed ever since.
A few months afterwards I wrote a book, The Fast Diet, which became an international bestseller. It has been embraced by a
surprising number of doctors and celebrities, ranging from Beyoncé to Benedict Cumberbatch (“You have to, for Sherlock”). Political
opponents the chancellor George Osborne and the former SNP leader Alex Salmond have done well on this diet. Even more ncouraging, dozens of people have contacted me to say that they had not only lost a lot of weight on the 5:2 but they had also
reversed their diabetes.
It was later, when I came across the work of Roy Taylor, the professor of medicine and metabolism at Newcastle University, that I nderstood what is going on. Using advanced MRI technology, Taylor and his colleagues have shown that we each have a personal fat threshold, a point at which the fat we are piling on starts to fill the liver and pancreas. Once these organs become clogged up with too much fat, your body is no longer able to control your blood sugar levels and you tip over into type 2 diabetes.
For some this fat threshold is high; for others it can be set surprisingly low. A third of type 2 diabetics are what would normally be considered a “healthy” weight. The good news is that a lowcalorie diet will rapidly drain the fat from your liver and pancreas,
improving their function.
Over the past five years Taylor and his team have staged a number of successful trials with overweight diabetics. Asked to go on a diet of 800 calories a day for eight weeks, most have managed to lose at least two stone (13kg), come off all medication and return their blood sugar levels to the normal range. His approach challenges longheld
beliefs about diabetes and about weight loss; in particular that type 2 diabetes is an irreversible condition and that rapid weight loss diets don’t work. Neither seems to be true. As Carlos Cervantes, whose blood sugar levels were literally off the scale, put it, “This diet cleaned out my liver and pancreas. It’s not easy for me to gain weight any more. It’s as though my body is working metabolically like a young man’s again, and I like the person I see in the mirror now.”
Funded by Diabetes UK, teams from Newcastle and Glasgow University are running DiRect (Diabetes Remission Clinical Trial), a study that involves patients from over 30 GP practices in Scotland and the north of England. The patients who agree to take part are randomly allocated to either an 800calorie diet or standard medical care. It will report in 2018. It’s not just type 2 diabetics, though, who would benefit from significant weight loss. If, like more than a third of adults in the UK,
you have prediabetes (blood sugar levels that are raised but not yet in the diabetic range), then you can cut your risk of developing diabetes by 85 per cent if you lose 10 per cent of your current body weight. The problem is that prediabetes
is often symptomless.
Most people only find out they had it when they cross the threshold into diabetes.
The five things I should have said to my dad
1. I would have urged him to try a rapid weightloss diet, either 800 calories for 8 weeks (if he was suitable and could tolerate it) or a5:2 approach. To motivate him I would have impressed on him the dangers of diabetes (increased risk of heart disease, impotence, kidney failure, dementia, going blind, etc) and, if necessary, shown him pictures of someone having a limb amputated.
2. I would have told him to forget the lowfat
approach (it rarely works) and instead go for a Mediterraneanstyle
diet, rich in fish,
olive oil and nuts but low in pasta and other starchy foods.
3. I would have strongly recommended that he go “cold turkey” on icecream
and other sugary treats, rather than attempt “moderation”, which is the current, rather meaningless advice.
4. I would have encouraged him to do more exercise, in particular a few sessions a week of HIT (high intensity training) down at his local gym on an exercise bike. Since I’m certain he wouldn’t have done it on his own, it would have meant clubbing together with my siblings to hire him a personal trainer (and asking the trainer to let us know if and when he failed to turn up).
5. I would have tried to persuade him to try a course of mindfulness meditation because stress is a major driver of overeating and diet failure.
I’m sure that If I had known 20 years ago what I know now, I could have prevented his rapid decline and early death. He would have enjoyed his grandchildren growing up and they would have enjoyed getting to know him. That this didn’t happen makes me both angry and sad.
The 8Week Blood Sugar Diet by Michael Mosley is published by Short Books. More information is available at thebloodsugardiet.com

drinking a litre and a half of cold water daily will help enormously.

GLUTEN free diet - why? coz the gluten does into the intestines and covers the VILLI (small thread like strands that absorb nutrients) Destroying the villi. Destroying your capacity to absorb nutrients. If you go back to diets 10,000 years ago this did not happen. Only one type of flour strain existed and it did not destroy villi. Your diet was natural foods. Not chemicals and glue. I love junk food but at some point it hits you somewhere. ACIDOSIS is the real enemy. Cancer and most ailments flourish in an acid environment. sugar and carbs causes acidosis. look up acidosis diet on google.

I have been type 1 Diabetic for 41 years now, I was 17 when diagnosed and it had very little effect on my life for the first 25 or 30 years, but how well you control it catches up with you. I have never smoked and don't like alcohol, so probably plus points for me, and my control was about average I guess, never abused my condition.

My job involved a lot of walking which took care of some exercise, but last 16 years too much time spent on here day after day certainly has not helped.
Eyes are ok, but need to have some laser treatment once or twice a year, but the big one is I am waiting for a triple heart bypass which will be in about a months time.

As others have said control and exercise very important.

it's quite simple really to combat, eliminate all refined sugars from her diet. it's rather about what you don't eat than what you do eat.

also do not listen to doctors, they'll prescribe her drugs to control her blood sugar but tell me how that is natural and what the body should have.

I definitely think diabetes can be reversed so she's not stuck with it, but she's got to drastically fix up everything she eats, research the Mediterranean Diet. she needs to consume more fat and very few carbohydrate especially anything with a really high GI. best of luck

May 10, 2016 -- 7:59PM, Swiss Franc wrote:

Although artie & bigmo are correct, I take a daily cocktail of tablets & insulinwhich is not clever or easy & wont last forever as a solution

I feel for you. I hope you can get off the medication. Remember that the doctors are selling you their dream not your own, most GPs are only interested in their bottom line. There's got to be another way to fight it. GL.

trebor, good luck with your surgery next month, let us know how you get on.

May 11, 2016 -- 10:49PM, zorrostrikes wrote:

GLUTEN free diet - why? coz the gluten does into the intestines and covers the VILLI (small thread like strands that absorb nutrients) Destroying the villi. Destroying your capacity to absorb nutrients. If you go back to diets 10,000 years ago this did not happen. Only one type of flour strain existed and it did not destroy villi. Your diet was natural foods. Not chemicals and glue. I love junk food but at some point it hits you somewhere. ACIDOSIS is the real enemy. Cancer and most ailments flourish in an acid environment. sugar and carbs causes acidosis. look up acidosis diet on google.

this. we all know this in the western world I think but we continue to poison ourselves out of convenience.

I was borderline high blood sugar at my last check up. Does this mean diabetes would be likely in my future if I didn't change things? Trebor best of luck with the heart op.