New Prediabetic diagnosis
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New Prediabetic diagnosis
| Tue, 08-28-2007 - 11:00pm |
Hi everyone! I'm Tammy, mom to 2 boys (8&5) and married for 9 years. Anyway, on to the story :) I had a ton of tests done a couple of weeks ago by my new gyno, and one was a fasting blood test. Well today I went in for my appointment and she told me that I am pre-diabetic, and that my level is a 35, which according to her was the worst she'd seen. I have NO idea what 35 means. She told me that I need to lose weight(I've lost over 30 pounds in the past 6 months), and decide on diet changes that I can make for the rest of my life(said that I need to not eat any carbs for breakfast or dinner), and she had me start taking Glucophage(500 mg once a day for 2 weeks, then twice a day after that)and I'm supposed to get another fasting blood test done and then come back in 2 months for a follow-up appointment. My head is just spinning. I have NO IDEA what to do! Do I need to get a meter and start doing glucose testing? What changes do I do to my diet? (I am a bread and pasta freak) I know that you've probably all answered questions like these a million times, but I couldn't find any info on this board that really helped, and the research that I've done makes me want to give up and eat some Ben & Jerry's. :)

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Hi Kathleen,
Welcome to the board.
We don't often see folks around here anymore that are on precose. How has your doctor told you to manage low blood sugar with the precose? I ask because with precose you have to manage it differently and with hypoglycemia still differently again. Because precose delays the absorption of carbs it works differently. So I am curious what you were told to do.
I certainly hope her blood sugar wasn't 35 because that is low enough to cause seizures and I certainly hope this doesn't happen to anyone.
Hi and welcome to the board.
This what I think it must be also. It is unusual for a diabetic for no reason to have that low a blood sugar and it truly is an emergency situation. Anything under 40 can lead to seizures and unconsciousness.
I have never been that low. I get too symptomatic at this point for that to happen. I feel absolutely awful in the low 50's so I am sure that if it were lower than that I would know it. At that point I would be drenched in a cold sweat and needing assistance. As it is when it is in the 50's I can't make decisions about anything.
Do you have a diabetes diagnosis?
I have metabolic syndrome at this point. although my blood sugars have not been good. I was taking them on a regular basis until my A1C came back good. But I go way up and then way down.... 55 is the lowest I have ever been and I can't imagine how bad one must feel when they are lower than that.
I have chosen to get my weight down and improve my excercise and try and cut down on carbs. I do love my carbs.
Thanks for the reply. You're right that precose isn't used that often, and if you do an internet search it does not come up as a way to treat hypoglycemia. So I'm not surprised that you seem skeptical. From what my doctor has told me and from the research I've done, it seems that my specific problems are the exception rather than the rule.
Shortly before I began seeing her, my endocrinologist had gone to a conference and mentioned to a colleague who is well-known in the field that she'd had a few patients recently who were very thin and had developed severe hypoglycemia. He or she told my doctor that Precose works very well in treating it since it slows the breakdown of carbs thereby preventing the huge output of insulin that causes the severe blood glucose drop.
Here's a bit more of my story than mentioned in my post and I hope I'm not taking up too much of your time. I started having mild symptoms of hypoglycemia in the mornings in winter 2005 but by Christmas of that year I felt dizzy and shaky most of the day no matter what or how much I ate even though I tried then to reduce the processed carbs. My mistake was that I put off going to my family doctor because I was so busy with the holidays, thinking I'd just go see him in January. Then one day I nearly passed out about an hour after breakfast...I was shaking, in a cold sweat, seeing pink and blue before my eyes. My doctor sent me for the glucose tolerance test and that's when my blood glucose dropped to 35 mg/dl, which is obviously dangerously low. The scary thing is that after my last blood draw the nurse said I could just go home then. It wasn't until I was in the car on my way home that I began to feel like I might pass out. Luckily, I made it home and immediately drank a soda. About an hour later someone called from the hospital in a panic that something might have happened to me after leaving the hospital with such a dangerously low blood glucose level!
I was referred that day to the endocrinologist who immediately fit me into her schedule (even though it's normally a 3-month wait to see her) and put me on Precose and told me to change my diet by adding a lot more protein and cutting out sugar. As I mentioned in my post she has diagnosed me as pre-diabetic and what we are trying to do now is stave off becoming diabetic. Incidently, I have Type 1 on both sides of my family (my father's brother and my mother's sister).
The Precose has worked wonderfully for me with only initial side effects. Originally I took it with every meal and snack but I'm now down to taking it just with breakfast and lunch. My blood sugar has remained in the range of 75-92 for nearly a year now.
The reason I posted a reply is that the number "35" seemed to be so confusing to everyone and I was sure that it was indeed her blood glucose level that her doctor referred to when talking with her. I wanted to point out that a low level like that does occur and someone can actually walk out of the hospital with it!
Hi Kathleen,
I'm interested in how they determine "pre-diabetic". My endocrinologist says he sees no indication at all that I'm at risk for diabetes. But I'm still worried since my fasting glucose is consistently "94" or "96" (after 10 hours of fasting). There's no family history of diabetes. But if the highest number in the normal range is "99", isn't "96" already PRE-DIABETIC? I don't know what is considered the number where "pre-diabetes" begins.
Just from your experience, does 94 or 96 sound borderline to you? I'm 61 years old and I'm clear about the crucial connection between diet and prevention---that the right eating can help prevent my numbers from going higher and becoming diabetes.
But I would still like to know, just based on my fasting numbers and no other factors, if they ALREADY seem "pre-diabetic" to anyone else???
Thanks for any help with this.
Dottienow60
Hi and welcome to the board!
Hi Kathleen,
It is a little harder to treat hypoglycemia than it is diabetes. I do hope that you are successful in keeping diabetes at bay.
My husband is a thin type 2 diabetic and he was on precose, which is how I knew about the drug. You wouldn't want to be put on one of the new drugs like Symlin or Byetta because even though they smooth out the blood sugar by delaying absorption they cause weight loss and that isn't your problem.
I don't know why patients aren't instructed to bring something with them to eat after they have fasting lab work done. There was a case in the next town over where a type 1 diabetic had fasting lab work done in the middle of the morning and as he was out searching for a restaurant he passed out and struck and killed a very nice man who was putting his garbage can away. This was so tragic in so many ways and could have been prevented by a little patient teaching. Where I get my diabetes care there is a research center attached and the nurses there have told me that more than once they have given food to a diabetic who was too low after having their lab work done. I try to carry something in my purse (which reminds me, I ate my glucerna bar on Sunday and I need to put another one in my purse.)
You only need to experience hypoglycemia once, regardless of the cause, to never want to go through that again. And I have done some pretty stupid things when hypoglycemic so I try to prevent it but it happens frequently with me. We have changed around my insulin dosage, when I take it and what I take with it but nothing really seems to help. I just have to be extra vigilant and test my blood sugar more often.
Good luck and I hope that you will continue to visit with us.
Hi,
You have me confused with someone else. I don't have pre-diabetes. I have had type 2 diabetes for 17 years. I am on the oral version of Byetta and I am doing well although I do notice same queasiness.
I am not sure it is valid to say that it hasn't been well tested. The FDA wouldn't allow for its release without sufficient testing. I have been in drug tests and they are pretty rigorous for the drug company, the researcher and the patient. There are statistical formulas used to determine how many people need to be in a trial. Usually it is less than 4500. This is one of the reasons that I don't want to be on a new drug immediately after it comes out. There are always things that are learned about patient responses to drugs and drug reactions with other drugs that can't be learned in the clinical trials. There are just too many variables that they can't test for all of them.
And yes it is made from the spit of a Gila Monster Lizard. You never know where they are going to find the compounds that we need to take care of this disease.
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