Where should I start? (I'm worried).
I got my friend Linda excited about Atkins about 10 days ago and so she has been on it that long. She's been doing very well on it with her diet (she was SERIOUSLY carb addicted before). The only thing is: her blood sugar was through the roof tonight. I called her and she was groggy and sleeping and I told her to get her butt downstairs and check her blood - it was 264!!!
She was shocked.
Now for a little history in order to get some help from those of you that may know.
She told me that before Atkins, she is a diabetic who only takes her medicine when she knows she is about to HIGH CARB IT! I think the name of the medicine is Glucoside (or sounds like that) and I KNOW it is NOT glucophage. The pill is 10 mg and she says that when she took one about 5 days ago for high blood sugar, she bottomed out TOO LOW. I told her I would come here and ask you all, especially those of you that are or were diabetic because she doesn't have internet access at the moment.
I told her that the *logical* thing seemed to me that she should be taking a maintenance amount of the medicine - like 2.5 mg or something but that I had no way of knowing this.
I *think* she is also taking something called an ACE INHIBITOR (the only thing I know about this type of drug in her case, it helps protect her kidneys from damage from the diabetes).
I asked her about her diet and she is eating well and eating the right foods. She feels she is not eating too little, nor too much. She is also exercising - walking.
She has convinced herself that it must be some HIDDEN CARBS causing the high blood sugar but I do not think it is that at all. HELP GUYS!!! I'm worried about my friend and she is reluctant to see a doctor until her new insurance starts because of the cost. I'm thinking of telling her to get off induction and go to OWL because I'm worried about her.
By the way, she weighs over 300 lbs and is about 5' 10" (if that helps).
Any ideas?

Hi Jeannie--Hope your friend is o.k.--I would suggest that you go back to the Active Low Carb Forum Page and scroll down to Low Carb Related Use Net News Group and under it hit Diabetes. Present your question and hopefully you will get a lot of support. --My husband is diabetic but he regularly takes his meds and checks his blood glucose. Wish I could be more helpful. Aleka

Sorry to hear about your friend.I truly believe that lc is her only chance.High carbing with lots of medication is going to burn out her pancreatic cells and besides those levels are enough to give her complications. I URGE her to get a copy of Dr Bernstein's book. Right away. For me, it has been easy, but if its more complicated, you can get his glucograf charts and figure out systematically what foods do what for how long. And it would be nice if she could find a Dr who understands and believes in LC. A friend of my wife started Atkins, then discovered that she is diabetic. Amazingly, her Dr did NOT try to get her to eat more starches and s--- that the ADA recommends. He just said, go with your Atkins. So there are a few out there. Bill

Thank you both for your support and suggestions.
I will have you pick up a copy ASAP on www.half.com as they have a few for sale.
She lives 2 hours away from me in Las Vegas and I am SOOOO worried about her.

It is GOOFY that her blood sugar would be so high when she is only consuming about 20 grams a day of carbs. I can't figure it out. sheesh!

Hi,

I'm sure someone else will reply with more helpful information, but here are my comments. (I'm a type 1 diabetic)

Mandatory disclaimer: because this diet will change your diabetic friend's sugar levels and she takes medicine, she really needs to see a doctor to figure out appropriate dosages. If she is going to try and go it alone, she needs to take her blood sugar level several times a day to see how much medicine results in what blood sugar levels. I don't know how long she has had diabetes, but she may well need medication to reach her target sugar levels. This is very dangerous if you are not checking your sugar levels.

Regarding diet, induction is less carbs than owl, therefore induction will produce lower blood sugars than owl. I think some diabetics have reported it taking several weeks even up to a couple of months doing low carb to get their sugars down. I feel strongly that switching to OWL will not help.

Sugars: they are affected by a lot of things besides diet, like stress, exercise (some find exercise actually increases their sugar levels!), etc. Anything else going on in her life?

*This is my number one comment* You have given only one blood sugar level reading. One check means nothing in the scheme of things. How often is your friend checking? Without other information, I would assume that her sugars were even HIGHER before starting atkins. ~250 is by no means uncommon among type 2s eating a lot of carbs. Has she only checked sugars once since starting this diet? If so, she needs to check a lot more to monitor how her sugar levels are coming down. Although atkins may not bring sugars down as fast as we would like, in my experience they don't bring them up. Mid-200s may be an improvement.

Also, when she felt "low" with her medication, what was her actual reading? If she didn't take it, she may not have even been low - just lower than she had been in awhile. Target levels are 80-120.

I wish your friend good luck! A low carb diet is the best thing she can do for her diabetes.

-Deb

HELP!!!!!!
I went to the suggested area under User Net Groups and clicked on Diabetes and thought Yup, this is the place to post it! and then it wouldn't let me post a new message or even reply to existing messages. This is the response I got:

You do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:

You do not have permission to access the page that you were trying to. Are you trying to edit someone else's post or trying to access administrative features? Check that you are allowed to perform this action in the Forum Rules.
If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation.
Logged in user: Jeanne Sch [logout]

HELP

Log out thn relog in and go to the page. Sometimes this stuff gets goofy.=Aleka

Deb -
Thank you for your input. She has had type II since she was about 13/14 years old. I personally don't think she has been taking her diabetes seriously her entire life but that's just my concerned opinion.
She woke up (yesterday) feeling sluggish all day and when she got home from her job (she is a massage therapist and on her feet all day long) she went to sleep. I woke her up about 2 to 3 hours into the *nap* and didn't like the way her voice sounded - TOO TIRED!
That is when she took her glucose and saw it was at 264 and realized it must have been high all day long. She then popped what I think she calls a glucoside 10mg pill and she told me it usually makes her glucose go too low (to which I countered - then try taking 1/2 a pill or 3/4 of a pill). She is so consumed by the idea of having to consume sugar if the med makes her glucose go too low that she is losing sight of her health darnit!

When I went to see her 10 days ago (a day before she started Atkins), she admitted to only checking her blood glucose *occasionally* and I got her to pinpoint it at - a few times a week.
Now, I know type I's don't have that luxury but I was also under the impression that type II's don't either (my husbands grandmother has type II and checks it twice a day, grudgingly). I think my friend has part denial and part *I gotta save a buck* on her mind and not her health in the equation anywhere!!!

On her glucose levels - I can't tell you with any assurance that it is that high as she has told me that she felt pretty energetic and good (which means she doesn't monitor it even on a daily basis) and 5 days ago her blood glucose was around 250 and she popped one of the glucoside 10 mg pills and started getting LOW blood sugar in the middle of doing a massage (she explained this was a very HORRIBLE situation because it is unprofessional to stop a massage in the middle at CANYON RANCH in Vegas - I thought - who cares - this is your health and life chicky!)

I don't think I can persuade her to get to an endocronologist to monitor her meds and I don't know what doc would have told her to only take this pill when she was going to CARB HEAVY. I also don't know of any doc that would tell her that she only had to monitor her blood a few times a week. It seems like she is playing Russian Roulette with her pancreas....does anyone else get that feeling? I mean if it is money she is worried about (I think it is) than I will gladly pay for her doctor's visit or her testing strips just so she will monitor once or twice a day. I am SOOOO worried about her not being responsible about this.

Wow, Jeanne, you are a totally caring friend. I hope your friend appreciates you. There's not too much you can do. I admit to having a year or so of denial before starting to be responsible about my diabetes. It's tough to deal with. I would just say to encourage her to 1) see a doctor as soon as she can, at least as soon as insurance kicks in 2) check her sugars more often and try and keep a journal of what she eats, her sugar levels, and when she takes her meds. She can show it to her doctor and he/she will better be able to help her. and 3) stick with the low carb diet. It really is the best thing she can do food-wise for her diabetes. And even if that's all she does, it will be a big step in the right direction. Good luck, again!

Jeanne, you are indeed a very caring friend.

There is one possibility that I dont' think anyone has mentioned yet...that your friend's blood sugars were far higher than they are now and are actually beginning to come down. I get the impression from your posts that your friend isn't in the habit of checking her blood sugar even daily which is very dangerous for a diabetic. Right now, she should be checking it several times a day; fasting, 2 hours after each meal and at bedtime and she should keep doing this until she's getting normal readings consistantly.
Blood sugars do respond positively to low carbing, but it isn't always an immediate response. If blood sugars have been very high or a person has been diabetic for quite a while (and uncontrolled), it may take a couple of months for those blood sugars to get into normal ranges, especially without the help of medication. Often medication is needed to help get the blood sugars into a normal range until the patient can manage it themselves on diet alone and it's important to normalize those blood sugars as quickly as possible.
It concerns me that your friend is using her medication (I believe it's Glicizide) to cover carb binges or only when she checks her blood sugar and notes that it's high. Generally, this is not what medication is to be used for and it's called self-medicating and can cause serious problems such as unexpected hypos if you don't know what you're doing (and sometimes even if you do...that's why you need to work with your doctor!). For it to really help, your friend needs to get on a regular medication schedule with the right medication until she can control her blood sugars with diet alone. For that, she will need a trip to the doctor and at least a few blood tests. From what you're reporting, I wouldn't be too surprised if she would get a HBA1C test that it would be between 11 and 12 or even a bit higher which would show that her blood sugars have been elevated for more than just a few weeks. You obviously can't force her to go to the doctor, but I'd suggest that you really encourage her to do so. Diabetes isn't a disease to be taken lightly and messed around with on your own and I can't believe that any serious doctor would let her continue to have blood sugars this high without at least suggesting that she get on a regular medication shedule at least short-term. Mine was about as high as hers is when I first saw my doctor about it and he was very concerned and put me on medication immediately!
She needs a professional right now (as well as a very caring friend!), encourage her to get the help she needs and start getting control of her health.

Thank you for your input Lisa

I called my friends answering machine and read it to her.

I KNOW she has been in denial off and on for years. I think she feels *WHY ONLY ME?* because she got it when she was only 13/14 years old.

I now tell her that she has a 1/3 of the US population to share it with and another 1/3 of the population are like me (living with chronic intestinal candida/fungal infections). The result of diet change is the same for both her and I so I tell her to stop acting like a victim and realize how LUCKY she is that she has symptoms that tell her to shape up!!!
I do feel lucky because I have more than one reason to do Atkins!

If I was doing Atkins, ONLY to lose weight, that wouldn't be enough of an incentive for me at my *advanced* age (cough, cough, 37, cough, cough, getting old, stagger).

Jeanne...

In a way, I can understand how your friend feels. Face it...it sucks to be diagnosed with a chronic illness, especially when you're still a teenager with your whole life ahead of you. Even when you're [ahem] forty-something, it still sucks.
BUT...throwing yourself a decades-long pity party doesn't do a darned thing about what's going on inside your body; then you're just a depressed person with a chronic illness and you're still no closer to doing anything productive about it.
As I see it, there are several options that a person in this sitation has:

1) Sit around feeling sorry for yourself, do nothing about the problem and get worse.
2) Sit around feeling sorry for yourself, do something grudgingly and halfheartedly about your disease and hope you don't get worse.
3) Feel sorry for yourself, do something about your disease (diet, medication, whatever it takes) and at least get better physically.
4) Forget about feeling sorry for yourself, face your disease head on, do whatever it takes to keep it in check and resolve to do your darndest to not let it deprive you of a long, healthy and happy life.

Option 4 sounds like the best option for me.

This is one of the few diseases where the person who is sick has a great deal of control over how sick they will let themselves get by either chosing to do nothing or by chosing to make the lifestyle changes needed to gain and keep good control (diet, exercise, medication). Diabetes is no longer a death sentence as it was as little as 80 years ago. There have been great advances in what we know about how to treat it effectively and with the right program, many diabetics go on to lead long and happy lives. Yes, you will need to change some things, like what you eat, but if it actually makes you healthier and helps you live longer how awful is that???

When life hands ya lemons, grab some Splenda and make some low carb lemonade.

I hear ya Lisa and have quietly stood by her for years, knowing she was hurting herself but knew she was in deep denial in her 20's. I remember the days (about 8 years ago before I was sick) when I'd make peanut butter pie and she would come over and BEG for a piece of it. She would have it and then IMMEDIATELY fall asleep and I could barely wake her up - used to scare the HELL OUTTA ME!!! I stopped giving her any sugary things when she came over after two episodes like that.

I know first hand what it is like to not come to terms with a disease - I have a chronic fungal infection in my gut (which can lead to diabetes) and wasn't dealing with it through my diet. Atkins gave me the control over food that I've been needing for a long time (whew).

I feel it may be time a friend told her it was ok to control her weight and her life. Case in point, her parents helped her to buy a house last year and she confessed to me that she didn't even own it - they did and they did not let her pick out anything about the newly built home in the subdivision - not even the paint color.

I really worry because in the year I haven't seen her these health conditions became known to me or were glaringly obvious:
-she admits to being sugar/carb addicted (in the past it was fats)
-her hair has thinned
-she mentioned being on an ace inhibitor
-she has had her large toe on her foot amputated and was hospitalized
-she has a huge hole on the bottom of her foot currently because she
was at a bbq, barefoot (what is she thinking?) and stepped on a
burning coal (odd story, I know).
-she has gained roughly 50-100 lbs
-she is self-medicating her foot wound and taking antibiotics she got
from a friend who is an RN (I urged her to see a foot doc and she
finally did to have the CALLOUS removed and have him give his ok).
- she had a kidney infection (mild? I dunno) about 3 or 4 years ago
- she smoked a pack a week about 3 years ago and had such high
blood pressure that a friend who was a nurse told her she better stop
or she'd surely die (she stopped).

I honestly believe she has been in denial to some degree the whole time. It is just that now, I feel time is running out for the mismanagement of it and the health issues are catching up with her. She is smart and I know she can successfully control it.

Lisa, what is a hypo that you reference above?

Right on with the options and very well said.