Glucose readings experiment

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Re: Glucose readings experiment

Postby eXtremE » Sat Apr 05, 2014 12:51 pm

@ Astro, when you were DX with T2D, how was the DX made by your doctor? Were your fasting blood sugars running really high then when you you also had the really high cholesterol numbers before you made the switch to a PB diet?

@ Colony, when were you DX as prediabetic, what was your A1C then? Do you recall? How long ago was this?
On 7/8/2013, I decided to change my diet to a "mostly" WFPB diet. I have always been somewhat lean and muscular due to being a lifelong exerciser. Change in diet due to feeling crummy all the time despite a healthy outward appearance. Image
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Re: Glucose readings experiment

Postby colonyofcells » Sat Apr 05, 2014 1:18 pm

I probably had preprediabetes for about a decade since my fasting blood sugar was close to 100 for about a decade before it reached prediabetes level.
2010 : fasting 101
2011 : fasting 117. hba1c 6.3
2012 : fasting 094. hba1c 5.5
2013 : fasting 088. hba1c 5.3.
I would attribute most of the improvements to : 1. weight loss of about 30 lbs down to about 120 lbs probably due to increase in low calorie vegetables. 2. unrefined foods. 3. cutting down on animal products and later eliminating them and just take b12 supplements. 4. exercise before breakfast and after every meal. I currently eat all the unrefined starches and fruits I want to fill up my stomach. I often stop eating only when I can't continue anymore. Since my ancestors were not inuit, my guess is I can do well on a high starch diet of unrefined starches and vegetables. I currently don't have a car like my ancestors and I eat the same foods as my ancestors in China.
Last edited by colonyofcells on Sat Apr 05, 2014 1:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Glucose readings experiment

Postby Joseph65 » Sat Apr 05, 2014 1:23 pm

Extreme,

What I eat doesn't change. It's how much I eat that varies. I'll have one serving of oatmeal instead of two and later in the day if it's potatoes it become two instead of three, etc, etc for three meals a day. The trick if you want to call it that is to consciously eat less (in my case by 1/3) every other day. The only items that stay constant each day is the amount of greens or green and yellow vegetables. This has allowed me to swing away from Fuhrman with my high daily consumption of seeds and nuts and back to McDougall with high starch, low fat and still control my Trigs and BS. I've discovered that it isn't what you eat that counts as much as how much of it you eat....within reason.
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Re: Glucose readings experiment

Postby eXtremE » Sat Apr 05, 2014 9:39 pm

colonyofcells wrote:I probably had preprediabetes for about a decade since my fasting blood sugar was close to 100 for about a decade before it reached prediabetes level.
2010 : fasting 101
2011 : fasting 117. hba1c 6.3
2012 : fasting 094. hba1c 5.5
2013 : fasting 088. hba1c 5.3.
I would attribute most of the improvements to : 1. weight loss of about 30 lbs down to about 120 lbs probably due to increase in low calorie vegetables. 2. unrefined foods. 3. cutting down on animal products and later eliminating them and just take b12 supplements. 4. exercise before breakfast and after every meal. I currently eat all the unrefined starches and fruits I want to fill up my stomach. I often stop eating only when I can't continue anymore. Since my ancestors were not inuit, my guess is I can do well on a high starch diet of unrefined starches and vegetables. I currently don't have a car like my ancestors and I eat the same foods as my ancestors in China.
Seems to be working well for you Colony. You went from 150 to 120 (30 lbs). How tall are you? 150 is pretty thin unless you are really really short. I am 5'10 and now 140 lbs and don't need to drop anymore weight.You are doing well with your HBA1C. If I can get mine down to 5.3, I will be happy. How many calories would you say you eat in a day?
On 7/8/2013, I decided to change my diet to a "mostly" WFPB diet. I have always been somewhat lean and muscular due to being a lifelong exerciser. Change in diet due to feeling crummy all the time despite a healthy outward appearance. Image
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Re: Glucose readings experiment

Postby colonyofcells » Sun Apr 06, 2014 1:02 am

Currently eating more, about 2,000 calories every day altho I don't know if my hba1c is up again. My fasting is around 90+ again.
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Re: Glucose readings experiment

Postby eXtremE » Sun Apr 06, 2014 6:51 am

PS / FYI - @ Joseph65 , I sent you a PM but you never opened it awhile ago. Maybe you never noticed it but the software sends a notification to your e-mail address when someone PMs you. It stayed in my outbox forever. I think after awhile, it is discarded by the forum software if you don't open the PM after a certain time period. That is how it works at another forum I participate in. ....IDK!
On 7/8/2013, I decided to change my diet to a "mostly" WFPB diet. I have always been somewhat lean and muscular due to being a lifelong exerciser. Change in diet due to feeling crummy all the time despite a healthy outward appearance. Image
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Re: Glucose readings experiment

Postby eXtremE » Sun Apr 06, 2014 6:52 am

@ Colony, when you were in that pre-diabetic range, were you having any symptoms?
On 7/8/2013, I decided to change my diet to a "mostly" WFPB diet. I have always been somewhat lean and muscular due to being a lifelong exerciser. Change in diet due to feeling crummy all the time despite a healthy outward appearance. Image
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Re: Glucose readings experiment

Postby colonyofcells » Sun Apr 06, 2014 10:34 am

For prediabetes, I did not have any symptoms which I believe is the usual case. Even for diabetes, many people have no symptoms and it is estimated that america has many cases of undiagnosed diabetes and when some are diagnosed, there can already be serious complications which were not noticed before.
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Re: Glucose readings experiment

Postby eXtremE » Thu Apr 10, 2014 7:30 pm

Just checking periodically.....FMI

Dinner = Big bowl of beans and brown rice, large vegetable salad, bowl of turnip greens, a few russet potato wedges (just 3)

I did exercise lightly for 20 minutes on a stationary bike 1 hour and 15 minutes after I ate.

2 hour postprandial BG = 94

Observations: Exercise can be a valuable tool if certain WFPB foods (starches) are making your BG levels spike and you still want to eat large quantities of them. Colonyofcells (a member here) talks about this often (he does it himself) and medical doctors like Gabe Mirkin and Julian Whitaker have advocated this for years in diabetics who want to have more control of blood sugars after eating. Carefully planned Exercise can be used as effectively as a drug like metformin in some cases but far too often, most ppl want to take the easy route (Rx drugs). There are downsides to taking drugs but only upsides in the mild to moderate aerobic exercise.

Also, Astro was having a hard time eating potatoes and brown rice bc they were making his BG levels spike really high. Oatmeal seems to do this to me for some reason, but the brown rice seems to be ok (go figure). Different foods affect different ppl differently.
On 7/8/2013, I decided to change my diet to a "mostly" WFPB diet. I have always been somewhat lean and muscular due to being a lifelong exerciser. Change in diet due to feeling crummy all the time despite a healthy outward appearance. Image
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Re: Glucose readings experiment

Postby GeoffreyLevens » Thu Apr 10, 2014 7:33 pm

[quote]Exercise can be a valuable tool if certain WFPB foods (starches) are making your BG levels spike and you still want to eat large quantities of them. Colonyofcells (a member here) talks about this often (he does it himself) and medical doctors like Gabe Mirkin and Julian Whitaker have advocated this for years in diabetics who want to have more control of blood sugars after eating. Carefully planned Exercise can be used as effectively as a drug like metformin in some cases but far too often, most ppl want to take the easy route (Rx drugs). There are downsides to taking drugs but only upsides in the mild to moderate aerobic exercise./quote]And using the biggest muscles in the body (legs) is key. When I was having high postprandial spikes, I could get a dramatic drop in sugar reading by doing 100 or 150 slow, ful,l bodyweight squats. 20 minutes or so later, much lower though I can't now remember how much it was quite dramatic.
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Re: Glucose readings experiment

Postby eXtremE » Thu Apr 10, 2014 7:45 pm

Absolutely correct Geoffrey. I have tested this myself after eating the oatmeal using 2 (20 or 25) lb dumbbells (3-5 sets of 15 reps - squatting) and you can see a dramatic drop in high blood sugars. These working, contracting large leg muscles just suck the glucose out of the bloodstream without the need for the hormone insulin to fuel cell activity. You are essentially giving your pancreas a rest. Plus, insulin is not a very nice hormone. You don't want large amounts of it in the bloodstream trying to get rid of the excess blood sugar bc your cells have become resistant.
On 7/8/2013, I decided to change my diet to a "mostly" WFPB diet. I have always been somewhat lean and muscular due to being a lifelong exerciser. Change in diet due to feeling crummy all the time despite a healthy outward appearance. Image
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Re: Glucose readings experiment

Postby eXtremE » Thu Apr 17, 2014 9:21 am

(FMI) FBG this morning = 85

*Currently working on getting that down as low as possible as well as the postprandials after eating mostly carbs.
*Trying to eat a lot more non-starchy plants now, but having a hard time getting in enough calories.
*Using brief bouts of timed exercise right after meals to keep BG from spiking, even after a high complex carb load.
On 7/8/2013, I decided to change my diet to a "mostly" WFPB diet. I have always been somewhat lean and muscular due to being a lifelong exerciser. Change in diet due to feeling crummy all the time despite a healthy outward appearance. Image
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Re: Glucose readings experiment

Postby baardmk » Thu Apr 17, 2014 10:54 am

Keeping an eye on FBG is a good thing to do while you control those spikes. My "experiment" showed to me that I didn't have any huge problems with BG control, but I didn't like the variability of my readings. I also seem to have the issue of BG rise in the morning, and when exercising. Don't know what to make of that, but it's interesting to know.

I'm thinking about doing a home glucose tolerance test. That should be a good measure of insulin sensitivity I'm hypothesizing, although it's pretty fraught with different sources of error. I'm thinking I could just add BG readings at 1/2 h, 2/2 h and 3/2 hour, subtracted the baseline reading, and the higher the sum is, the worse insulin sensitivity. I'm thinking that even with low FBG and avoiding the spikes, these measures aren't always good for measuring your insulin sensitivity.
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Re: Glucose readings experiment

Postby colonyofcells » Thu Apr 17, 2014 11:50 am

It is common for blood sugar to rise in the morning from the glycogen sugar maybe bec. the body is expecting people to start working hard to look for food of the day. Exercise maybe also releases glycogen sugar. Rise in blood sugar is normal since sugar is the fuel of the body.
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Re: Glucose readings experiment

Postby eXtremE » Thu Apr 17, 2014 1:20 pm

baardmk wrote:Keeping an eye on FBG is a good thing to do while you control those spikes. My "experiment" showed to me that I didn't have any huge problems with BG control, but I didn't like the variability of my readings. I also seem to have the issue of BG rise in the morning, and when exercising. Don't know what to make of that, but it's interesting to know.

I'm thinking about doing a home glucose tolerance test. That should be a good measure of insulin sensitivity I'm hypothesizing, although it's pretty fraught with different sources of error. I'm thinking I could just add BG readings at 1/2 h, 2/2 h and 3/2 hour, subtracted the baseline reading, and the higher the sum is, the worse insulin sensitivity. I'm thinking that even with low FBG and avoiding the spikes, these measures aren't always good for measuring your insulin sensitivity.
I am sure the hormone cortisol is causing me some issues with higher than optimal FBG bc of my anxiety. Not quite sure what to make of the increase when exercising. If you have not eaten, the glucose in the bloodstream is being supplied by the liver from stored glycogen.

This is where the HBA1C comes in. It will tell your average BG over the last 3 months. That, coupled with home monitoring, should give you a pretty good indication on how well you are doing. If HBA1C is high, too much sugar is being stuck to cells. That is why I wish to avoid the BG spikes esp. if they are sustained after a high carb load and not brought back down immediately by the body.

From the ADA website>>>
Blood Glucose Control and Exercise

There are a few ways that exercise lowers blood glucose:

Insulin sensitivity is increased, so your cells are better able to use any available insulin to take up glucose during and after activity.
When your muscles contract during activity, it stimulates another mechanism that is completely separate of insulin. This mechanism allows your cells to take up glucose and use it for energy whether insulin is available or not.
This is how exercise can help lower blood glucose in the short term. And when you are active on a regular basis, it can also lower your A1C.
On 7/8/2013, I decided to change my diet to a "mostly" WFPB diet. I have always been somewhat lean and muscular due to being a lifelong exerciser. Change in diet due to feeling crummy all the time despite a healthy outward appearance. Image
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