At My Wits End... Blood Sugar is Through the ROOF!

[VooMan]

Hello Everyone,

I am confused and disappointed and I am hoping that a message to the Dr. McDougall community might help.

I'm 52 and I have all the usual results of following the Standard American Diet. High blood pressure, Type 2 Diabetes, and high cholesterol. I'm 5' 9" and 225 pounds. Not the picture of health I used to be... So I need to lose about 65 pounds to be back at my favorite weight, and I want to be off ALL medication if humanly possible. I seem to be really sensitive to everything prescribed to me so far and I know they aren't fixing the problems anyway...

So here's the quick story. About six months ago my brother in law the nurse told me he really thought that the Ketogenic Diet was the only way I was going to lose weight and fix my diabetes. I told him I tried low carb many years ago and felt terrible on it. He said these days it was different, so I gave it a try. I have never lost weight in my life without being on a low fat diet, but against my better judgement I gave it a shot. I stuck to less than 10g of carbs per day. Over the course of about a week my blood sugar came down to 100 and that was fantastic, but for two months I never got into ketosis, never lost an ounce of weight, and I had terrible insomnia and my hands shook like someone with Parkinsons Disease any time I had to use my hands. (cracking eggs made a HUGE mess!) I also can't really look at a pound of bacon and a bottle of olive oil and believe it is healthy. So I did the ketogenic diet for a couple of months and gave up.

I've been a big fan of Dr. Fuhrman for years, but I was never able to really stick with the diet long term. When I found Dr. McDougall I thought I had found a happy medium that would be amazingly healthy and with the starch I felt it was something I could do. Well, it's been a couple of weeks of potatoes and vegetables, vegetables and potatoes, and I find myself starving all the time and my blood sugar has gone through the roof. It's gotten worse over the last year, but I am regularly seeing fasting numbers in the 250 range and today I checked it before lunch and it was 333! I am really discouraged. I feel like I've lost a few pounds so far thanks to the low fat, and I actually feel somewhat better than I have felt in a while, but those numbers are in the "walking heart attack" range and I just don't know what to do anymore. I have been dodging my doctor because he is going to go ballistic over my A1C number, and he's been trying to get me on Lipitor for months and I don't want to take it. I literally drag myself out of bed every morning and one medication gives me worse side effects than the next. I don't want to add to the list of pills, but I am really at my wits end that my blood sugar has gotten this bad. I don't know if it takes longer for it to come down, but Dr. McDougall talks about taking people off medication right from the start and I haven't done that. And these numbers are definitely bad bad bad...

If anyone has any input I'd really appreciate hearing from you.

Thanks,
Andrew

[Lyndzie]

Hi Andrew. What you’re going through sounds tough, but surely something that can be overcome! Would you be willing to post your meals for a couple days? Than we can see if there is any tweaking that can help.

Make sure you are eating enough starch. Being hungry is a losing battle. Make sure at least 50% of your plate is starch. Really, only starch is fine. A plate of beans and rice for dinner, or mashed potatoes, or a breakfast of oatmeal.

Avoid ALL oil, of course. No flour products (bread, crackers, etc) for the time being, and high fat plant foods (soy, avocado, nuts, seeds, coconut).

If us laypeople can’t help, a phone call with one of the gurus can be the key to success. You can totally do this.

[VooMan]

Hi Lyndzie,

Thanks for the quick reply. I haven't been writing down what I eat, but this week it's been slow cooked oatmeal for breakfast, baked potatoes, and rice with vegetables, or some combination thereof. I had white rice on hand, so I thought I'd finish that up before going to brown rice. I guess the thing that concerns me is I thought that without the fat in my diet my blood sugar would drop. I didn't expect a miracle overnight (okay, maybe) but I didn't expect it to be this high either.

With the keto diet it was easy, no sugar going in meant that my blood sugar could only go down over time. My question is, how long before I can expect that on the McDougall program? I don't mind waiting, but these numbers definitely scare me...

Thanks,
Andrew

[viv]

So glad that you have finally found the healthiest diet on the planet and now you have a great chance of living your best, healthiest life.

Now I'm no doctor but from what I have gleaned after being a McDougaller for over five years is this. The body is healing from the inside out. As you say when you were on keto there was no sugar going in so no sugar was circulating in the blood hence the low numbers. Once you started eating a high carb diet like this one after eating crap for so long, the carbs turn into glucose in the blood and start showing high numbers. Why? Because the glucose cannot get into the muscle cells to give you energy because the cells are clogged with fat. So the glucose just keeps circulating round and round. What's the solution? Stick with it and the muscle cells will begin to heal and eventually the insulin can do the work of getting the glucose into the cells. Once that happens your numbers will plummet.

There are many more educated and expert posters that I so no doubt you will get some great answers from the experts. But don't give up!

Best,
Viv

[VooMan]

Thank you Viv, that makes sense as well... I suppose that exercise will help speed this process along. I've been terrible about that, I must admit. The medications make me so tired all the time. I need to get past that so I can hopefully see the plummet you're talking about. I am looking forward to that day for sure.

Thanks again,
Andrew

[GeoffreyLevens]

I guess the thing that concerns me is I thought that without the fat in my diet my blood sugar would drop. I didn't expect a miracle overnight (okay, maybe) but I didn't expect it to be this high either.

Fat in the diet is a factor but even more important is the fat stored in the cells. Eating a ketogenic diet to some extent but mostly just being quite a bit overweight, causes a lot of fat to be stored in the cells which gums up the receptors and so you have insulin resistance. It depends on individual physiology how long exactly, but it does take some time to reverse that. With sugars as high as yours, it might be a good idea to very temporarily be taking some sort of sugar controlling medication and a consult with your doctor would tell you which one and how much. Then as your fasting sugar level comes down, you would reduce dosage to prevent hypoglycemia. The Starch Solution will likely do the trick but patience and some time are required and possibly some pharma help to prevent longer term damage. You are on the right track, just need to hang in there and be safe along the way.

[VooMan]

Hi Geoffrey,

I appreciate your response. I've been this weight for about 10 years, but it's only in the last few that I've had the Type II diagnosis. I take Metformin, but I'm limited to 500mg twice per day. Anything more than that gives me a rash... they added Jardience a while back, but it caused severe migraine-like headaches. Tradjenta didn't make much difference, and with my new insurance it's $300 per month...

I am glad to know that I'm on the right diet. I have been trying to create some miraculous recovery before seeing the doctor so that he won't try to add more medication, but maybe it would be best to face the music and know that whatever they add, over time those medications will go away.

Thanks very much to all of you for your input. I have really been getting worried about my numbers, but you've helped me to realize that this is temporary and with time I'll get things under control.

Thanks again,
Andrew

[veg tom]

Dr. McDougall said this way of eating will cure type 2, 100 percent of the time. Just keep at it

[victw]

@vooman

Have you read Neil Barnard's book on reversing diabetes?

Also - if you are hungry you might need to eat more.
You really have to eat more food when you eat healthy.
I recommend that you keep educating yourself.
Watch Jeff Novick's Calorie Density video on youtube.
it's crazy how much you have to eat if you choose to exclude nuts/seeds/and natural unprocessed fats.

I don't know how to imbed an image - I hope this works - this one has always wowed and inspired me.


Vic

[VooMan]

I am familiar with Neal Barnard, Jeff Novick (have his videos) and Chef AJ... I study and enjoy them all.

Funny, last night I watched a YouTube video by Neal Barnard on diabetes. Normally whenever you watch a plant based video, there are a few people who comment and say that Keto is what worked for them. With this video is was a very high percentage of people saying that... kind of ironic to me. I think I might try to lower the starch and eat more vegetables and salads and see if that has any effect. I ate salad and spinach pie yesterday, and after about 16 hours without food my fasting blood sugar this morning was 260. That is just crazy to me. I have a neighbor who has lost 230 pounds on a plant based diet, and he always tells me "I eat nothing but carbs, I don't have diabetes, and I'm off all medication."

[Idgie]

My dietitian told me that one thing I could do to level out my blood sugar is to eat frequent, small meals, so that's what I do, and I'm not sure if it's that or the better food (probably a combination) but I don't get scary blood sugar numbers any more (my problem is hypoglycemia, not diabetes)

[Lyndzie]

There is a difference between having low blood sugar and having insulin resistance. Sure, your blood sugar will be low if you don’t consume carbohydrates, but that does not mean that the insulin resistance has been resolved. Give any of them a glucose challenge yeast and they might fail, because they haven’t fixed the underlying issue.

Comments on a YouTube video mean absolutely nothing.

You can either keep at it or not. But expecting an overnight fix to a lifelong problem will set you up for disappointment.

[Poison Ivy]

Try giving up just the oatmeal and see if your BG improves any. Oatmeal makes my BG skyrocket and it stays high for several hours after eating so I had to ultimately give up one of my fav starches. I posted about it here and no one could answer my question. Even Jeff here did not respond when I posted this question on his message board. Oatmeal does this to some ppl. I have connected with others who eat a WFPB diet who experienced the same thing with oatmeal for unknown reasons.

[Dixee]

Yes, oatmeal also makes me spike, sadly. I have been doing hard core McDougall for about 15 weeks and have dropped from 121 to 106 pounds, but post prandials still spike to about 235, which is high for me. But I notice that I come back down faster now. I am hoping that over time those spikes will stop. It is scary to keep going but I think at least 4 months is a reasonable test. We didn't get in trouble over night and so the solution will also take time. Really need to exercise, but hate it!!! Good luck to you!

[VooMan]

Thank you both for your advice. I have noticed that my favorite slow cooked oatmeal spikes my blood sugar too.