AIBU as a Type 1 Diabetic, to be baffled the seemingly sudden influx of non diabetics using CGM's...?

[OSAP]

If your pancreas works, you don't need one.

Blood glucose isn't exclusively influenced by the food you eat so 'personalised nutrition plans' 'metabolic trackers' etc etc are a, usually expensive, gimmick.

Nobody seemed too fussed about their 'blood glucose' when it involved finger pricks, but the Freestyle Libre now seems to have become a must have accessory for the 'worried well' who now seem to need to know what their blood sugar is doing, all while not really understanding what most of it means.

I remember when I was in my 20s and my friend with T1 was in a study to find out if there might be a genetic link (his dad also had it), this was in the 90s. They had thought there was no genetic link till then.
DH thinks he may have had an infectious disease when little which attacked his pancreas but it didn't give up till he was in his 30s (he's lucky enough that he started with pens, my friend I knew in my 20s had glass syringes). But DH was also born into fairly extreme poverty, and I know low birthweight (he was prem) can be a factor. He's in his 60s and all the decisions get him down too.

We recently started planning all our dinners for the month (as a means to get the DCs to eat new food) so I suppose that might help a bit.

@Oblomov24

How have I misquoted you? I quoted your post & said it has been explained why they're useful for T2's.

@uneffingbelievable

I know. All this woke, "worried well". Makes me laugh, health anxiety? , oh purlease. DFOD. Try a week of T1!

I too remember weeing into a test tube, dropping the tablet and watching it fizz.

180
Decisions.

An old consultant at Kings college hospital once asked me why I let my diabetes dominate my day? I actually roared with laughter.

I asked him how many times he .... went to the toilet, looked at his phone, how many times he....then I told him to triple it. And again. And see how he got on.

Twat.

I have a fantastic diabetic nurse who is just brilliant. However, I have also had many many frustrating or upsetting appointments with consultants or other diabetic nurses over my 45 years of being diabetic. I find consultants the worse actually, as if you have nothing else going on other than ‘being diabetic’ and that ‘being diabetic’ itself is a doddle if you just put some effort in.

What annoys me about this whole zoe thing is that it doesn’t appear to acknowledge the other factors that impact blood sugars.

As someone said before it isn’t as straightforward as I ate this and my blood sugar did that. I can eat the same lunch on subsequent days and get completely different results. It it was as straightforward as I ate this so my blood sugar did that then we wouldn’t have to make all these decisions and calculations about our food/exercise/life! It gives the impression that diabetes is straightforward to manage.

I’m convinced the blood sugar gadgetry is to make it seem worth the money.

I can eat the same lunch on subsequent days and get completely different results.

100% this. Plus different types of carbs can affect people in different ways – rice has very little impact on my blood sugars, but will send my DD high. Exercise can cause a spike initially then a big drop, as can alcohol. DS goes to the gym everyday and the affect can vary enormously depending on whether he's doing arms or legs, or cardio or weights… Stress (which could be stress about diabetes!) can cause a spike. People have no idea, but hey it's actually quite easy if you just use a Libre, don't you know.

Peri-menopause is proving an absolute hoot! Some days my blood sugar is all in range, others it’s determined to stick in the high teens, others it’s high all day and low all night, other days it’s the opposite. I am adjusting and correcting but it sometimes feels like it’s pointless.

Just anotherdude :"You aren’t special just because you’re type 1"

Well yes actualy Type 1 is special - it is the one where you can die quicker from a true hypo, go into DKA much quicker and have the least amount of control over what happens to your blood sugar.

Your ignorance of the difference is astounding.

OSAP - I get your pain, yesterday i sat at 11, ate v little carbs, today I am sitting at 4, unable to walk up the stairs without going hypo - someone tell me why?!

It does seem there's a bit of a market boom in "wellness" contraptions/devices/elective tests at the moment, most of which is primarily effective to lighten the wallets of people with health anxiety. I was having a conversation about it with my friend last weekend, who is an oncologist, and sees most of this stuff as a fairly cynical ploy to keep people on the anxiety treadmill of buying more things to correct the potential problems the last test or gadget revealed. Her summary opinion was something like, 'eat a wide variety of plants and stay active; not everything is within our control'.

I always use the term Insulin dependent diabetic or IDD when talking about types as an ID T2 will face many of the same challenges as a T1 if they're using both long and short acting insulin. I think all IDD patients should be entitled to a CGM on the NHS, not so much for diet or medication (e.g metformin) controlled T2 as it isn't the same risk factor as IDD.

@iloveeverykindofcat thats interesting from your oncologist friend as I presume they know more than the average person due to their job.

I mentioned it, in passing, to a GP in an appt a few months back and he seemed quite dismissive too but I couldn’t be certain if he was just agreeing for the sake of it. I presumed he wasn’t but I suppose you can’t be 100% sure!

@Fleurty I might do that too, use Insulin Dependant rather than the types. Sounds a bit more neutral as some of the posters have sounded quite defensive about T2, which is also, at least to some degrees, also a pain in the arse. Possibly more so if controlled via diet!

I did the Zoe course, and as part of checking your blood sugar tolerance, you wear a tracker for a while. I noticed that my crippling fatigue spikes correlated with sugar spikes, even though I am not diabetic. I've managed to bring these under control by having a light lunch and avoiding specific carbs, so it's been very useful for me; but I see no reason to keep on wearing one.

I’m type three and due to my pancreatitis am in a lot of pain and have been between 15 and 24 for the last two days. I was on libre but due to the lack of availability , looking at you Zoe last year went to dexcom however I am now on cgm loop with an omnipod. My tiny bit of pancreas also produces insulin now and then so I have that to cope with too. It’s hell.

Do you find there is a lot of confusion being T3 as there seems to be loads between just 1 and 2?

@Technonan was the crippling fatigue a large part of why you signed up to Zoe? Did you think it might be blood sugar related, or just diet related, or neither?

My 17 year old is also.type 3c he had acute necrotizing pancreaititus last year he was diagnosed In Severe DKA he also has to take Creon.

Nope. My ex was a T1 and didnt believe me when I said my blood sugar was low: 'your pancreas works, you absolutely won't be low'. I waited for a low, he tested me (finger prick back then) = 2. Struggle to even eat bread or porridge without a spike, but blood tests dont show a HINT of T2.

Monitoring to keep myself steady helps me hold down a job, live a normal life without really inconvenient crashes.

People have never heard of type 3c most are treated as type one but some don't need insulin so treated more like type two.

I’m on the Zoe plan. My blood sugar was all over the place when I had the device on my arm. It told me to contact my healthcare practitioner a few times. It actually taught me quite a lot.

4 weeks later and my diet is 100% better. I now eat things I’ve never touched before.

No paranoid health anxiety here. Just trying to improve my diet, which I have. It’s probably the most education I’ve ever had on nutrition.

Interesting.

What do you mean by 'all over the place', and what has it made you do differently and why?

There's a phase before you become a T2, possibly lasts around 10 years or so, where you have impaired glucose tolerance. So your HbA1c might be in the normal range but you spike more than someone who doesn't have impaired tolerance. That's where Zoe will be useful. I've done it. I can see that although my HbA1c is normal, I can spike to 14 or 15 after eating pizza. I'm not too surprised, I had gestational diabetes. My dad had insulin dependant diabetes which would now be labelled as type 3 I think, there was some autoimmune component to it and some confusion when he was diagnosed in his late 20s. So my risk of developing T2 is already elevated but I had got complacent because my HbA1c and BMI are normal. In the two weeks of CGM they get you to do some experiments. E.g. what happens to your spike if you have protein before carb vs the other way round. Or what effect exercise has if you do it before eating Vs after eating. There were quite a few different things to try. I personally found it quite useful and it's helped prompt me to make some changes which will hopefully delay my progression to type 2.

I get that you're saying it's not a type 1 Vs type 2 thing but it actually is. You don't just suddenly become type 2 out of nowhere and if people find that they are at risk of this are picked up early and taught how to optimise their health it's no bad thing.

My consultant is type one diabetic too 😅 quite handy, not that I’ve seen him for four years….

When I get stressed or anxious I get a massive spike, I remember going to het my first Covid vaccine (was one of the first as NHS) and it was so mad looking at my libre graph go from a perfect line to big spike just from the cortisol.