There are 1.2 million Dutch men and women with DM1 or DM2, and worldwide 460 million, mostly in China, India and USA, mostly men and mostly (90%) DM2, Diabetes Mellitus type 2,
The numbers have doubled in the last few decades and continue to rise. Since ten years some of the main tech companies are trying to develop a non-invasive Apple-watch like device for monitoring continually the glucose level, but not yet fully succesfully, certificated by medical authorities, DEA for example.
Since half a year I am member of the DM2 population, starting with an unexpected evening at the emergency care, on urgent request by my GP, home physician, with a so-called hyper of 22 mmol/mol.
In the hospital after tests and hours of reading on my e-reader, and after a 6-units of insuline injectie’s car. Home at midnight with a bag full of metformine (3 x 850 mg) and fluconazol and antibiotics for the UTI, urine tract infection, the antibiotics eplaced a few days later by fluconazol, as the UTI was not bacterial but viral.The UTI is historyafter two months, and the metformine works perfectly well to keep the glucose level in the green zone between 4 and 10. And, if you are almost 80, an octogenarian, doctors are allowed in their guidelines and protocols, to relax and allow an extended range from 3 to 15. Especially, I read, when you are inhabitant of a hospice, preparing for the end of your life. Hmm.
But I hope that final life chapter will be waiting to start several years from now, it is much too nice in our home with the recent renovation, and the National Park nearby.
There is a logic to the management of DM2, much easier (I heard) than for DM1. One pleasant causal effect is that at a somewhat high level a walk is instantly effective, for me the rule is: each quarter of an hour is one point less. So a 13 drops to 9 often. Sometimes the logic is mysterious, like today, after a Sunday lunch with one or two extra lunch items I was scared to see on the iphone app, connected by bluetooth to the sensor fastened with a half cm little needle piercing trough the skin on my upper arm, a half year record score of 16,4. In the care with Marianne, to the Park, and walking through paths with autumn leaves and golden colored trees loosing their leaves! One and a half hours later the 16.4 has dropped to 8.2! Actually, I did not feel tired or ill or whatever with the 13,4, not even at the mergency evening wit glucose aboove 20, but doctors are worried that in the long run with levels too high, your nerve ends will be damaged; in particular in your eyes, the retina, and your feet, the toes will suffer some nerve damage.
The catch of metformine is that it causes at least for me the first four months, a considerable drop in appetite.
So the whole wheat bread that had to replace the orinary delicious bread that I was used to, that taste not at all, and the same with other usual food. Hence, you loose weight, for me from 80 to 78 in a half year. Hence you are placed under the regime and advice of a dietician to try to regain some of the lost kilos by little bottles with astronaut drink, as we call it jokingly. The other catch is that 50% of you weight loss is by muscles that shrink. So my supper arms are the typical old men flabby arms, it is a wonder that the round sensor still sticks the two weeks of it lifetime very securely. Hence if you move some book boxes, reducing your library of 2000 books,
you force tour few remaining arm and shoulder muscles, and hence you visit the physiotherapist for a series of sessions of exercises with small weights, dumbbells, 2 kg for me.
I did not yest try the other standard diabetes medicib, glicazide, because our local pharmacy did a consistency check as they use to perform with each new medicatio, and it was inconsistent with what I at that time also took, fluconazo for the UTI. The experts at the pharmacy had in their guidelines that it may increase the risk on getting hypos, so less than 3.
The good news as regard side effects is that my hypertension, battled by the usual betablocker and ACE-inhibitor enalapril dropped strongly from average 150-90 to 135-70, called somtimes ‘high-normal’.
Here is warning for beginning (pre)-diabetici of type 2. Seven years ago, my value for glucose was a beautiful 4. Each year at the yearly blood tests, it increased 0.5 point. So it was after seven years here in our new home, 7.5 I was warned that this is known to be prediabetes. I did not mind, waving it away, and kept using sugar in my coffee, and enjoying various sweet things for another half year. It goes well; until you get a UTI because your urine is too sweet, sugarly, and bacteries seem to like that too. The subsequent UTI, for instance Candida yeast infection makes your glucose levels explode, as I experienced. And from that time onwards you belong to the population of DM2 people. On the internet you are offereed various courses and ways to ‘revert diabetes’. This is mostly wishful thinking: only a tiny fraction of people succeed in that endeavour by a rigorous chance in lifestyle. There are investigations that report some successes though. Anyway, DM2 is not too bad, but it is good to avoid it or postpone it a couple of years.