Quote:
Originally Posted by mrsD
I would like to know how you are getting such a spike on real food. Yet you do not show this spike on pure glucose in the contrived lab test which would be very quick with glucose.
Food stays in the stomach for at least an hour, to 4 hours in most people. You do not eat pure glucose but have to digest any complex carbs. This is not an instantaneous process. Any fructose would not show on your meter at all for a long time as it has to go thru the liver and be converted to glucose. This evens out any spike so that the sugars show more moderately. (this is why diabetics use fructose supplements in cooking instead of table sugar sucrose. )
I would expect the fast spike on the GTT test. The GTT test is not "real" and cannot really be compared to regular eating. It is used as a statistical test with the results determined based on many years of comparing diabetics to non-diabetics.
I think if you jump on medication at this point, with a normal A1C and no long term elevations showing, you might end up overmedicated and experience low sugar spells. Low sugars are dangerous to the brain and some studies show even one serious low sugar event can lead to dementia.
I urge caution, whenever starting drugs. ALL the diabetes oral drugs carry a pancreatitis warning and potential. I think you should really NEED the drug, to decide to use it. While you are stressing your body with those drugs for your lung condition, adding another would be problematic IMO.
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Dear mrsD,
I agree that the pancreas is affected by diabetic drugs. I agree that taking medication unnecessarily is a bad thing to do. I agree that ALL prescription drugs have side effects. Prescription drugs are by prescription only as they should be prescribed and taken only under the advice of a physician.
Many diabetic drugs WILL potentially cause a LOW blood sugar which can be dangerous. SOME diabetic drugs will NOT cause you to go low and that is why they are safe to be administered to persons BEFORE they are classified as diabetic according to the guidelines used by the ADA. There are several different classes of diabetes medications and many, but not all create low levels. I personally am a little leary of the DPP-4 class, but Metformin has been around since about 1927 if my memory is working properly and has a long track record. It appears it would not be appropriate for
member Idiopathic PN due to her lung condition. If she had no contraindications, I think it would be a good test over a 30 day period to see if it helped but that is just my opinion.
There are potential dangers in anything we intake, whether it be natural or manufactured. Certain foods have potential dangers, supplements have dangers, over the counter drugs have dangers, prescriptions, too. My point is anything we ingest needs consideration and risk vs benefit determined. Even peanuts can be fatal.
I think further investigation needs to be done to determine WHY she is having spikes. I do not think she should just wait around until the day someone tells her she IS diabetic when that path need not be in her future. Maybe her spikes are due to something entirely different than diabetes or the road to it. That would be the most common thought but metabolism is not always that simple.