Hi, do you keep a constant check on your fasting sugars ?
as the low sugars can damage the nerves as well.
I have followed a high fibre low GI diet which keeps my sugars good through out the day.

fasting blood sugars
 

Dear Brian, yes, I have been told to back off of the medication that has put my a1c at 5.0 but I still have severe neuropathy. I was taking 2.5mg of glyburide and 1000mg of metformin. Now I am at 1.25mg of glyburide and 1000mg of metformin and I awaken to 90-100. What kind of meals do you eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. Any help is appreciated. thank you

Bacon and eggs for bfast. Maybe a veggie omelet. One piece of low carb toast with butter

Lunch tuna, or chicken salad, raw veggies with ranch dressing, maybe 5-6 Triscuts

Dinner, any kind of meat, not breaded or fried. Lots of veggies, a small 1/2 cup of potato or such

Snacks, string or any cheese. Almonds olives dill pickles. A small apple with some peanut butter. Pop corn, but watch portion size

Well it's true you loose weight on a low carb diet, my mom has this same problem, and she just has to eat MORE calories but not carbs to keep from losing anymore weight.

I can stand to lose so I'm good with it.

I only eat a very low carb fagita as my bread other than that, I simply do not do bread. No cereal. All my carbs come from veggies, no simple carbs.

example of food:

omelet, or scrambled eggs with onion, mushrooms, cheese, etc.

A homemade fagita pizza on fagita with 6 carbs, meats, veggies, cheese

Dinner is always a meat with veggies or salad

I only drink water, and almonds and peanuts are my snacks

Hi again, your glucose monitor is your best friend, I eat according to how my sugars are at 2 hrs after the first bite of any meal during the day.
If I am over over 8.0 or 144 in USA measures in any meal, I will have less of the known high carb next time, there are plenty of carb charts on the net to find out what carbs you should be careful with, like potatoe which I really like, i have replaced it with cauliflower but I still have a quarter of a small potatoe as well, so I still get a taste of it to satisfy myself.
If your a bread lover, find the highest fibre loaf, then when you have a sandwich test your sugars to see if it is as good as they say, I went through a few different brands until I found a good one.
Snacks, nuts are great, cheese, also yogart with any of the berry family of fruits, but again check blood sugars to see how much you can have without spiking.

Your morning fasting sugars are good, but I would still check that your not going to low between meals as your eating low carb food plus taken medicine that will drive them down too.

best of luck to you
Brian :)

I agree with Brian and I would add that the 1 hour mark after first bite is more important, as it is at 1 hour that blood sugar spikes and 2 hours that is should come back down.

Knowing what your blood sugar number is at the 1 hour spike mark is important because nerve damage can occur beginng at 140. So for me, it is my goal to always keep my numbers below 140 and of course not going too low also.

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Dear Mrsd, After doing some research about drug depletion. Metformin, glyburide and prevastatin all deplete coq10 from the body. Carbohydrates, sugar and any kind of fat effects my neuropathy, So I have a few questions for you Mrsd.

1 If coq10 has been depleted from the body and if it is causing my neuropathy, can food still affect your neuropathy. My face will start to go back to tingling after i eat 3/4 cup of plain oatmeal with no sugar and my body is hurting just as worst.

2 Out of 1 of 30-45 days my neuropathy will disapear and I feel great, sometimes for a 1-1/2 days and talk about getting some work done, but its not within a very short period of time and I mean hours before I am hurting all over again from neuropathy. A day and a half is the longest i have ever felt good in so long. Whats causing the neuropathy to completely disappear for a short time and then to suddenly come back, please let me know Mrsd, thank you.

I think if your symptoms come and go so quickly, there is another reason besides blood sugar levels.

Some people have food intolerances. The nightshade veggies (potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, some spices) are a prime cause of burning for some. They contain an alkaloid called solanine.

MSG in processed foods is also a culprit. Some people cannot tolerate Nutrasweet sugar substitute.

Fix your magnesium and you may find less swinging with symptoms. Magnesium is an antagonist to the NMDA pain receptors that run on calcium and glutamate or aspartate. When mag is low and calcium high, those receptors do not shut off. Nutrasweet contains aspartic acid.

It is possible to have more than one cause of PN. PN that comes and goes may not be PN at all, but a paresthesia. This may reflect something in your lifestyle that changes from day to day.

CoQ-10 is mostly for your MUSCLES and heart... which run on the energy your mitochondria need to produce for you. You will not see instant results with it, but in a month or two there can be improvement. Nerves also have mitochondria, so it also will help them.

Metformin upsetting CoQ-10 does not show up in the reference I use or on PubMed. So I don't know where your read that.
Gyburide however, does show a depletion effect.

I think you should keep a log of what you eat and how you feel each day. This will point to intolerances from food, activities, etc.

Once you see a connection like with the oatmeal... avoid it for at least 2 weeks, and then reintroduce it again, and log what happens. Sometimes it may take hours or a day to react to something.

From what I have read, if you have used a statin for a while, after 2 yrs, your CoQ-10 level will be about 1/2 of normal.

Nerves are a warning system to tell us something is wrong.
They do not tell us WHAT is causing the alarm.

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dear mrsd, i have 4 more qeustions. since my a1c has been so well controlled for over a year now, would my neuropathy had healed by now? I also have poor circulation, back in march of 2013, my pcp doctor sent me to the hospital for some test to see if i had pad or pvd since my feet, legs, hands and arms they were so cold. i have lost 95% of my hair below my knees. the doctor ruled out pad and pvd according to the test results and said that my poor circulation is caused by neuropathy and he could not do anything. i wake up with a very dry mouth and have a dry mouth all day, are medications causing that or is it diabetes/neuropathy?

my magnesium level is 2.2 and according to the test, it says low is 1.7 and high is 2.6. do i really need more magnesium? since i have already been to a neurologist(which i have not seen since july 2012) and he stated that there is no cure for my neuropathy by only giving me a nerve conduction test and no blood test. would you suggest a new neurologist or a endocrinologist? please let me

Yes, you do need magnesium. The blood work only is valuable for very very low and very high levels medically. The middle range does not point to "normal" in the sense that other things do.

The best indicator of magnesium status is INTRAcellular testing showing what is actually in the cells. Only special labs do this.

Poor circulation is a sign that you need more magnesium. Magnesium relaxes the small arteries and improves blood flow.
If things are constricted, then magnesium, glucose and oxygen cannot get into those tissues, and waste products cannot get out, and toxicity develops.

Start with soaking in epsom salt baths. Use about 6-8 ounces in a bathtub of lukewarm water, and soak about 1/2 or more.
You should notice right away after a few days a distinct improvement. Diabetics lose magnesium every day thru the kidneys more so than non-diabetics.

Sometimes it is the easiest most obvious solution, that helps.
Oxide form of supplements does not work. So when you decide to supplement orally choose a chelate or SlowMag, and start at 1/2 the RDA.

This is my magnesium thread:
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/thread1138.html