Yet Another Cycling Forum

General Category => The Knowledge => Health & Fitness => Topic started by: Andy W on 21 September, 2020, 06:04:14 pm

Title: Diabetes.
Post by: Andy W on 21 September, 2020, 06:04:14 pm
My wife bought some blood sugar monitor testing sticks. Tested every morning upon waking and have had consistent readings of between 6 and 6.5 mmol. FWIW I'm 185 cm tall and 80 kg. Reasonably fit cyclist and run 5 km around 22 minutes. I'm a few months off 60. Maternal side 3 uncles had diabetes as well as my mum , all had heart attacks aged 61-65, all survived and following triple bypasses( all 3 uncles) lived to early 80s. I'm now really worried. I've never smoked, drink about a pint  of ale a week on average and have ran or cycled all my adult life. What can or should I do? If I were overweight I could fix that, I don't know how I live a cleaner life
Title: Re: Diabetes.
Post by: FifeingEejit on 21 September, 2020, 06:31:40 pm
History in family is an indicator to developing Type 2, so it could be Impaired Fasting Glucose based of the limited information available.
Also need a Glucose Tolerance Test and various other things, as IFG can be present in Impaired Glucose Tolerance and other things.

IFG is apparently also caused by metabolic problems, which can be caused by diet issues like over doing the carbs over the years*... I say while polishing off a Belgian Biscuit.

But I'm a software developer previously working in Diabetes not a diabetologist, nutritionist or any other sort of medic.
Your GPs Triage Receptionist would be a good start point.

* Once met someone in the Lochranza hostel who after years of Carb Gorging while cycling could no longer consume any.
Title: Re: Diabetes.
Post by: numbnuts on 21 September, 2020, 06:55:05 pm
I was classed type 2 a couple of years back same height and weight as you, but a bit older, I cut out sugar in tea and coffee and sweet puddings ect lost 3kg in weight did a lot of walking around 30 miles per week along with cycling.
Last blood test – no longer diabetic.
Another thing I do now I have a good large cooked breakfast around 09:00 (I'm retired) and then have something light to eat between 15:00 -15:30 and maybe something light again if hungry around 18:00 and I do that at least 5 times per week on the other two day eat three normal meals for those two days which is normally Friday and Sunday.
It works for me, what it does for other people is another matter, good luck
Title: Re: Diabetes.
Post by: nobby on 22 September, 2020, 07:35:25 am
My wife bought some blood sugar monitor testing sticks. Tested every morning upon waking and have had consistent readings of between 6 and 6.5 mmol. FWIW I'm 185 cm tall and 80 kg. Reasonably fit cyclist and run 5 km around 22 minutes. I'm a few months off 60. Maternal side 3 uncles had diabetes as well as my mum , all had heart attacks aged 61-65, all survived and following triple bypasses( all 3 uncles) lived to early 80s. I'm now really worried. I've never smoked, drink about a pint  of ale a week on average and have ran or cycled all my adult life. What can or should I do? If I were overweight I could fix that, I don't know how I live a cleaner life

You could go to your doctor, get an accurate test and be referred to a consultant for a proper diagnosis. I've had type 2 for about 20 years and the knowledge of the illness and the drugs to treat it have improved enormously over that time.
Title: Re: Diabetes.
Post by: T42 on 22 September, 2020, 09:05:16 am
My wife bought some blood sugar monitor testing sticks. Tested every morning upon waking and have had consistent readings of between 6 and 6.5 mmol...

Stop worrying.  I was diagnosed with Type 2 over 30 years ago - it runs in male line of our family.  With a healthy life-style and modern medication it's easily controlled.

Re heart attacks:  the way it works is that cholesterol & blood glucose form gunge that gathers in the coronary arteries over the years until eventually the internal diameter of one of them becomes inadequate, and the bit of heart muscle it should feed gets starved of O2 and starts to grumble. If nothing is done it starts to hurt and if flow isn't restored, dies, leaving you with reduced heart function. If it's a big artery that gets blocked you die.

The thing is, this very, very rarely just happens out of the blue.  You get grumbling chest pains well in advance: in my case I found that after two large coffees there was a niggling pain as if someone were pressing the blunt end of a pencil outwards against my rib cage.  Other people find that they feel pain after walking up a hill in very cold weather. In other words, anything that constricts your blood vessels will show it up.  That's the signal that something needs investigation.

But there's more. As a bike-riding diabetic, your GP should send to a cardiologist once a year, who'll do a bunch of tests including putting you on a stationary bike and making you pedal until you croak under successively higher loads while he watches your ECG on a screen.  He can spot the signatures of starved cardiac muscle even before you feel any pain.  If he does, further investigation can result in a stent (wire cage that expands the afflicted artery) being inserted by arterial catheter. Once the wound left at the insertion point has healed, you're back on the bike.

Only in the worst cases, i.e. if you shrug off the grumbles for too long, do you risk a heart attack and a possible bypass.

OK. After my coffee incident, 12 years ago, I had a major artery stented.  I was back doing >100k rides in a couple of months and doing cols in the Vosges a month after that. Since then I've done several SR series, PBP once and a couple of diagonales, which are 1000+ km Audax-style rides across France.  My lifestyle not being what it should be I've had two small run-ins since, both of which dealt with swiftly with stents, a dressing-down, and three weeks off.

So: you've got decades of normal life (plus pills) ahead. With proper surveillance you need never have a heart attack. Get to your GP, tell your tale, and don't worry.


ETA: A chum of mine has 5 stents and still does >100k rides with >1000 metres of climbing.