Blood sugar

[agrippa]

I wonder how to know when to go to inslin injections. My oral meds. are not doing the job. I feel so tired, vision blurred a quite a bit. Feel like sand in my eyes when I sleep. I am overweight. I know I need to exercise and loose weight, but WHO FEELS LIKE IT? I am 65 years old with problems of HBP, depression, sleep apnea as well as diabetes.
I have been told by people who were put on inslun they wish it had been sooner. I need help!!!!!

Thanks

kenny

[JDRF-Team-sgg]

You cannot buy insulin over the counter without a prescription, nor can you buy syringes needed to inject insulin without a prescription. So you first need to go see your doctor. I would do blood tests before each meal and at bedtime each day until your doctor's appointment and write down the numbers that you get on your glucometer. This will give you a record of what your glucose numbers actually are doing all day long and will help your doctor know whether your glucose levels are indeed too high. Most doctors will not just take your word for it, but will need to see what the numbers actually are, so this is why i suggest you making these notes for a week or two before you see your doctor.

Then, when you see your doctor, ask him or her if it is appropriate to start adding insulin to your regimen. Many people are reluctant to take shots of insulin, and for this reason, most doctors tend to wait until they absolutely have to add insulin before suggesting this to patients that they assume will be hesitant to take this step. So perhaps you simply need to communicate to your doctor that you have no such hesitancy and that if insulin is what you need to regain your health, you really want to go ahead and start taking insulin before your health is damaged. I wish you the very best.

Once the blood sugars start to come down, you should regain some of the energy you are missing now. THEN, you absolutely MUST take the steps you need to in order to lose weight if you are too heavy. Once you lose the pounds, you may be able to stop the insulin, and the other symptoms you  are telling us about may go away or significantly improve. This could be a matter of life or death for you, so don't neglect the weight loss. Adding insulin won't help the other health problems.

[agrippa]

THANK YOU VERY, VERY MUCH!!

[jmrommes]

Exercise and weight loss will help with every one of the medical conditions you listed.  I didn't have the HBP (borderline), but with weight loss, I was able to put my C-PAP in the closet, get off oxygen 24/7 (I also have COPD), reduce my daily puffs on my inhalers, and reduce my diabetes meds from 2000 mg metformin and 20 mg gliburide daily to 500 mg metformin and no gliburide, and get my BP to very acceptable rates for my age (61).  When you decide to get started, ask your doc to set you up for a diabetes education class or a session with a diabetes educator. That made a huge difference for me because I could see how food selection fit together to make a reasonable plan that I could follow.  I also use recipes from the South Beach Diet, a few Atkins things, and find the magazine Light and Tasty very helpful.  Good luck!