Update on my A1C

So today, went to see my doctor concerning my hemoglobin.  It turns out they forgot to put in the chit for my blood test.  I did get the results of my A1C though.  After getting off of Janumet (a mixture of 2000mg of Metformin and some other drug) my A1C is back down to 6.1; right where it was before I started taking Metformin.

I don't plan to go crazy with going back to stuffing my face with carbs (I love pasta).  I think it is wise to go easy on sugar and white flour.  I am a moderate in a lot of things.  In my politics, in my Pentecostalism, and in my lifestyle.

I have started going to the gym.  I have been a couch potato long enough.  So I been getting on an elliptical trainer 3 times a week and I have worked myself up to 45 minutes doing 20-30 minutes in the cardio zone for my age.  I was doing some core strengthening exercises for my back, but I have other things I have been working on.  Hopefully,  I will be back to is sooner or later.

So I am left wondering what is going on with my body and Metformin.  It is supposed to help your cells metabolize or accept insulin for people who are experiencing insulin resistance.  Of course, all my naturopath friends tell me that metformin actually increases blood sugar.  Well, that WAS my experience.  But why?

What also concerns me is the number of people dying from malpractice or procedural accidents.  People are shoving drugs at us thinking they are going to fix our SYMPTOMS, but they are not looking very close at the underlying causes.

While I was in Ukraine, I did some role play with a doctor who was wanting to do an internship here in the US.  As I learned from him, doctors are now being required to try to get through an exam in less than 15 minutes.  How can a doctor really find the root cause of my illness in a 15-minute  examination?  Obviously, many things doctors encounter are pretty straight forward like sprains, broken bones, boils and such.  But what about those of us who are outliers from the norm.  My body temp norm is 97.6 maybe a serum blood sugar of 6.1 in normal for me.  What does it mean when I take metformin and my blood sugar goes up.  So far all I have gotten is a lot of head scratching.

Next week I will see my primary care doctor (another new one) and we will see what she has to say about that fact that I have stopped my medication for blood sugar, cholesterol, and blood pressure.  I am mostly working at controlling these through exercise and some changes in my diet.

Do I really need to take 2000 mg of Metformin?

About 4 years ago, I was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes.  I was not enthusiastic about embracing this diagnosis to the point of refusing to say I had diabetes but rather saying, "I am working to control my blood sugar."  At the same time I was diagnosed, so was my brother.  His response: accept it and try to deal with it.  He took the meds but used exercise and diet to try to control it.  Not a bad idea, but I'm not the exercise enthusiast so I took drugs and drastically cut back on my carbs.

But what happened was not what I expected.  My blood sugar (via A1C) when up from 6.1 to 6.3.  Examine the chart for the results of the spiraling up of my blood sugar readings

Medication	A1C	Doctor’s recommendation
None	6.1	Go on Metformin and reduce carbohydrate intake
500 mg per day	6.3	Increase Metformin dosage
1000 mg per day	6.5	Increase Metformin dosage
2000 mg per day	6.9	Change to Janumet
100 mg Sitagliptin 2000 mg Metformin	6.3	Stay on meds
Off Medication	Waiting to see	We’ll see what they say

As you can see is seems that my blood sugar was spiraling up.  My brother's sugar was doing similar things, so I was initially inclined to believe the doctors and take the medications as directed.  But I noticed something odd in my blood sugar.  The longer I fasted (beyond 8 hours) the higher by blood sugar went.  In fact while I was hospitalized for my faux heart attack, they were surprised how my blood sugar went up in the morning, such that the Air Force medic asked me if I had eaten, which I hadn't.

Then recently I had to undergo a medical examination that required me to fast.  Since my stomach wasn't doing well on the Janumet, I decided to skip most of my meds and just deal with the consequences.  But when the surgery nurse took my morning blood sugar it was 117, after being off of my meds for about 36 hours.  That's not normal blood sugar for non-diabetic people but is much lower than I expected.  

Another abnormality the bugged me was that morning following an evening where I had a scoop of ice cream, my blood sugar would often be lower in the morning than when I didn't eat a bunch of carbs before bed.  And when I asked about these peculiarities, I never got an answer that satisfied me.  

So then this idea dropped into my heart/mind.  To do a vegetable juice fast and monitor my blood sugar while going completely off my medications for blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol.  I started my fast on 1 April of this year and the results were dramatic from the point of my personal measurements of my blood sugar and my blood pressure.  My blood sugar dropped down to 115 ± for most of my testing.  I stayed on low salt V-8 vegetable juice for 3 days.  Then I added cooked vegetables for the next two days.  For days 6 & 7 I started eating cheese and meat.  Finally on the 8th day, I started eating carbs in the form of bread and fruit.  From what I have been able to tell, both my blood sugar and blood pressure have been behaving themselves.  I have pretty much gone back to my normal diet and testing my blood sugar just once or twice a day.

Today, I am suffering a sugar Jones and keep eating sweets.  Not the best choice, but we will see how things are looking after dinner.

What gets me about this whole process is none of my doctors were really listening to me.  They were sticking to the protocol.  I remember when they told be about possible causes for Type II Diabetes.  There were three.  One, my body wasn't producing enough insulin, 2 my cells had developed a resistance to insulin (this is what metformin is primarily intended to treat and what they suspect most type II diabetes sufferers. The third reason involved my liver putting out too much sugar.  I suspect that is what is happening with me.  Regardless though, they treat all three causes the same. In fact they never try to discern the cause, they just treat the symptoms.  

This new protocol applies to anyone who is "prediabetic", meaning a blood sugar of 6.1 or a morning sugar level of 125.  Once you cross this threshold, they want to get you on the medication as soon as possible, hoping to prevent any damage to one's body from excess sugar in the blood.  But I am left wondering if it is not just an excuse to get us on their medication as soon as possible so as to earn as much money as they can as soon as they can.  Now this is just my opinion, but I cannot but wonder how the criteria for treatment involves lower and lower thresholds.  I know this much, now that I am off the meds - my blood sugar looks to be almost low as it was 4 years ago and I feel a whole lot better now that I am off of the Janumet.

I also question the reasoning that caused no one to make the correlation between increased metformin and increased blood sugar levels.  I am not medically trained.  In fact I dropped out of biology in college, but I have been blessed with the ability to ask good questions.  But no one would answer me.  I would have like to have been referred to a endocrinologist but that isn't the "protocol".  They don't refer you to and endocrinologist until you need insulin injections.

There is part of me wondering if this protocol led to my brother needing insulin,  We look a lot alike and I cannot but wonder if we have some of the same things going on.  We both have issues with our EKG, we both have issues with blood sugar.  We have been treated by the same thinking, but I have chosen to take a new path.

I cannot but wonder if this "protocol" ends up creating new problems for some of us.

So what medicines are you taking that may be causing you problems?  Which medicines do you need to take.  How do you determine the answer without putting your health at risk.  Even with headaches.  you don't have one because of a lack of pain medicine, maybe it's tension, maybe it's dehydration.  

I hope my journey is helping you to question some of the solutions that have been shoved at you, so that you can see if you really need what you are taking.  I would never encourage you to just stop taking a medication without some way of verifying how the changes you are making will affect you.  

Keep seeking, keep questioning and keep trying to live a life that is both healthy and enjoyable. Don't live in fear.

What can I do about my health?

I'm not sure where this is going but I am writing it in part because of some health issues I have been wrestling with.  According to the doctors I have: sleep apnea, type 2 diabetes, GRD and Cough Presenting Asthma.  For a while I was told I had polycythemia (too many red blood cells) but now I a being told I have anemia (smaller red blood cells and low iron count).

What aggravates me most about all of this is how quickly the doctors decide I have something and start shoving drugs at me.  For a while I have been taking inhaled steroids, then I was put on Metformin for high blood sugar and later Janumet. I am taking iron tablets for the anemia, but they have yet to find the source of my loss of iron or red blood cells.  They also put my on statins so that they could keep my cholesterol count down.  They put me on lisinopril for one high blood pressure reading at the office.

I don't know who to blame.  Is it the insurance companies that push for a quick diagnosis without many tests.  I must say that at least with my oncologist that he was very thorough about checking for the possible causes of my polycythemia.

But when my doctor didn't see an immediate decrease on my blood pressure he jumped my dosage to 40 mg.  I'll get to my blood sugar issues in another post.  I was surprised how little the doctors work without trying to find a  non-pharmaceutical solution.  It's more like, "Oh, your such and such is high or low so take these drugs.  Personally I think it is a lazy man's way to dispense drugs without looking for an underlying cause that could be fixed with either a lifestyle change (which admittedly can be very challenging for people) or some sort of surgical intervention.  Clearly, I do not have a medical degree.  My undergraduate degree is in computer science and my graduate degree is in ministry.  But I have a pretty good head on my shoulders and I can asked some pretty good questions to get at the root of things.

Unfortunately I feel like my doctors, for the most part, have not been engaging me in a dialog about my health and what "WE" could do to find solutions to some of my problems.  To that end I have become frustrated and taken control of things on my own, monitoring my body to see what is happening.

I think the biggest benefit I have gotten out of medical diagnosis has been being diagnosed at having sleep apnea.  For the longest time I had been experiencing exhaustion and feeling like I couldn't think straight.  So when I thought I was having a heart attack (which may have been more likely caused by my problem with acid reflux) and they kept me overnight, it was discovered that my oxygen saturation would drop under 90 % while I was sleeping and they suggested that I might have sleep apnea and I was scheduled for a sleep study.  That answered a lot of problems for me.

Apparently sleep apnea can cause increased in blood sugar, blood pressure as well as causing exhaustion and polycythemia.  So I am very glad that they found this problem and I am grateful for my CPAP machine that helps me breath while sleeping.  I like the CPAP in that it is a non-pharmaceutical and noninvasive way to address the problem.

Now I am not about to throw all pharmaceuticals out with the bathwater.  There is a place for people who lack critical enzymes or their bodies are unable to produce necessary hormones.  But to throw medecine at every little variation in human metabolism can be dangerous.  One thing I learned about systems is that when people try to make changes in them without full knowledge of how all the processes work, they can create havoc and make things worse rather than improving,, fixing or correcting them, like they had hoped.

So I have decided to take my health in hand and am doing to be monitoring what is going on with my blood sugar, blood pressure and my animea.  I am praying for God's guidance as I make adjustments based upon some things that came to light through a recent fast prior to a medical procedure.  The following article will deal with my attempt to bring things back in control, without lots of meds.