1. The reason your blood sugar is high in the morning is because of what you ate for dinner the previous night.
There are many reasons why blood sugar can be elevated in the morning and food is only one reason. During the night or during long periods of not eating, your liver makes glucose for your body so it has consistent fuel available. This is true for everyone, whether they have diabetes or not. As your blood sugar rises, the pancreas matches it with trickles of insulin to keep levels steady. But this changes in pre-diabetes and then throughout the progression of diabetes. Rather than producing steady levels of insulin, the cells in the pancreas that make insulin slowly die out (type 2 diabetes). This progression can be evident by slowly rising blood sugars in the morning.
2. I can’t eat carbs.
The human body will make glucose out of any food you eat if it has to. But to produce energy, it prefers using carbohydrates. Eating smaller amounts of high-quality carbs helps provide the right fuel for the body thereby allowing the protein to repair tissue and fat to transport molecules such as vitamins and hormones. On the flip side, eating zero carbs is not sustainable or even possible. Remember – it’s best to eat high-quality carbs like whole-wheat pasta or bread, brown rice, green vegetables, flaxseed, beans, lentils, etc., and not processed carbs like sugar and processed packaged foods.
3. My metformin stopped working.
Metformin is oftentimes one of the first medications used after and in conjunction with education and nutrition therapy for diabetes management. Metformin targets the liver to help it make less glucose so that fasting blood sugars are more manageable, but it does not work on elevated blood sugar related to food. Because Type 2 diabetes is a progressive disease Metformin may work for years. And then it may seem like it’s not doing its job. That’s because as diabetes progresses, which it will, your HbA1C will elevate and when it does, it’s time to come up with a new plan and try other drugs.
4. It’s better to have real sodas like Coke than diet sodas.
The truth is that the human body does not need ANY soda in any form whether regular or diet. There is nothing healthy about any soda option. Pure sugar that’s found in soda directly raises blood sugar and repetitively challenges the pancreas to make extra insulin that the body doesn’t need. The rise of insulin causes the body to store calories. Diet sodas don’t do this because artificial sweeteners don’t raise blood sugar, but they are not a healthy choice for other reasons. Caffeine, found in most of these drinks, can raise blood sugar too. Bottom line? Humans need water, not Coke Zero.
5. Adults with diabetes have type 2. Children with diabetes have type 1.
Adults and children both can get type 1diabetes. Type 1 is an autoimmune disease in which the person’s immune system has attacked and killed all of the beta cells in the pancreas. These are the cells responsible for making insulin. Humans need insulin just like they need oxygen. So they have to inject it to create energy from food. Likewise, adults and even teenagers and younger can get type 2 diabetes, which is not an autoimmune disease. In type 2, the body overproduces insulin from the same beta cells on the pancreas which affects type 1. However, the process is slow and difficult to catch. Whereas type 1 is sudden and definitive to diagnose. One disease does not turn into the other because they are separate and different.
