Everyday Systems

I had a patient today who came into the office and proudly told me that he had lost 20 pounds since April. He said his Primary Care Doctor told him that his A1C was so high that he wanted to put him on insulin. My patient made an appointment with a nutritionist ( NOT his doctor's idea) because he wanted to know how to go about managing his weight and diabetes with his diet. Here's where No S comes in: He said that he started using a 9" plate, made sure it was well balanced with protein, veg, and right amount of starch, NO SNACKS, and of course no sweets. Hmmm, that's all it took to get his diabetes in control and avoid insulin. Makes me motivated to get back on track!

Well, it can't be promoted that way, but I'm not surprised. However, I'd say the nutritionist might have made different recommendations if the patient's readings had been different, so I wouldn't recommend people go too far with self-treating. They might need more restriction on types of foods or frequency. It certainly does seem there is a lot of emphasis these days for decreasing the frequency of eating for type II diabetes.