Reddit mentions: The best books on american diabetes association

First off welcome to the club no one wants to be a member of. I myself was diagnosed at 28, (I just turned 32) and I remember being really overwhelmed and having a TON of conflicting feelings and emotions kind of wash over me. It's frustrating and I still hate being a diabetic, but you can live with it. My father was diagnosed in his 50s...he's 70+ years old now and doing fine.

Now THAT A1c isn't too bad. When I was diagnosed I was at an 11.3! My initial fastings were like 150-175. However the past few months the two pills I take have not been functioning as well as they were since I was diagnosed so I may have to find other ways to treat what I have. You're definitely a diabetic, the fasting test is pretty good at determining that. Now Vitamin D isn't always the best indicator because usually we're ALL deficient in that. I high level IS controllable without meds, but it can be difficult. You have to adopt a very low-carb diet or supplement your diet with exercise.

So here's my suggestion...

Get this book. Seriously it was the best thing and made it easy to understand why things were happening the way they were, what I needed to do, and when to do it. You'll want to do the following kind of in brief:

• Get and read that book
  
• Approach friends/family for support. Even here on /r/diabetes will help you get through some of the things. I like www.diabeticconnect.com as well.
  
• If you haven't enrolled in a diabetes education class yet, do so ASAP. Most hospitals offer one, and there are usually diabetic centers by county. Insurance should cover it.
  
• Find an endocrinologist or specific diabetic doctor. You need to assemble your "team" of doctors and care specialists. This usually consists of a general practitioner, Endocrinologist, Opthamologist/Optometrist (I recommend Optha instead of Opto, they're better for diabetics and test and monitor more things with your eyes/vision), a podiatrist and a dietician/nutritionist.
  
• Once you receive a blood glucose meter, start testing. Before and after every meal, and snack if you can afford strips to do so. I went nuts after I was diagnosed. I tested before and after everything. Biggest tip I can give you...set the needle depth on the finger lancer to the lowest setting lol, then work up. I use a "3" but when I started it was like at a 8 and ouch that hurt lol, now I can't even feel a thing. Test often. Log all the food you eat in a journal. This will help when you hit a nutritionist or dietician, even your diabetic doctor.
  
• Learn what foods are good/bad to eat for diabetics. I can recommend this Calorie King book for learning how to count carbs, which can be awesome for controlling your in take etc.
  
• Take a breath.
  
  Diabetes isn't a death sentence, and eventually you'll come to look at it as just a forced healthy life change. All in all it's actually a blessing you got diagnosed. Sure we would love NOT to have diabetes, however having it and being undiagnosed can be dangerous. Diabetic complications are slow and happen over time...and usually when your blood sugars are elevated over a long period of time. They are completely controllable, and it's likely you will never have any neuropathy or retinopathy BECAUSE you caught it so young.
  
  Losing weight is amazing. Even 10 pounds. However starving yourself won't help. You will read a lot about being able to "reverse" diabetes but really there is no such thing. You can make it so you don't require meds, but you'll always have to watch. Don't sweat it, there's LOTS of us out there and it doesn't impact your life as MUCH as if you were a Type 1 and required insulin.
  
  D

Not a question, but a close family friend and fellow redditor wrote a few books on being Type 1 and surviving school. He just finished Harvard Law, so the tips probably worked. Their Mom also wrote a good one.

Parental support is the best thing that helped them along the way. Always available (even when in high school they got a little too drunk and their sugars skyrocketed and then plumetted, or learning to cook with no sugar). Anyway, keep it up.

Check it out:

http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Grip-Diabetes-Quick-Techniques/dp/1580402550/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b/190-2801881-3142910

For excellent technical discussion of type 2 in language I can understand I recommend these two books:


The First Year, Type 2 Diabetes, An Essential Guide for the Newly Diagnosed. Author: Gretchen Becker. ISBN 1-56924-646-0

Blood Sugar 101, What They Don't Tell you about Diabetes, by Jenny Ruhl, ISBN-13: 978-0-9647116-1-7.

Diabetes definitely blows. Keep an eye on your foot. You're probably an early enough diabetic that it won't be a serious problem, but those sorts of things can take forever to heal on us if you don't take care of them from the start.

As for knowing so much, I feel like maybe I should actually do a post on this at some point. When I was first dx'd, I actually was discharged from the hospital without anyone teaching me to use insulin. I think there was a miscommunication between the day nurses and the night ones, and someone thought that I had already been diabetic for a while. They kept me a total of 5 or 6 hours while they got my bg back in range and then sent me home to call my endo.

I actually already had an appointment set up for one the next day (I was worried that all my weight loss might be some sort of thyroid issue). I went in cried like a complete wuss while he showed me how to give myself my first shot (I was scared as shit about needles). He sent me on my way with a meter, some samples of insulin, and little instruction on how to use either. 10 u of levemir at night, 2 u humalog before lunch and 4 u humalog before dinner.

My first 3 months, I followed those instructions and my bgs were all over the place. I'd call his office and be instructed to take 2 u of levemir in the morning as well. Pretty useless shit. My A1c barely dropped at all those first 3 months.

That's when I decided to stop following the instructions of anyone who didn't have to live with this on a daily basis. I got my first diabetes related book, Think Like a Pancreas, which I used to figure out my I:C ratio and correction factors. I started testing around 10 times a day to figure out what my previously dictated 4-times-a-day routine was missing. I also started tweaking my own basal amounts, splitting my levemir in two and shifting units around to develop the rates I wanted for different times of day (which was only possible because Levemir, unlike Lantus, is not 24 hours of steady absorption.)

I brought my A1c down from around 13 to under 8 in the next 3 months, and I got hooked on figuring out why I still had variations that my earlier math couldn't explain. I stopped buying books for patients, and started consuming books and journals meant for nurses and physicians. My bookshelf now includes:

• Practical Insulin: A Handbook for Prescribing Providers
  
• Joslin's Diabetes Deskbook: A Guide for Primary Care Providers
  
• Educating Your Patient with Diabetes
  
• Joslin's Insulin Deskbook: Designing and Initiating Insulin Treatment Programs
  
• Medical Management of Type 1 Diabetes
  
• Nurses' Guide to Teaching Diabetes Self-Management
  
• Intensive Diabetes Management
  
• and, more for fun, Diabetic Athlete's Handbook
  
  I use the stuff that works, ignore the stuff that becomes outdated, and have about a thousand of those little, color-coded document flags marking different pages for the times when I need to look something up.
  
  I've since switched endos to one who is fantastic and who supports me in the changes that I want to make.

For the lazy: Prediabetes for Dummies