One in three people with type 2 diabetes are given medication too soon, instead of being urged to eat better and do more exercise, a study suggests.

The latest report that I saw suggests that Doctors are too quick to put us Type 2 diabetics on tablets (see here) . Well now I think that reports like that are very worrying, not because of the suggestion that they make, but worrying because the suggestion is misleading and the study poorly scoped.

It is reported that some people have Type 2 diabetes for years without knowing. How can that be I wonder? For me the disease came on very quickly, in December a full medical showed no illness and just a few pounds overweight, by the following June I was in full blown Type 2 and, according to my hurredly taken blood tests, only a few weeks away from hospitalisation. In the early months of the onset I increasingly felt 'old', my energy waned, my concentration was lacking and my thirst grew beyond belief. By June it was obvious to me and to my family that there was something seriously wrong. I could not have lived with that medical knowledge for years, in fact I couldn't have coped any longer. I put off going to the doctors for at least a month, even though I knew I shouldn't. I was scared to be told what I had, I wouldn't even look the thing up on the internet. Eventually I had no choice, I could not live any longer the way I was.

At the Doctors, armed with blood tests showing a skyhigh HbA1c and the records of how I ate and what I ate, my GP had only one option. Tablets. He told me that lifestyle was something I needed to look at but that a visit to the dietician was probably a waste of time, my diet was already very good. He put me on metformin, statins, aspirin and perindropril and signed me off work for a month.

In the few months since my full medical, my BP had gone from 140/80 to 200+/100, my cholesterol had gone from around 4.5 to 11 and my blood sugar was 'dangerous'. A lifestyle change by Jogging around the streets and eating more fruit and less fats was absolutely NOT going to sort out my Type 2. No way. Yet I am in the South West, I am one of the statistics in the study, the study that says Type 2 diabetics are given tablets too soon. From what I can discern, the study looked only at time from diagnosis to medication. A true scientific study should have taken many other factors into account, the levels of key indicators, the speed of onset, the existing dietary and motory habits of the patient.

I think that this study is poor, and I think this type of headline maligns the GP. My GP was excellent and did exactly the right thing for me. He is in the South West, the area covered by this report. The reporting of the frankly poor study should have given a balance, should have examined the assertions and perhaps spoken to some GP's for their opinion.

Not impressed, yet again. BBC I expect better quality reporting from you.
Rant over.

Yet again poor reporting on a major

Well that was a surprise. I've just appeared on the BBC website (click here). It follows an interview I gave the BBC ages ago and I had almost forgotten about it, and then today I had a very nice comment from Stuart Diamond on my entry from a few days ago. It reminded me that a few times in the past I have a had blood tests done, usually on a precheck prior to going into hospital, and they had suggested diabetes and referred me to my GP for a thorough check up. So I would go and have a check up, and no diabetes found. Not forgetting that I had an annual medical at work that included blood checks, I was supposedly diabetes free for many many years.
But now I wonder.

I wonder if my diabetes was 'waxing and waning' somehow.

I wonder if we need a better way of checking.

Anyway, I still eat healthy, I am still relatively sedentary, but do what I can. I have just built lean to and am now removing a huge old tree and preparing land for growing vegetables. I am not a couch potato, but it just takes me a lot longer to do things than many other people. I refuse to give into my arthritis and I refuse to give into my diabetes.

And people still label me as a glutton because I am diabetic. In response I mentally label them as ignorant. Perhaps I am just as bad as they are.