It's not "age"...it's the drug you're giving me

(Bob M) #1

My doctor does not listen to me. I had to start a different drug last year sometime, started low, built high. After this, my blood sugar, HbA1c, fasting insulin, and c-peptide all shot up. You can see it here:

image
image.jpg459×549 109 KB

My HbA1c had been around 5…for years. It went from 5.2 in March to 5.6 in October, and I am getting blood sugar levels about 20 points higher than where it used to be. My fasting insulin doubled. My c-peptide increased to 6. Normal c-peptide is <2. Mine went to triple that.

I have not changed my diet in years.

I tell the doctor this, and he says he’s seen no evidence that the new drug (which I titrated up, by the way, started low, went higher, then highest, over basically a year) does this. Well, I just presented evidence of it.

And he dismissed this with…you’re getting older.

HbA1c doesn’t go from 5.2 to 5.6 in about 6 months due to age. C-peptide does not triple due to age. Fasting insulin does not skyrocket due to age.

I am a person who has thousands of tests of blood sugar, ketones, blood pressure, etc. I bought a year’s supply of CGM from Sweden for over a thousand dollars so I could test my blood sugar. If I say a drug is adversely affecting my body via blood sugar, insulin, and c-peptide, believe me.

I plotted it the day before I went to see him. As you can see, my blood sugar starts about 20 points higher than it was a few years ago. I had my first meal and took some berberine. My blood sugar then comes down, possibly due to the berberine. Unfortunately, I have not been using berberine much and I have not been tracking blood sugar after taking it, the way I did this day. But my blood sugar is higher (the numbers below the blue line are ketones in mmol/l):

image
image.jpg819×461 128 KB

To all doctors out there: if a patient tells you something, believe them. Just believe them.

@PaulL Is this post searchable without an account? If not, please make it searchable to anyone on the Internet. It’s complete garbage that doctors don’t listen to their patient.

(Robin) #2

GRRRRRRRR……full stop

(Joey) #3

@ctviggen Your evidence seems strong. But unless I’ve missed it, you don’t actually share which prescribed drug you’ve been taking that you believe is suspect… was that intentional or an oversight?

It might be more helpful to inform others (and perhaps inviting others to share similar experiences with the same Rx) to name the drug’s name. Otherwise, you are banished to remain a single n=1 data point regarding an unknown drug.

(KM) #4

How much would it cost you for a retest? There are lab mix ups, and I would guess the occasional weird human blip. It certainly appears to be a straight correlation, new med = significant change in metrics, but it could be a one-off. Not because of suddenly accelerated aging with no other issues (really? Then again, this is the same institution that diagnosed my husband’s neuropathy as “probably a too tight belt” and my brother in law’s burst appendix as “a cold in your stomach”), but just because of because.

(Alec) #5

Did I hear a statistic that on average people in the US are on 5 prescription drugs? Is that statistic right? If so I am absolutely amazed…

(KM) #6

The number definitely depends on the age group. What I found was from merckmanuals:

Almost 90% of older adults regularly take at least 1 prescription drug, almost 80% regularly take at least 2 prescription drugs, and 36% regularly take at least 5 different prescription drugs." So hopefully 5 is a bit of an exaggeration for the nation as a whole. I could not find what they consider “older”.

(B Creighton) #7

It def appears your blood sugar and A1C are up during the year of 2023. Berberine brings down blood sugar in most cases. If you have been using less in 2023, this could be the reason your blood sugar and A1C went up rather than the medicine. Things still look quite respectable to me. Personally, I will not take any meds doctors want to prescribe me for “chronic” metabolic reasons, but rather have adopted changes in my diet to address markers going askew. I do take allergy shots on a chronic basis, but I don’t really think of them as a prescription med.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #8

Since the Health forum is protected from searches, I moved this to “Show me the Science.” That should do it.

But really, why should the doctor listen to you? You are just a lowly patient, after all. :grin:

There is an old joke about how God is acting strangely, so St. Peter calls up the spirit of Sigmund Freud to analyse him. Dr. Freud goes in, and doesn’t come out for several days, and when he does, he looks worried.

St. Peter rushes up and asks, “Dr. Freud, can you tell us what’s wrong?”

Freud strokes his chin and says, “This is a very serious case. He thinks he’s a doctor.”

#9

That’s why I’m a fan of DO’s since they target root causes and don’t blindly take labs at face value and throw more meds at stuff, I’m also not anti pharma either, the right ones for the right people do amazing things. But to play devil’s advocate, most people lie to their docs, so people have also conditioned them to not believe what their patients tell them. In your case, you bring too much info to the table for any doc that’s not ignorant to ignore what you’re saying, to me it’s time to go doctor shopping

My doc who is an MD, but is a functional medicine MD was great, but just sold her practice to a senior based clinic chain has killed that for me, so I’m just going back to not having a PCP, not worth the hassle. I do enough of my own labs, if I need something right then I can just walk into an urgent care and get what I need. Yearly wellness visits and docs that don’t try isn’t worth my time.

I’ll buy the couple Rx’s I use online, and continue to do my own labs. Trying to find good docs that aren’t part of the system, and also not on very expensive membership based practices is almost impossible

(KM) #10

I really do love that attitude. It’s become such a ubiquitous undercurrent in our society, the idea that it’s somehow Responsible of us as citizens to march into a doctor’s office annually for “preventative check ups”, especially when the interventions they prescribe for the laundry list of non-ailments they find don’t even cure them.

I love reading about medical history and society’s ideas of what constituted reasonable action before the advent of Big Med (or Big Brother). Of course yes, treatment of actual disease has made great strides, but a manufactured fear of “being irresponsible” by skipping the annual inquisition and listening to oneself instead isn’t one of them.