Re: Amaryl Experiment

Glipizide made me hungry, put weight on me, and was often unpredictable in
its effect as I suffered numerous lows. I took to taking just a speck of it,
an 8th and got better results.

When I decided to get off the "insulin pusher" and go on injectable
insulin, all that nonsense ended --hunger was normalized, weight was easier
to control, and injectable insulin was much more precise in the low doses
Bernstein recommends. If I had started this many years earlier, I would
probably have better ability to self-regulate my blood sugars than I do now.

Any fear of needles or qualms about insulin that I once had look absurd in
retrospect.


"Jenny" <lottadata@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:SKCdnYI2Z8_wjDTZnZ2dnUVZ_q2dnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxx
Leaving no stone unturned, I decided to try a very small dose of Amaryl
after seeing posted on the Exeter MODY site what the correct dose would be
for someone with the kind of MODY it looks like I might have. (1/4 of the
normal starting dose.)

My doctor had been wanting me to try it, and after assuring myself that
Amaryl is, in fact, one of the sulfs that doesn't affect the receptors on
the heart (since some sulfs cause the two and a half times more heart
attacks in sulf-takers), I gave it a shot.

Being ultra conservative, I started with 1/8 of the starting dose, which
involved complex manipulations with a pill cutter. Turns out you can turn
1/4 into 1/8 by turning the pill on edge. (Dr. Bernstein's warning about
sulfs burning out beta cells seemed not to be a huge concern with a dose
that was 1/64th of what most Type 2s take.)

It was an interesting and productive experiment. The Amaryl most
definitely got me secreting insulin, and that insulin worked. That
validated that I do seem to have the MODY I think I do, as an extremely
strong response to tiny doses of Sulfs is a characteristic. It also
answered the question of whether something is wrong with my own insulin
molecule with a rousing "No!" (This makes it more confusing that my
C-peptide was normal when my bg was over 200!)

That said, I'm not likely to take this stuff again, even though it worked
scarily well.

I had stopped taking metformin for a couple days because the version the
pharmacy gave me this month, from a different manufacturer, was making me
nauseous all the time. Without metformin in my system, my bgs after eating
had risen another 20 mg/dl. So to test the 1/8 mg of Amaryl, I ate a meal
that contained the same amount of carbs--40 grams--that, the previous day,
when eaten with 3.25 units of R was putting me in the 110s (6.1 mmol/l)
after 2 hours. The 1/8 mg of Amaryl dropped me to 86 mg/dl (4.8 mmol/l) at
90 minutes!

This sounds good, but there was one deal-killing side effect. From the an
hour after I took the Amaryl at 8 AM until I went to bed at 10 PM I was
ravenously hungry--Eat everything you see and then eat more hungry. Shovel
food into your mouth like a crazed lunatic hungry. The kind of hungry I
was in the months before I got diagnosed with diabetes.

When I woke up this morning with a fasting bg of 111 and NOT hungry, I
heaved a deep sigh of relief that the drug was clearly out of my system.
It wasn't clear how long it lasted from the prescribing information, and I
wasn't looking forward to another day like yesterday!

I'd read that sulfonylurea drugs packed weight on people, now it is clear
why! Intellectually I might like the much better control it could give
me, but I could not live with that kind of hunger. Plus, I could also not
take this stuff with metformin, given that I was plummeting to the 80s
after eating boatloads of carbohydrate at each meal. Metformin does such
good things to my lipids and maintains my weight perfectly, so I don't
want to give it up.

My total intake yesterday got up to 150 grams of carbs because otherwise I
was sure I was going to hypo. At one point, I hit 190 mg/dl at 45 minutes
and then dropped back very quickly to 100 and then back to the 80s at 2
hours.) Since Met drops me another 20 mg/dl I could easily end up in the
60s. A lot. I don't think I could get the pill splitter to do 1/16!

So back to the R insulin I go. No hunger, no ugly spike when I time it
right, though not a lot of time spent in the 80s, either. But 90s works
for me and I can achieve that consistently. It's a lot better than
120-140.



--Jenny

http://www.phlaunt.com/diabetes Diabetes Info

http://www.alt-support-diabetes.org/newlydiagnosed.htm Get Your Blood
Sugar Under Control


.

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