Complaints & connections · borters.ch
The key insulin still fits, but the lock is stiff — the earlier you act, the more can be regained.
Also known as: type 2 diabetes · prediabetes
Open in the tool — with search and all the links →This compilation is for information and replaces neither medical diagnosis nor treatment. If you have symptoms, see a doctor.
Insulin is the key that lets sugar out of the blood and into the cells. In type 2 the key still fits but the lock sticks: the cells respond less well, the pancreas compensates for years with more insulin, and only when it can no longer keep up does blood sugar rise measurably. The road therefore starts long before the diagnosis — raised insulin comes before raised sugar. That is exactly why looking early pays, and why the early stage is not a harmless in-between but the point with the greatest leverage. Two numbers shape the conversation: fasting glucose as a snapshot and HbA1c as a look back over about three months. A single raised value is not yet a diagnosis. What works is unspectacular and well established: weight, movement and the kind of carbohydrate. A walk after eating measurably lowers the peak that follows; muscles take up sugar even without insulin, which makes strength training more useful than its reputation suggests. With substantial weight loss in the first years after diagnosis, blood sugar can return to the normal range. What matters throughout is what runs on quietly: eyes, kidneys, nerves and feet belong checked regularly, because they only hurt once something has already happened.
A sugar raised over years also damages the nerves that steer the stomach. Fullness, nausea, swinging sugar values after eating and vomiting of old food belong to this picture — it can be treated and is often not named.
Less sugar, white flour and sugary drinks lowers spikes and, over time, HbA1c most directly.
Even 10–15 min of walking after a meal markedly lowers the spike — muscle pulls glucose from the blood.
Less (especially visceral) fat strongly improves insulin sensitivity — often the single most effective lever.
Muscles take up sugar even without insulin and are the body’s largest store. Strength work twice a week has a measurable effect on HbA1c.
Eating vegetables and protein before the starch blunts the peak that follows. A small move that costs nothing and forbids nothing.
At the prediabetes stage the leverage is greatest and reversal most likely. Later every step costs more.
These three only speak up once something has happened. One fixed appointment a year beats any good intention.
Short nights worsen insulin action within a few days. Looking only at food misses this part.
The commonest cause of chronic kidney disease. Once a year the urine protein belongs measured, not only the creatinine.
Metformin slows the liver’s sugar output and makes cells more responsive to insulin. SGLT2 inhibitors send sugar out in the urine, GLP-1 agents slow stomach emptying and damp appetite. All lower blood sugar; insulin resistance itself shifts mainly through muscle work and weight.
On average it has been there four to seven years before it is found — which is why some people already have eye or nerve changes at diagnosis. HbA1c reflects the last eight to twelve weeks; a change therefore shows in the value after three months at the earliest.
The early stage and early type 2 do not hurt. The diagnosis is therefore often made in passing during another check — and that is why asking pays.
Only with clearly raised sugar: the body clears it through the kidneys and takes water with it. Getting up at night belongs to it.
Especially on the feet. Together with reduced feeling in the toes this is a sign not to wait on — feet belong in the regular check.
Starts symmetrically at the toes and creeps upward, often worse at night. A sign that sugar has been raised for a while.
On the neck, in the armpits, in the groin. It looks like dirt, does not wash off, and is one of the few visible signs of insulin resistance.
Fat around the organs acts on sugar metabolism more strongly than fat under the skin. Waist measurement therefore often says more than the scales.
After long-standing diabetes the stomach can slow because the nerves steering it suffer. Food lingers — and blood sugar rises later than expected.
Clearly worthwhile and well studied when deficient; fewer data for the wider uses. Fat-soluble — check blood levels at high doses.
Muscle work takes sugar out of the blood without insulin — the most direct lever there is.
Studied as one of several forms of calorie reduction; what matters is what is kept up.
A bitter plant, traditionally drunk before eating. In humans no effect on blood sugar is shown — what works is the fibre in the food itself.
The dried berries are an old remedy for diarrhoea, the leaves were once used against sugar. The leaves are advised against today — over longer periods they count as harmful to the liver.
No oil lowers blood sugar. What counts here is a different point: with nerve damage the feet lack pain sensation — foot baths therefore belong checked with a thermometer, not with the hand.
Sweet in TCM is not sugar but a direction of effect — rice and pumpkin count as sweet. That is the point where the old classification and today’s nutrition science are furthest apart.
Warm, cooked, regular — the recommendations partly overlap with what holds anyway. The classification itself does not act on blood sugar; the amount of carbohydrate does.