Diabetes & Byetta

Hi,

I’m new to this forum. I was diagnosed type II in 2001 and have been on
glucophage and starlix with good results and consistent below-6 a1c results.
But right around the holidays, my AM fasting sugars started measuring in the
140s, where before they’d been in the 100s. My post-prandial readings shot
up into the 200s and I craved food all the time.

My internist put me on Actos in January. It didn’t seem to help with
anything, and I gained 20 pounds within a few weeks.

I finally got a referral to an endo and she started me on the 5-pen Byetta a
couple of weeks ago. My 2-hour post-prandial readings got a lot better
(unless I ate a lot of carbs), but my AM fasting numbers didn’t improve. The
first couple of days, the nausea and headache were overwhelming so I took

some compazine (anti-nausea med) I had left over from something else. That
helped a lot. I didn’t get that "full" feeling consistently, and I still got
food cravings in the middle of the day between shots. I didn’t lose any
weight.

My endo wrote a prescription for more compazine to help get me through the
next month or two. I recommend it. I couldn’t continue Byetta without it.

Last night, I started the 10-pen and felt so sick I couldn’t eat dinner and
had to go to bed.

Today I took compazine before the injection and didn’t get the nausea, but
the headache is terrible. I got awful food cravings around lunch time, ended
up eating too many carbs, and got a reading of 213 an hour after my snacks.
An hour later it was still 200.

Oh yeah, and my endo said to stop the Actos because of the weight issue, and
to increase my PM glucophage dose to 1500 mg. The increased glucophage is
supposed to help lower my fasting readings. So my body is going through some
changes right now.

I’m feeling discouraged because I’m not getting the "full" feeling, and am
still getting food cravings. With other folks, have you had food cravings go
away immediately when you started Byetta, or did you have to be on it for a
while? How long?

I’m wondering if Byetta is going to help me lose the Actos weight and
straighten out my eating habits. (And I hope the headaches are going to stop
soon.) How long does it seem to take to get whatever results you’re going to
get?

And… how do you handle food cravings when they come up (especially between
lunch and dinner)?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2003 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.