Hello all,

I have struggled with health anxiety for most of my adult life. As with anyone, sometimes it is worse than others.

There is a lot of diabetes in my family, and about 2 1/2 years ago my health anxiety got the better of me and I went and purchased a home blood glucose monitor. My fasting / pre meal readings were typically 'prediabetic', and my post meal readings 'normal'. With this in mind I completely overhauled my diet and lifestyle in an attempt to prevent or delay the onset of diabetes.

I'm 31 years old, at a healthy weight (bmi 21.5), exercise nearly every day and eat very clean and fairly low carb.

I believe anxiety can raise blood sugar levels. In all honesty I have always been so stressed when taking measurements that my hands are shaking, I can feel my pulse in my head etc. etc. Because of this, when I look objectively, I'm not sure my sugars are even unusual, and in fact when I take an average of all readings, they put me within normal ranges.

I ran out of test strips, and gave my test kit to a trusted friend about 3 months ago. The constant testing wasn't doing my mental state any good, and I decided that if (or when) any symptoms showed up of diabetes, I would get myself tested. I was finding whenever I got a 'good' result my brain would just come up with a million reasons why I couldn't trust it as much as the 'bad' readings, so I got no reassurance.

For some reason I returned to the diabetes forum I used to visit a fair amount, and got myself all worried about LADA (which is essentially type 1 diabetes which appears later in life). It is thought to be common in type 2 diabetics who are slim and active like myself. I can't get out of my head that my prediabetic readings despite being slim are evidence that I will end up as a type 1 diabetic, injecting insulin every day and worrying about 'hypos'. This LADA diabetes would progress constantly, despite lifestyle adjustments, so now I feel like I should go back to testing all the time to make sure it doesn't sneak up on me.

I'm now so anxious and stressed about it that I feel like if I did go and test my blood sugar it would be through the roof and it would reinforce the stress and anxiety!

Is my original plan of wait and see if we get symptoms and then get tested more reasonable?

Thanks,