It can be controlled by following a low carb diet. Unfortunately any reference to “diet” immediately has negative connotations. However a low carb diet of 100g of carbs per day is easily achievable but it needs effort i.e. food has to be weighed and a record kept, at least in the early days until you become familiar with portion sizes. There is no need to completely cut out all bread, rice, pasta and potatoes – this is where the weighing comes in and is critical. Obviously you need to know the % carb content of everything you eat in order to calculate the actual weight of carbs consumed. I made an alphabetical list of all the foods we usually have, together with the carb contents.

I believe there has to be some genetic/metabolic influence as well. For example my Hb1Ac reading was 42 and my wife's 48. We were both overweight so we stuck to a low carb diet (100g/day) for 6 months. At the end of the 6 months her Hb1Ac level had come down to 42 and mine had not changed at all (42)!