Susan Richardson Facebook ad: “Read this if you feel like you’re failing”

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The practice nurse at my diabetes review put down her pen, looked at my results, and said, "I don't understand. We haven't changed anything. What have you done?" I'd just told her, casually, that I'd lost half a stone. That my fasting glucose was consistently under 7. That I'd stopped needing my afternoon nap for the first time since my diagnosis. She actually pulled up my previous results on the screen to compare. Then she looked at me like I'd performed some kind of magic trick. Here's what you need to understand: I'm a 58-year-old former NHS receptionist from County Durham. Type 2 diabetic for ten years. The kind of diabetic whose numbers never quite behave, no matter what I do. You want to talk about irony? I spent twenty-three years working the front desk at a GP surgery. Twenty-three years booking diabetes appointments for other people. Typing up referrals to the diabetes clinic. Watching patients come through those doors month after month, year after year, their conditions slowly getting worse. I knew the warning signs. I saw what happened when people didn't get their numbers under control. I filed the letters about complications — the eyes, the kidneys, the feet. And I still ended up diabetic myself. I've tried everything they tell you to try. Metformin since day one. Gliclazide added two years later. Then Sitagliptin on top of that. Three medications, and my HbA1c was still hovering around 58. The diets? Don't get me started. Slimming World for two years — I lost a stone and a half, then gained back nearly two when my mam got ill and I was driving to Newcastle every other weekend. Weight Watchers twice. Michael Mosley's Fast 800 — I lasted three weeks before I was so exhausted I could barely get through my shift at the surgery. The 5:2 diet that left me so short-tempered my husband said I'd become "impossible to live with." I even paid to see a private nutritionist in Durham. £280 for someone to tell me things I'd been hearing the GPs tell patients for twenty-three years. Eat less sugar. More vegetables. Try to exercise. Nothing shifted those numbers. Not properly. Not permanently. My fasting glucose would dip for a few weeks whenever I started something new. Then it would creep back up, like it was mocking my efforts. 8.4. 8.7. 9.1. Back to where I started, or worse. The weight was the same story. I'd lose half a stone. Gain it back plus a bit more. Lose four pounds. Gain back six. My wardrobe had three different sizes in it because I never knew which version of myself I'd be from one month to the next. Ten years of this. 3,650 mornings of that little glucose monitor delivering its daily verdict. 3,650 days of feeling like I was becoming one of those patients I used to book appointments for — the ones whose numbers never improved no matter how hard they tried. My husband kept saying I was too hard on myself. "You're doing your best, pet," he'd say. But the numbers don't care about your best. They just tell you the truth. And the truth was that my body wasn't cooperating. The shame of it was hard to bear. I'd spent over two decades watching diabetic patients struggle. I'd typed up their blood test results. Booked their follow-up appointments. Seen their HbA1c numbers creep up year after year. And I'd thought — though I'm not proud of this — I'd thought some of them just weren't trying hard enough. Now I was one of them. And I was trying as hard as anyone could. The worst part? I used to be active. I was on my feet all day at the surgery — walking between the reception desk and the filing room, chasing down patient records, rushing to answer the phone. On my feet from half eight until gone five. I had energy for everything — the morning rush, the afternoon chaos, the impossible patients who turned up without appointments demanding to be seen. Now I was the woman who needed to sit down after walking round Asda. Who planned every outing around where I could have a rest. Who said no to things I used to love because I simply didn't have the energy. My grandchildren wanted me to take them to the park, and I had to make excuses because I knew I couldn't manage the walk. At my last appointment, the practice nurse — a lass I'd worked with for fifteen years before I retired — suggested I "try to be more active." I wanted to cry. Or laugh. Possibly both. Be more active? My feet ached constantly — the neuropathy was starting, I recognised the symptoms from all those patient letters I'd typed over the years. My knees protested every staircase. I was carrying an extra two and a half stone that made everything harder. And I was exhausted — the kind of bone-deep tiredness that sleep doesn't fix. "Exercise more" isn't advice. It's a cruel joke when your body has already given up on you. I'd spent twenty-three years watching doctors give that advice to patients who couldn't follow it. Now I understood why they couldn't. Here's what finally made sense of everything: It's not about what you eat. It's not even about how much you move. It's about what your body DOES with the glucose in your blood. And when you're diabetic, that process is fundamentally broken. Let me explain it simply, because nobody ever explained it to me properly — not the GPs I worked for, not the practice nurses, not the NHS diabetes education course I sat through: When you eat, your blood sugar rises. Your pancreas releases insulin. Insulin is supposed to shuttle that glucose into your cells, where it gets used for energy. But when you have Type 2 diabetes, your cells have become resistant to insulin. They ignore the signal. The glucose stays in your blood. Your pancreas panics and pumps out MORE insulin to try harder. Now you have two problems: high blood sugar AND high insulin. And here's the part that made me furious when I finally understood it: High insulin tells your body to STORE FAT. That's not a theory. That's just how it works. When insulin is elevated, your body is in storage mode. It will hold onto fat no matter how little you eat. It will resist losing weight no matter how hard you try. You could eat 1,200 calories a day. If your insulin is chronically high, your body will store as much of that as possible and burn as little as it can. This is why diabetics struggle to lose weight. This is why "eat less, move more" doesn't work for us. This is why I spent ten years feeling like a fraud — eating salads at my desk while the scales went up and my colleagues assumed I must be sneaking biscuits from the break room. It's not willpower. It's not discipline. It's chemistry. Your body is working against you. Not because you're doing something wrong, but because the fundamental metabolic process is broken. Twenty-three years working in a GP surgery, and nobody had ever explained it to me like that. I'd typed up thousands of letters about diabetes. Filed hundreds of blood test results. And I'd never understood why the patients couldn't just lose weight and fix it. Now I knew. They couldn't. Neither could I. The second step was discovering what actually fixes it. I was lying in bed at gone midnight — because that's when you do your most desperate research — scrolling through the Diabetes UK forum on my phone, when I found a thread that made me stop. A woman was talking about her husband. Type 2 for twenty years. Nothing worked. His GP had basically given up, just kept increasing his medication. Then she mentioned something called NMES. I'd seen that word before. In referral letters. Something to do with physiotherapy, stroke rehabilitation. But I'd never connected it to diabetes. She said it had dropped his fasting glucose by nearly 2 points. That he'd lost over a stone without changing his diet. That his practice nurse was "genuinely confused" at his improvement. I thought she was exaggerating. Or trying to sell something. But I couldn't sleep anyway — the neuropathy tingles were keeping me awake — so I started reading. NMES stands for Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation. It's a technology that makes your muscles contract using gentle electrical pulses. The NHS has used it for decades — I'd typed up enough referral letters to know that. Rehabilitation after strokes, post-surgery recovery, physiotherapy. What I didn't know — what NOBODY had ever explained — is what muscle contractions do to blood sugar. Here's the science that changed everything: Your muscles are your body's largest glucose sink. When your muscles contract, they absorb glucose directly from your bloodstream. And here's the crucial part: They do it WITHOUT needing insulin. There's a pathway called GLUT4 that gets activated when muscles contract. It pulls glucose into your muscle cells regardless of whether insulin is working or not. This is why exercise helps diabetics. It's not about burning calories. It's about your muscles physically pulling glucose out of your blood every time they contract. But here's the problem: when you're exhausted, when your feet are tingling with neuropathy, when you're carrying extra weight, when your knees have had enough — exercise isn't realistic. It's not that we don't want to. It's that our bodies won't cooperate. And the less we move, the less our muscles contract, the less glucose gets absorbed, the higher our blood sugar stays, the more insulin gets pumped out, the more fat we store, the more tired we become. It's a trap. A metabolic prison. And diet alone cannot break you out. That's where NMES comes in. It makes your muscles contract FOR you. Same glucose absorption. Same metabolic benefit. But you're sitting in your armchair while it happens. I was sceptical. Of course I was. Twenty-three years in a GP surgery teaches you to be wary of miracle cures. I've seen patients come in clutching articles about the latest wonder supplement, the newest diet trend, the miracle device they saw advertised on Facebook. But the research was there. Published studies. Clinical trials. Real data showing NMES reduced fasting glucose in Type 2 diabetics. One meta-analysis had a p-value of 0.002 — I didn't fully understand statistics, but I'd typed up enough research letters to know that was significant. And there was a 90-day money-back guarantee. So worst case, I'd waste a bit of time and get my £70 back. I ordered one that night. It arrived three days later. That evening, I sat in my usual armchair — the one by the radiator in the front room — put my feet on the mat, and pressed start. For fifteen minutes, I felt gentle pulses making my calf muscles twitch. It wasn't painful. Wasn't even uncomfortable, really. I could feel my muscles contracting and releasing, contracting and releasing. Like a very mild version of walking, but without having to go anywhere or put any strain on my poor knees. I checked my blood sugar before and after. Force of habit from years of watching patients track their numbers. Before: 9.2 mmol/L After: 7.8 mmol/L I stared at the meter. A 1.4 point drop. From sitting in my chair for fifteen minutes watching Vera. I assumed it was a fluke. The meter playing up. My own wishful thinking. The next evening, I did it again. Before: 8.9 mmol/L After: 7.5 mmol/L Another 1.4 point drop. I started keeping a diary. Old habits from years of filing patient records. I needed proof. Something I could point to when my brain tried to tell me it wasn't working. Day 1: Fasting glucose 9.0 Day 3: Fasting glucose 8.6 Day 5: Fasting glucose 8.3 Day 7: Fasting glucose 7.9 By the end of week one, my fasting glucose was lower than it had been in months. And I hadn't changed anything else. Same food. Same medications. Same retirement routine of sitting about more than I should. Day 11 was the moment I'll never forget. I woke up, reached for my glucose monitor on the bedside table like I always do, pricked my finger, and waited for the number. 7.3. I said "bloody hell" out loud. My husband came rushing in thinking something was wrong. I checked it again. Then I checked my other hand just to be sure. 7.3. 7.4. 7.3. Under 7.5. For the first time in years. I sat on the edge of the bed and felt something I hadn't felt in so long I'd forgotten what it was. Hope. Not the desperate hope you feel when you start a new diet — the kind that fades by week three. The quiet hope that comes when you realise something is actually, genuinely working. I cried a bit. Not sad tears. Relief tears. My husband just held my hand and didn't say anything, because after thirty-two years of marriage he knows when to keep quiet. By week three, something else started happening. My trousers felt looser. I hadn't changed what I was eating. Still having my normal meals, my normal portions. Still having a biscuit with my afternoon cuppa because life's too short. But the scale was moving in the right direction for the first time in ages. Three pounds. Then five. Then half a stone. I didn't understand it at first. Then I remembered what I'd read about insulin. Lower blood sugar means less insulin being pumped out. Less insulin means your body stops getting the constant signal to store fat. Your metabolism can finally function like it's supposed to. I wasn't fighting my body anymore. It was finally cooperating. Week six, I noticed my energy changing. The afternoon slump that had become part of my daily routine — that 2pm crash where I'd need to close my eyes in the armchair — it wasn't happening anymore. Or when it did happen, it was milder. Shorter. I wasn't losing half the afternoon to exhaustion. My husband noticed before I did. "You're different lately, pet," he said one evening. "Different how?" "You suggested we go see our Kelly at the weekend. You haven't suggested anything like that in months. You always wait for me to suggest and then find reasons why not." He was right. I hadn't even noticed. But somewhere in the previous few weeks, I'd started saying yes again. We went to see our daughter in Middlesbrough. Walked round the shops with her and the grandkids. Stayed out for four hours. Sat down twice. That's it. Three months ago, I couldn't have managed the drive, never mind the walking. Three months in, I had my diabetes review at the surgery. The practice nurse — Janet, the one I'd worked with for fifteen years — pulled up my results on the screen. Did that thing where she leans forward and squints like she's misread something. Then she turned to me. "Your HbA1c is 50. It was 58 last time." For anyone who doesn't speak diabetes: that's a big drop. That's the kind of improvement that usually only happens when someone starts a new medication or loses three stone. "What have you changed?" she asked. I told her about the NMES device. About the muscle contractions. About the research I'd found on that Diabetes UK forum thread at midnight. She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "Muscle contraction does improve glucose uptake. That's established. I just never thought about patients doing it at home." Then she said something that made me smile: "Can you send me the details? I've got a dozen patients who could benefit from this. People like you — doing everything right, numbers not budging. People I've run out of advice for." A practice nurse asking ME for advice. After twenty-three years of it being the other way around. Then she said the words I never thought I'd hear: "If your next HbA1c is similar, we should talk about reducing your Sitagliptin." Reducing. Not adding. Not adjusting upward. Reducing. After ten years of only ever adding more pills, more interventions, more things to remember and swallow and worry about — we were finally talking about taking something away. I held it together in Janet's office. Just about. I cried in the car park afterwards. Properly cried. Ten years of feeling like a failure — of becoming the kind of patient I used to feel quietly sorry for — finally lifting. The company that makes this device doesn't do big advertising. I found them through that forum thread, and most of their customers seem to find them the same way — word of mouth, people sharing what worked. They offer a 90-day guarantee. If it doesn't work for you, send it back. I respect that. Twenty-three years in a GP surgery taught me to be sceptical of anything that sounds too good to be true. A guarantee matters. It means they're confident enough in their product to take the risk themselves. Here's where I am now, six months in: Fasting glucose: Between 6.7 and 7.2 most mornings. Down from 9+ consistently. HbA1c: 50 and expecting it lower at my next review. Down from 58. Weight: Down a stone and two pounds. Without a new diet. Without forcing myself to exercise. Just my metabolism finally working the way it should. Energy: Better than it's been since before I retired. I'm doing things I'd stopped doing. Walking further. Staying out later. Saying yes instead of making excuses. Afternoon crashes: Mostly gone. Neuropathy tingles: Still there, but less intense. The improved circulation seems to be helping. Medication: Janet's already talking about reducing my Sitagliptin at my next appointment. My husband says I'm like the woman he married. "You've got your spark back, pet," he said last week. I didn't realise I'd lost it. You don't notice the slow dimming when it happens gradually over years. You just adjust to having less light, less energy, less life. Until suddenly there's more, and you realise how dark it had gotten. I've shared my experience in a few diabetes groups online. The response has been overwhelming. One man had been Type 2 for twenty-two years. His HbA1c hadn't been below 60 in a decade. His GP had been pushing him toward insulin injections, which he was terrified of. Two months with this device. His last HbA1c was 52. Insulin conversation postponed indefinitely. "I thought I was past the point of improvement," he wrote. "I thought my body was just broken beyond repair. It's not. It just needed help." A woman messaged me who'd gained three stone since her diagnosis despite eating less than ever. Her GP kept implying she must be "eating more than she realised." She wasn't. She was tracking every bite on MyFitnessPal. But her metabolism wasn't cooperating, and nobody would believe her. I believed her. After ten years of the same thing happening to me, I understood completely. Ten weeks using this device. Down nearly a stone. Fasting glucose from 10.4 to 8.1. "For the first time in years, I don't feel like I'm going mad," she wrote. "The scales are finally agreeing with what I'm actually eating." That's exactly how it feels. After years of your body gaslighting you — and sometimes doctors not believing you — it finally starts telling the truth. I'm not saying this is a miracle cure. It's not. Twenty-three years in a GP surgery taught me to be suspicious of miracles. Diabetes is complex, and everyone's body responds differently. But if you've tried the diets and they haven't worked. If you've tried exercising and it's too hard on your body. If you've watched your numbers climb despite doing everything "right." If you've felt like a failure for years because nothing you do seems to matter. There's a reason for that. It's not you. It's chemistry. Your muscles can absorb glucose without insulin. That's not a sales pitch. That's physiology. But when you can't exercise — and let's be honest, most of us can't, not the way we'd need to — your muscles don't get the stimulation they need. NMES gives them that stimulation. Fifteen minutes, twice a day. Sitting in your armchair. Muscles contracting, glucose being absorbed, blood sugar dropping, insulin levels normalising, metabolism starting to work again. It costs £70. I've spent more than that on Slimming World over the years. More than that on that private nutritionist who told me nothing new. More than that on "diabetic-friendly" foods from Holland & Barrett that made no difference whatsoever. There's a 90-day guarantee. That's three months to see if it works for you. If it doesn't, you get your money back. No quibbles, no fuss. You've probably spent years — decades, maybe — feeling like your body has given up on you. Like nothing you do makes any difference. Like you're somehow failing at a disease that's designed to be impossible to manage. What if your body hasn't given up? What if it just needs help that medication and diet can't provide on their own? Every morning now, I use the device for fifteen minutes while I have my cuppa and watch BBC Breakfast. Every evening, another fifteen minutes while I watch whatever's on ITV. My muscles contract. My glucose drops. My metabolism works. 730 sessions a year of reminding my body how to process sugar properly. Your glucose monitor has been delivering bad news for too long. Your HbA1c has been a source of dread for too long. Your relationship with your own body has been adversarial for too long. There's another way. Your blood sugar deserves better than another diet that won't work. Your energy definitely does. Your grandchildren definitely do. Your life definitely does.

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Read this if you feel like you’re failing☝️

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