Eating out

davej1950

Member
Messages
22
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
My wife has been a type 2 for 30 years most of that time on mixtard without any problems. A couple of years ago she had a mild heart attack and then it went haywire. She was told she is a type 1 in February and is now on lantus and novorapid. Her levels seem to have settled and over the last week or so her morning glucose was between 4.7 and 9.3. Before starting on the current regime she was having 65 units of mixtard, then humulin and latterly Novomix morning and evening. Currently she has 60 units Lantus at bedtime and her novorapid insulin to carb ratio is supposedly 1:6 but seems to need close to 1:5. We have the carbs and cals book and most of the time we are OK. But whenever we go out for a meal, the next morning it's through the roof. yesterday morning level was 7.9, this morning 18.9 we calculated she needed 17 units to deal with the meal but it would appear from the levels that we underestimated by 66g of carb. I cannot believe we were that inaccurate but this has happened 3 times on recent occasions and now my wife is afraid to eat anything we haven't weighed ourselves. I accept we may be a bit conservative because she was getting hypos at 3 am which she doesn't on this regime. Anyone got any ideas what is happening here. I would add that we felt the professional input when she changed regime was less than desirable, "oh well you know all about injecting yourself etc etc". Sorry for being long winded.
 

noblehead

Guru
Retired Moderator
Messages
23,618
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Pump
Dislikes
Disrespectful people
It's hard to get the carb value of food when eating out as we don't get the opportunity to weight the food before eating, so at best it's always an educated guess. However it does get easier with practice and one way of learning is by estimating the food on the plate at home then weigh it out and see how far out you were with the carb value, that way it will make things much easier for those special occasions when you do have a nice meal out together.

Another possibility for the high readings could be the fat content of the food, high-fat meals can effect bg levels several hours after eating and result in morning highs, Gary Scheiner explains the process in the following:

http://www.mendosa.com/The-Fat-of-the-Matter-How-Dietary-Fat-Effects-Blood-Glucose.htm


If your good lady has not had the opportunity to go on the DAFNE course yet it would be a good idea to get her DSN to put her name down for the next available course, the following is an on-line course similar to DAFNE and by all accounts it's very good, register and have a look:

http://www.bdec-e-learning.com/

btw, welcome to the forum :)
 

Daibell

Master
Messages
12,642
Type of diabetes
LADA
Treatment type
Insulin
Hi. I've had a similar experience where if I eat away from home and eat more, my insulin needs don't follow a linear curve. I need to increase both Levemir and Novorapid more than I would expect based on 'eyeballing' the food as my DN would say. I find keeping the daily carb content down gives me a more stable base for injecting the right amount.
 
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