Three questions from a newbie T2 that have been baffling me

[LucySW]

Hi there,

Should I treat the milk in my coffee and tea as a problem for my BS, or should I just test it a few times?

Do I time the one-hour, two-hour tests from the time I start my meal, or when?

Snacking (I hardly ever do it but tonight when cooking dinner my nice pack of walnuts was screaming at me): should I treat it like a meal and test? And is it okay not to let my poor system go thro the entire eat-spike-come down again cycle sometimes?

T2D, mmol/L 14-16, only diagnosed three days ago, trying to test a lot but frustrated by lack of access to strips, on Metformin working up to 2g/day.

Help very, *very* much appreciated
Lucy

 

[Mushroom]

Hi Lucy,
Milk has lactose which is a type of sugar, however I am LCHF so I have double cream. I only test two hours after food - and try and keep below 7.8mmo/l recommended by the forum rather than the NHS 8.7mmo/l.
Try not to snack. Better not when you start testing because you need a clear two hours after meal. If you have to nuts are good or a bit of cheese is filling. My coffee with cream also helps.
It does get easier. Great help on this forum.

 

[Brunneria]

Hi,

1. Everyone has different reactions to milk (and the caffeine in coffee), so probably best to test a few times. Some people find Lactofree milk better. Some don't. I like cream in coffee (no BG spike), but won't do that in tea because it's foul.
2. Time testing from the start of the meal. But... If you are sitting down to a 7 course, 5 hour medieval banquet, you might want to adjust that a bit...
3. Walnuts wouldn't spike me... You could check and see. But another type of higher carb snack might be a different story.
4. If you can avoid the spike, you're giving your body and pancreas a rest. The more rest you give it, the better it functions, and the less insulin resistance you have. Rest good. Spikes (where avoidable) bad.

Basically, when in doubt, test. You will soon develop a rough idea of how your body reacts to different foods, and once you have that, you'll probably ease off on the testing, and only do it with new foods, or special, unfamiliar meals.

Hope that helps.

 

[LucySW]

Thank you Brunneria and Mushroom..I'll test the coffee anyway, and snack only in extremis. Help really appreciated !!

Ran out of test strips for two weeks after 3 days - have come up against state reluctance to let me have strips (I'm in Denmark, system v similar to UK). I've ordered a new meter and strips from Amazon so I can be independent and will just pay, but honestly! Was told by this nurse that it was bad for me to test because it would worry me. Good God - what nonsense. I guess this is a very familiar story on the forum ...

Lucy

 

[Andy12345]

Hi, great that your ignoring the advice not to test, although you've received good advice above, i feel slightly different regarding snacking, i snack a lot, i have to because i get hungry otherwise and don't like being hungry lol, so nuts are a snack of choice for me, i don't seem to have a problem with them at all from a bg point of view so just eat them if and when i want, this also stops me being ravenous when i do finally eat and i won't tend to gorge myself like a tasmanian devil at the dinner table, testing is a great idea at first but as said you won't have to for long as you soon learn what it does, the milk in tea... i mostly drink green tea nowadays, this started because i was worried about the milk in normal tea, however when i do drink normal tea now i have the smallest splash of milk in it, this i prefer anyway and its less likely to do any bg damage, i love double cream and eat it a lot but don't like the white bits it leaves ontop of drinks, it makes me think I'm drinking stale milk so i don't go there, perhaps i should try it in a dark room one day to cure this irrational thought hehe, as soon as we start to eat we start to digest our food in the mouth, before we have even swallowed it so you should count the 2 hours from the first bite, but testing isn't an exact science so i doubt 5 or 10 minutes either way would be conclusive, you can play games with it, do 15 minute tests from when you eat and see what happens, its not cheap but i found testing games with food really useful to see exactly what happens at what point in time, it takes the guesswork out of eating, and you don't need to do this a lot, just to see what happens in the beginning, but its easy for me to spend your money for you lol

how good does @Brunneria 's 7 course 5 hour banquet sound? sigh

 

[sanguine]

It's a good idea as Mushroom says to avoid snacks at first until you get a clearer idea of your BG response to meals. But LCHF should eventually get you to a point where you stop eating when you feel 'full' (properly full this time, not transitory carbohydrate full) and eat when you feel hungry - which may be less often than you think. Nuts are my snack of choice (brazils or hazelnuts, not cashews though) but I also find that drinking lots of water helps, and that's a necessary part of LCHF anyway.

 

[cold ethyl]

I try joy to snack mainly because snacks were my downfall before and even if it's lo carb friendly stuff like nuts and cheese, they have calories ( lots!) - if I'm out walking I have a small tub of brazils and hazelnuts in my bag to have one or two if I feel a bit wafty, though usually as Sanguine days, a drink of water is what we really need. Tbh since removing carbs and taking Metformin, I've not been as hungry and often I leave stuff on my plate.. Unheard of for me in past. My grandad who is also a T2 ( but got another 25 years of grace before diagnosis than me!) was told to eat stuff as close together as possible by his DN presumably to give the liver and pancreas a rest at times. So if you fancy berries and cream or yogurt have them as a dessert and not a snack.
I test as close to 2hrs post-meal as I can, but don't get upset if it has to be shorter or longer. You are just trying to get a sense of what different foods do to you. Currently I test between 5-7 times a day but I can't sustain that as my fingers will just refuse to play.

 

[Lamont D]

7 course, 5 hour meal. If I only could.

Starter. BBQ ribs
2nd Fish
3rd. Half tandoori chicken
4th. Gammon & pineapple
5th. Roasted ham
6th. Omelette
7th. Brunnerias jelly with Black tea

Sounds good to me!,


Just going the fridge, I might be a while!
Wait, that's how I got here in the first place!

 

[LucySW]

Thank you all you guys - this is wonderful help, and it also is amazing to find a treasure trove of others out there and we all in the same boat together. It makes me feel a lot less lonely and isolated. It's fantastic. Thank you to you all