• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

Please help me understand

Karen Dwyer said:
I'm curious as to what you expected it to be, after eating mashed potato.
Click to expand...

Just hopeful I guess, I have been eating potatoes without effect but in the form of two or three boiled chopped into my lunch time salad. This was a fair bit of mash though.
 
Karen Dwyer said:
There's no need for me to write a book - it's already been written! My inspiration for all my years as a Type 2 diabetic keeping non-diabetic blood sugars has been Dr. Richard K. Bernstein and his book "Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution." Dr. Bernstein has been a type 1 diabetic since the age of 12. He is now 84 and is still practicing medicine as an endocrinologist. He is a truly amazing man and his book tells us all we need to know about managing diabetes successfully with a low-carbohydrate diet. When I first read it, I thought "I can't possibly do that" but I decided to give it a try and here I am 17 years later with my A1Cs better than those of many non-diabetics. It was only difficult for the first ten days or so and then I lost my cravings for carbs. Most people think eating low-carb means depriving oneself of delicious foods, but it truly isn't. There are many wonderful sources of incredibly good low-carb recipes online, and I find I actually prefer some of them to the higher carb dishes recipes that I used to use - for example, yesterday I made a cheesecake using almond flour for the base instead of the usual graham cracker crust - it's much tastier! Please do yourself a favour and read Dr. Bernstein's book - it's available at many libraries and can be purchased through Amazon.

If you think I'm obsessed, you're probably right, but I am absolutely convinced that this book has given me the means to live a longer life with none of the usual long-term complications of being diabetic - Type 1 or Type 2.
Click to expand...

Karen, I read a few reviews and it seemed that most people were in the US or if in the UK found it a little more difficult to adapt the figures to UK levels. Also can it show us anymore than this site which advocates the low carb diet.
 
kazd63 said:
Just hopeful I guess, I have been eating potatoes without effect but in the form of two or three boiled chopped into my lunch time salad. This was a fair bit of mash though.
Click to expand...
You've been lucky then. If I have even one forkful of potato of any kind, my blood sugar soars. Iwould love to have a bit of potato salad, but it isn't to be.
 
kazd63 said:
Karen, I read a few reviews and it seemed that most people were in the US or if in the UK found it a little more difficult to adapt the figures to UK levels. Also can it show us anymore than this site which advocates the low carb diet.
Click to expand...
The standard international measure of blood glucose levels is millimoles per liter (mmol/l) but for some reason the US is different; it uses mg/dl (and I can't remember what that stands for). But it's very simple to convert - just multiply or divide by 18. So if an American says their BG reading was 126, for example, divide that by 18 and you know that in "our" numbers he means 7. Multiply by 18 if you want to convert from American to international numbers. I can just about do it in my sleep now, particularly since my late American husband still used his American glucometer after he moved to Canada to marry me! (We met on Dr. Bernstein's website!)

I don't think I understand the second part of your question. A large part of Dr. Bernstein's book is available free on the Internet. I don't remember how to find it, but I'll find the link for you when I have time - probably tomorrow - and let you know. Is that the kind of thing you're looking for?
 
kazd63 said:
Karen, I read a few reviews and it seemed that most people were in the US or if in the UK found it a little more difficult to adapt the figures to UK levels. Also can it show us anymore than this site which advocates the low carb diet.
Click to expand...

Dr. Bernstein has quite a few videos on YouTube.
 
Guzzler said:
Dr. Bernstein has quite a few videos on YouTube.
Click to expand...
Yes, he does. They are listed on YouTube under "Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes University." He deals with one aspect of diabetes in each video. They're well worth watching in my opinion.
 
Karen Dwyer said:
The standard international measure of blood glucose levels is millimoles per liter (mmol/l) but for some reason the US is different; it uses mg/dl (and I can't remember what that stands for). But it's very simple to convert - just multiply or divide by 18. So if an American says their BG reading was 126, for example, divide that by 18 and you know that in "our" numbers he means 7. Multiply by 18 if you want to convert from American to international numbers. I can just about do it in my sleep now, particularly since my late American husband still used his American glucometer after he moved to Canada to marry me! (We met on Dr. Bernstein's website!)

I don't think I understand the second part of your question. A large part of Dr. Bernstein's book is available free on the Internet. I don't remember how to find it, but I'll find the link for you when I have time - probably tomorrow - and let you know. Is that the kind of thing you're looking for?
Click to expand...
 
Check out this site: http://www.diabetes-book.com/ . There's an interesting article about Dr. Bernstein's background, but also scroll to the bottom of the page and you'll find links to several chapters of Dr. B's book that I was telling you about.
 
Karen Dwyer said:
The standard international measure of blood glucose levels is millimoles per liter (mmol/l) but for some reason the US is different; it uses mg/dl (and I can't remember what that stands for). But it's very simple to convert - just multiply or divide by 18. So if an American says their BG reading was 126, for example, divide that by 18 and you know that in "our" numbers he means 7. Multiply by 18 if you want to convert from American to international numbers. I can just about do it in my sleep now, particularly since my late American husband still used his American glucometer after he moved to Canada to marry me! (We met on Dr. Bernstein's website!)

I don't think I understand the second part of your question. A large part of Dr. Bernstein's book is available free on the Internet. I don't remember how to find it, but I'll find the link for you when I have time - probably tomorrow - and let you know. Is that the kind of thing you're looking for?
Click to expand...

It's rather interesting that the US uses mg/dl since they are metric units while almost everything else in the US is in imperial units like lbs, miles, Farenheit, oz, feet etc. As you are wondering mg is milligrams and dl is deciliters. The UK and most others use molar mass rather than weight. Glucose has a molar mass of 180g being made up from its atomic components. Glucose = C6H12O6 so we just add the individual molar masses together. Carbon = 12g per mol, Hydrogen = 1g per mol and Oxygen = 16g per mol so 6 x 12 + 12 x 1 + 6 x 16 = 180. The US is in deciliters rather than litres so we divide by 10 and get the magical number of 18. 1 mol is Avagadro's number. Chemists prefer to work with moles as it is a bit more intuitive about the actual particle numbers and accounts for isotopes of the same elements.

History can be so fascinating.
 
Crocodile said:
It's rather interesting that the US uses mg/dl since they are metric units while almost everything else in the US is in imperial units like lbs, miles, Farenheit, oz, feet etc. As you are wondering mg is milligrams and dl is deciliters. The UK and most others use molar mass rather than weight. Glucose has a molar mass of 180g being made up from its atomic components. Glucose = C6H12O6 so we just add the individual molar masses together. Carbon = 12g per mol, Hydrogen = 1g per mol and Oxygen = 16g per mol so 6 x 12 + 12 x 1 + 6 x 16 = 180. The US is in deciliters rather than litres so we divide by 10 and get the magical number of 18. 1 mol is Avagadro's number. Chemists prefer to work with moles as it is a bit more intuitive about the actual particle numbers and accounts for isotopes of the same elements.

History can be so fascinating.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the explanation, Crocodile, and for reminding me of what mg/dl stands for! I had no idea of how the conversion factor of 18 came to be - I just knew it worked!
 
@Karen Dwyer
Guess I have my uses. I still don't know why the US still uses imperial measurements. It makes engineering calculations difficult. We quote our dam sizes in Gigalitres, the US in Acres feet. how unwieldy is that.
 
Crocodile said:
@Karen Dwyer
Guess I have my uses. I still don't know why the US still uses imperial measurements. It makes engineering calculations difficult. We quote our dam sizes in Gigalitres, the US in Acres feet. how unwieldy is that.
Click to expand...
You've brought up something that I am very resentful of about the US. Years ago, they announced that they were planning to switch to the metric system. The Canadian government then announced that Canada had no choice but to change to the metric system too as the U.S. is our major trading partner. So Canada went ahead and made the change and then the U.S. changed its mind and never did make the change. I was a young woman who had been brought up with the imperial system, and did not have a very scientific kind of a mind, and I had a terrible time learning to deal with some aspects of the metric system - to this day, if I shop for two pounds of meat, I don't have any idea of the weight in kg. and have to ask the butcher! Temperatures, sizes, and distances I've begrudgingly learned to deal with! I know you're absolutely right in saying that the metric sense makes a lot more sense, but allow me my old lady biases. I'm coming around, slowly but surely!
 
That's why I find it odd that they are using metric units for blood glucose. I would have expected ounces per pint or something like that. They pick metric but still use different units. I'm old enough to remember lbs and stones, yards and miles etc. It was hard at first but now it's perfunctory. In engineering not everything can be converted by a simple constant multiplier. Some things involve logs and squares so you have to take square roots before conversion. A real pain. Keep your biases, I think you may have earned them.
 
I just had my 75th birthday so I told my daughters that I've earned the right to be stubborn - glad you agree!
 
@Karen Dwyer I hope you don’t mind me asking, but I am curious as to if you have had any diabetic related complications in the last 17 years? Many thanks :)
 
kazd63 said:
Girl at work is diabetic, diagnosed a year or so ago, she still eats loads of carbs and hasn't lost any weight (despite watching her sugars, just her sugars!) has increased walking and swims once a week. She is on Metformin and some other medication and her three/six monthly blood test comes back with her sugars ok allegedly.

So my question is, if she is taking medication that 'artificially' brings her blood sugars down, then how if I have to take them, do I monitor my sugars because surely the blood glucose monitor will show me as having lower blood sugar. Or is it a case that the metformin and other drugs bring your blood sugar down but you can still monitor to see which causes a rise and therefore cut those foods out of the diet.

Hope that makes sense.
Click to expand...


Karen, what is that saying, the grass is always greener in your neighbors yard? You have so many variable going on with your questions, your friend may doing great according to her frame of reference, her body may handle glucose more efficiently, and maybe her exercise regime is burning off her glucose. I know this elderly couple in which the husband is diabetic with severe foot nephropathy. The couple was complaining one day about the pain and that he had to give up driving his auto due to the loss of feeling in his feet. The elderly wife went on to say, I cook him all of the meals at home, I watch what he eats. I asked her what a typical meal for them and she started talking about this homemade pasta dish and the salad he ate with the meal. You will find that some people will take the journey serious and dig in as you do to find the best control measures. Some will just go with the flow and expect the medicine to cure them. Your friend's point of reference may be a little off and you will not know until you start asking her questions.
 
QUOTE="Petaluk, post: 1783982, member: 472096"]@Karen Dwyer I hope you don’t mind me asking, but I am curious as to if you have had any diabetic related complications in the last 17 years? Many thanks :)[/QUOTE]

None that I'm aware of Petaluk. I do have some serious heart problems - I have two mechanical valves and a pacemaker in my heart - but they're nothing to do with my diabetes, but were caused by having had undiagnosed and therefore untreated rheumatic fever as a teenager.

When I had my first appointment with my eye specialist, just after I had started eating low-carb, he said I had early signs of diabetic retinopathy, but the next year when I returned he couldn't see any signs of it. He was amazed and said he could hardly believe it. He has been a great supporter of my low-carb diet ever since.
 
Last edited:
kazd63 said:
Girl at work is diabetic, diagnosed a year or so ago, she still eats loads of carbs and hasn't lost any weight (despite watching her sugars, just her sugars!) has increased walking and swims once a week. She is on Metformin and some other medication and her three/six monthly blood test comes back with her sugars ok allegedly.

So my question is, if she is taking medication that 'artificially' brings her blood sugars down, then how if I have to take them, do I monitor my sugars because surely the blood glucose monitor will show me as having lower blood sugar. Or is it a case that the metformin and other drugs bring your blood sugar down but you can still monitor to see which causes a rise and therefore cut those foods out of the diet.

Hope that makes sense.
Click to expand...

I'm certainly no expert on medical questions, but in my opinion, every diabetic should be testing blood glucose levels regularly. To me, that is the main purpose of testing before and after every meal - to see how various foods affect blood glucose levels. Even if you have to take diabetes medications (which I don't) the fewer carbs you eat, the smaller a dose of your medication you will have to take.

If you're not currently eating a low carb diet and decide to start doing so, (assuming that you're a type 2) you may well find that no medications are necessary; that's what happened to me and I haven't taken any medications for 17 years. Of course, type 1s will always need to take insulin, but will need less of it on a low-carb diet.
 
HR-Guy said:
Karen, what is that saying, the grass is always greener in your neighbors yard? You have so many variable going on with your questions, your friend may doing great according to her frame of reference, her body may handle glucose more efficiently, and maybe her exercise regime is burning off her glucose. I know this elderly couple in which the husband is diabetic with severe foot nephropathy. The couple was complaining one day about the pain and that he had to give up driving his auto due to the loss of feeling in his feet. The elderly wife went on to say, I cook him all of the meals at home, I watch what he eats. I asked her what a typical meal for them and she started talking about this homemade pasta dish and the salad he ate with the meal. You will find that some people will take the journey serious and dig in as you do to find the best control measures. Some will just go with the flow and expect the medicine to cure them. Your friend's point of reference may be a little off and you will not know until you start asking her questions.
Click to expand...

I have a feeling that you meant to address HR-Guy, and not me, as he is the one who posted the original comment about his office colleague who says she's "doing just fine" with her diabetes. In any case, I completely agree with you that most newly-diagnosed diabetics know absolutely nothing about the condition and are given very little guidance by their doctors and other medical personnel. It upsets me to think of the poor couple you mentioned where the wife is trying very hard to help her husband by feeding him a pasta dish. Obviously nobody told her that pasta is one of the worst foods a diabetic person can eat! When I was first diagnosed, I thought I simply had to cut out sugar from my diet; I had no idea that ALL carbohydrates turn to glucose once they hit your digestive system. As I mentioned in another thread, one medium-sized baked potato is the equivalent of eating 3 heaped tablespoons of table sugar, but very few diabetics are given that kind of information. I think the medical profession (and the various national Diabetes Associations have a lot to answer for. I read many years ago that the main source of funding for the Canadian Diabetes Association is 17 pharmaceutical companies so they are obviously not going to fund studies that might prove that diabetics don't need many of the drugs they manufacture!
 
Back
Top