Which Bread?

Yerusha

Member
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13
Type of diabetes
Type 2
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Tablets (oral)
Most discussions i have read has advised that it is OK to eat Brown Bread in moderation. I also attended the Desmond Program where we were all given Brown Bread to eat, the nurse, as well as my Doctor has also encourage eating no more than two slices of Brown Bread per serving. I am newly diagnosed and still working my way through a maze of info from everyone!!!! I have ditched Brown Bread for Dark Seeded Organic Bread and now waiting for my blood test in a few days to see if i am OK. If you have switched bread or have any advice for my choice i would love to hear from you.
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carol43

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1,191
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Does it say how many carbs are in this loaf. I haven't had any bread since I was diagnosed because it spikes too much. I bet that bread was expensive. Just go without and look for a low carb replacement, there are plenty of recipes.
 

Yerusha

Member
Messages
13
Type of diabetes
Type 2
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Tablets (oral)
Carol the bread is £1.00 and the Carbs are 34.2g of which 2.3g is sugar. My Doctor advised me to have oats which i eat daily, i buy Quaker Oats so i can have a measured packet but they contain more carbs and no sugar so i would say the bread is less harm right now. Still trying to work out what else to avoid as i have given up Cheese, eggs, rice, jams, honey, spreads, and pasta... any advise is welcome... ;)
 

tim2000s

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To be fair, most type 2s find that bread has quite a dramatic impact on their blood glucose levels. You really should test before and after eating if you want to eat bread in any form as it normally has a very big impact on glucose levels.
 
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Yerusha

Member
Messages
13
Type of diabetes
Type 2
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Tablets (oral)
To be fair, most type 2s find that bread has quite a dramatic impact on their blood glucose levels. You really should test before and after eating if you want to eat bread in any form as it normally has a very big impact on glucose levels.

Thanks for your advise i will certainly discuss this with my Doctor
 

copey399

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Messages
366
Type of diabetes
Type 2
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Diet only
I'm not experienced enough to give advice really but I will say that if you read the advice on here regarding the DESMOND course and what the doctors tell you then you're better off ignoring it if you want to either get off meds or stay off meds.

I came on here when I was first diagnosed and decided to go down the LC/HF route (Low carb/High Fat) which is totally against what the Diabetic Nurses and the GPs tell you but if you read the experiences of people that are doing it - it works. This involves doing an Atkins type diet. I'm sure @daisy1 will be along to give you all the info you need to read and absorb which will help you to make informed decisions about what applies to you and what you want to achieve. Good luck xxxx
 

daisy1

Legend
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@Yerusha

Hello Yerusha and welcome to the forum :) Here is the information we give to new members and I hope you will find it useful. Carry on asking questions and other members will be able to help.


BASIC INFORMATION FOR NEW MEMBERS

Diabetes is the general term to describe people who have blood that is sweeter than normal. A number of different types of diabetes exist.

A diagnosis of diabetes tends to be a big shock for most of us. It’s far from the end of the world though and on this forum you’ll find over 150,000 people who are demonstrating this.

On the forum we have found that with the number of new people being diagnosed with diabetes each day, sometimes the NHS is not being able to give all the advice it would perhaps like to deliver - particularly with regards to people with type 2 diabetes.

The role of carbohydrate

Carbohydrates are a factor in diabetes because they ultimately break down into sugar (glucose) within our blood. We then need enough insulin to either convert the blood sugar into energy for our body, or to store the blood sugar as body fat.

If the amount of carbohydrate we take in is more than our body’s own (or injected) insulin can cope with, then our blood sugar will rise.

The bad news

Research indicates that raised blood sugar levels over a period of years can lead to organ damage, commonly referred to as diabetic complications.

The good news

People on the forum here have shown that there is plenty of opportunity to keep blood sugar levels from going too high. It’s a daily task but it’s within our reach and it’s well worth the effort.

Controlling your carbs

The info below is primarily aimed at people with type 2 diabetes, however, it may also be of benefit for other types of diabetes as well.
There are two approaches to controlling your carbs:

  • Reduce your carbohydrate intake
  • Choose ‘better’ carbohydrates

Reduce your carbohydrates

A large number of people on this forum have chosen to reduce the amount of carbohydrates they eat as they have found this to be an effective way of improving (lowering) their blood sugar levels.

The carbohydrates which tend to have the most pronounced effect on blood sugar levels tend to be starchy carbohydrates such as rice, pasta, bread, potatoes and similar root vegetables, flour based products (pastry, cakes, biscuits, battered food etc) and certain fruits.

Choosing better carbohydrates

Another option is to replace ‘white carbohydrates’ (such as white bread, white rice, white flour etc) with whole grain varieties. The idea behind having whole grain varieties is that the carbohydrates get broken down slower than the white varieties –and these are said to have a lower glycaemic index.
http://www.diabetes.co.uk/food/diabetes-and-whole-grains.html

The low glycaemic index diet is often favoured by healthcare professionals but some people with diabetes find that low GI does not help their blood sugar enough and may wish to cut out these foods altogether.

Read more on carbohydrates and diabetes

Eating what works for you

Different people respond differently to different types of food. What works for one person may not work so well for another. The best way to see which foods are working for you is to test your blood sugar with a glucose meter.

To be able to see what effect a particular type of food or meal has on your blood sugar is to do a test before the meal and then test after the meal. A test 2 hours after the meal gives a good idea of how your body has reacted to the meal.

The blood sugar ranges recommended by NICE are as follows:

Blood glucose ranges for type 2 diabetes
  • Before meals: 4 to 7 mmol/l
  • 2 hours after meals: under 8.5 mmol/l
Blood glucose ranges for type 1 diabetes (adults)
  • Before meals: 4 to 7 mmol/l
  • 2 hours after meals: under 9 mmol/l
Blood glucose ranges for type 1 diabetes (children)
  • Before meals: 4 to 8 mmol/l
  • 2 hours after meals: under 10 mmol/l
However, those that are able to, may wish to keep blood sugar levels below the NICE after meal targets.

Access to blood glucose test strips

The NICE guidelines suggest that people newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes should be offered:

  • structured education to every person and/or their carer at and around the time of diagnosis, with annual reinforcement and review
  • self-monitoring of plasma glucose to a person newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes only as an integral part of his or her self-management education

Therefore both structured education and self-monitoring of blood glucose should be offered to people with type 2 diabetes. Read more on getting access to bloodglucose testing supplies.

You may also be interested to read questions to ask at a diabetic clinic

Note: This post has been edited from Sue/Ken's post to include up to date information.
 
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poohtiggy

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Diet only
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Getting old and diabetese
34.2g ? Is that per slice? If so that is very high carb bread and bread of any kind, pasta, potatoes & rice are all high carb. The NHS advice is to eat carbs with every meal, if you are testing you will find it's the carbs that give you high readings, why did you stop eating eggs & cheese, we consider these to be safe foods and butter is better than spread & full fat dairy products are better than low fat as low fat products contain sugars. All veggies especially green leafy ones are good as is chicken, ham, bacon, pate, salads, fish & sausages are good providing they are 97% meat content. Your doctor will tell you the opposite but there is evidence on this forum that increasing fat and reducing carbs reduces your BG and your weight. If you are going to do LCHF or LCFF there is loads of advice hear which will do you more good than the NHS advice. As for bread I have tried them all and the one that affects me least is Nimble wholemeal at 7grms per slice
 

Lee Riley

Member
Messages
19
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Diet only
Dislikes
Fatties who insist on using excuses.
Don't over analyse everything. Any bread other than white is fine. Anything with complex carbs is easy to control. Anything that effects glucose in a gradual way is better than anything that makes it rise quickly. This is the same for Type 1s and Type 2s. There is an exception and that is fruit.

Stop giving up every food under the Sun. Exercise, eat set meals, don't snack and reduce you calorie intake and your sensitivity to Insulin will increase over time.

May I ask of your weight? If you are on the larger side, fat is an endocrine system that is pretty much like a gland, pumping away hormones that do drastically effect insulin and the sensitivity the body has to it.

It is possible to cure Type 2 Diabetes in some individuals (if it is related to obesity) by severely cutting calories to about 300-400 a day.
 
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Celeriac

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1,065
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Type 2
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Tablets (oral)
You don't need to give up eggs or cheese, they're really nutritious.

Bread depends on your tolerance for it. If it pushes up your BG you
need to ditch it and even if you can tolerate it now, that may not be the case later.

However, bread, pasta, rice and cereals may contain energy in carbs and also fibre, but they aren't nutritious unless unrefined. That's why so many of the carbs we eat make us sick. They contain too much sugar, turn into glucose in the body and have lots of empty calories.

Breakfast cereals and bread are fortified with vitamins and minerals, synthetically. Without that they'd be as nutritious as cardboard.

Extreme low calorie diets can reset insulin sensitivity for some people over a limited timeframe - have a search on this website or Google ' Newcastle Diet'. But long term, low calorie diets are not sustainable and you'll find plenty of evidence on here and on Google, that low carbohydrate diets work for many people.

Another way of reducing weight, is to do Intermittent Fasting and Dr Jason Fung advocates this. You can find his lectures on YouTube.

If you are attempting to fast on Glucophage SR you may find this works less well than you hoped. You need to scroll through this but fasting reduces Glucophage SR's effectiveness by 30%.
www.medicines.org.uk/emc/medicine/20952
 
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uart

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424
Type of diabetes
Type 1.5
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Insulin
You don't need to give up eggs or cheese, they're really nutritious.
^ Yes this x1000.

Yerusha, you're getting bad dietary advice (for a T2D) if it is emphasizing carby foods like brown bread and oats while excluding healthy foods like cheese and eggs.

The best advice I could give you is to minimize concentrated sources of carbs, even the ostensibly healthy ones like oats and brown bread, and instead eat a combination of natural high nutritional density foods like meat fish eggs and dairy, as well as a good balance of low carb vegetables (which help replace much of the bulk in the diet that is normally provided by our carbohydrate staples).
 
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Redsnapper

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257
Type of diabetes
Type 2
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Tablets (oral)
Lidl do a high protein roll for 39p per roll.It is around 11.5g of carbohydrate per roll.I can get four nice slices out of one too.So less than 3g per slice.This is part of the LCHF diet I have been following for a month and a half.My B.G. levels are down significantly.Others bake their own bread using almond flour and coconut flour as lower carb alternatives.
Many here are enjoying success with low carbing against the advice of their health practitioners.Testing your blood sugars before and after meals is really the only way to find out how you tolerate different foods as we are all different.
 
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G

graj0

Guest
I have ditched Brown Bread for Dark Seeded Organic Bread and now waiting for my blood test in a few days to see if i am OK. If you have switched bread or have any advice for my choice i would love to hear from you.

Don't wait for a blood test like an HbA1c, measure your BG 1hr and 2 hrs after eating anything with carbs. It will give you a much better idea of what effect any particular brand of bread will have on your BG.
It's the BG peaks and troughs that should be avoided. Test, Test, Test.
 
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Totto

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Any bread other than white is fine.

And how did you reach that conclusion? Personally I find bread of any kind, even home-made sourdough made from home milled spelt flour soon takes me into the teens and holds me there for a considerable length of time and I'm not unique.

As a T2 without any medication I can see no other way around this but to completely avoid bread, white, brown, seeded or whatever colour if I want to keep my BG normal.
 
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Lee Riley

Member
Messages
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Type of diabetes
Type 1
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Diet only
Dislikes
Fatties who insist on using excuses.
And how did you reach that conclusion? Personally I find bread of any kind, even home-made sourdough made from home milled spelt flour soon takes me into the teens and holds me there for a considerable length of time and I'm not unique.

As a T2 without any medication I can see no other way around this but to completely avoid bread, white, brown, seeded or whatever colour if I want to keep my BG normal.
Well if you can't without any medication then you have no choice but to avoid it.

Slow increases in glucose should be easier to manage but I suppose that's all dependant on how little sensitivity to Insulin you have.
 

hankjam

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4,258
Type of diabetes
Type 2 (in remission!)
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Diet only
As a T2 with no meds I would ask, why bread? It blows my numbers away in a blink, no matter what type I baked.... so now no bread... lots of other fish in the sea though :)
 
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tim2000s

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@Lee Riley, t2s have it way harder than we t1s. We can take insulin to avoid a spike. T2s over produce it and are massively resistant to it. Therefore even lower GI carbs can push blood glucose up to unhealthy levels in t2. Bread in any form is one of the worst culprits for most t2s. Please be careful with what you advise diet wise as the management of the two conditions can be dramatically different and T1s can get away with a lot more than t2s.
 
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Neemo

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116
Type of diabetes
Type 1
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Insulin
@Lee Riley, t2s have it way harder than we t1s. We can take insulin to avoid a spike. T2s over produce it and are massively resistant to it. Therefore even lower GI carbs can push blood glucose up to unhealthy levels in t2. Bread in any form is one of the worst culprits for most t2s. Please be careful with what you advise diet wise as the management of the two conditions can be dramatically different and T1s can get away with a lot more than t2s.

Type 2s have it harder in 'some respects', not all...

From my (limited) understanding, I believe Type 2's vary wildy with respect to their individual Insulin Resistance etc.

I think it's very hard to abruptly give up something u have enjoyed for a long time. Gradual transition is key..
 
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