Question re fat affect on blood sugars

[Just_Me_Rachel]

Hey there,

So I've had diabetes a long time and always knew that fat will slow down digestion, which seemed like a good thing (lower glycemic index = avoid spikes).

Now I'm wearing a sensor and for the first time can actually see what's going on! And, need advice..

Last night around 2am I couldn't sleep so drank sleep tea (no added sugar) and ate couple pieces milky choc. My blood sugar was 10, didn't correct, reasons for another thread. On my sensor this morning I see i stayed stable at 10 until 4am and rose to a 13 and didn't come down til 7am when I got up this morn. Did the choc do this? I have been stressed too but more likely it was the choc? I don't usually bolus for couple pieces choc because thought it didn't have affect.

Next. Breakfast at 9am at a 8.7 heading down. 18carbs worth of insulin, not really in advance. 1piece wholemeal bread with skippy peanut butter, coffee and a small chocolate pudding that is half whipped cream (fat). Probably around 30-35carbs total. Thing is it's taken 2hrs for my blood sugar to raise to a 13 where it lays steady. Problem is at 2hrs, the spike is meant to be over and sugars back to normal. I especially eat fat with meal to avoid spiking, however i didn't take full insulin amount out of fear of hypo.

How do you take insulin for this? Am I correct in eating fatty foods to lower glycemic index? I learnt that a while back.

If you got this far in my post, thanks for reading my lengthy post! (Lengthy be sure I can't concentrate at work!)

Thanks guys,
Rachel

 

[GrantGam]

Hi Rachel,

I personally find fat a complete nightmare when combined with carbs. I find that my BG doesn't peak but then continues to rise hours after eating - even if I administer the correct amount of insulin to cover the carbs. When I eat carbs with fat, I need more insulin...

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

For your first question, the chocolate may well have caused the rise. You'd be surprised just how much carbs are in even 3 pieces of milk chocolate (around 8-10g), so it is possible. You may also see a small rise like that just from waking up and getting out of bed.

For your second question, I don't really understand what you're asking? If you're not taking the full dose of insulin to cover the carbohydrates in your breakfast, then don't expect your BG to return to normal range... Why is it that you feared a hypo?

You seem very focused on combining fat into your diet to dampen potential BG spikes. It's worth bearing in mind that not only can this prove troublesome, but there are also "better" fat alternatives to chocolate pudding - especially for your breakfast...

 

[tim2000s]

Hi @Just_Me_Rachel - firstly with anything like this, I'd go and check your basal needs and your carb ratios, starting with the first. I appreciate that we're all different, but at 10 mmol/l in the middle of the night, I wouldn't be eating milk chocolate - each square is worth about 3.5g of carbs and will confuse what you're looking at. Given you are wearing a sensor, what normally happens overnight? That would help you understand whether what happened was down to the chocolate.

Likewise for lunch. It could be that your basal levels are too low, that your insulin carb ratio is too low, that your carb counting was out, or more realistically, you didn't give enough insulin for the food. Given what you've described, if I was to eat 30-35g of carbs with a bolus for 18 of them immediately before eating I wouldn't expect to get down to pre-meal levels at all. And given that your menu was wholemeal bread and chocolate pudding (in spite of the fat content) I would expect that to go up relatively quickly.

Just to add, the timeframe for a return to normal is 4 hours not two hours. You'd expect the peak level to be reached at two hours with normal fast acting insulin and be back to the pre-meal level at 4 hours.

You may be better off looking at pre-bolusing than at the fatty foods, as @GrantGam has mentioned, as they do make managing life quite a bit harder with prolonged higher levels that require multiple boluses.

 

[qe5rt]

Keep in mind that a glycemic index has a set value whereas glycemic load does not. To be honest glycemic index isn't all that useful in practice, glycemic load however is more realistic since it takes into account the serving size.

 

[TheBigNewt]

Keep in mind that a glycemic index has a set value whereas glycemic load does not. To be honest glycemic index isn't all the useful in practice, glycemic load however is more realistic since it takes into account the serving size.

Yeah I use GI to choose which carbs I eat rather than how much to take. We frequently have dinner meals that are sent to us in paper bags with all the ingredients measured out and nutritional info on the recipe cards. We often choose paleo meals which has lower glycemic carbs, like quinoa instead of rice for example. These meals have between 550-750 calories each and we often split them in thirds as opposed to halves. I look at the total number of calories as well as grams of carbs.