JanieMc said:In 1975, people would ask me "should you be eating that? Technological advances now mean that we have fabulously fast insulin and blood testers that give results in seconds. There are very few food stuffs that as diabetics we should avoid because they work faster than insulin. These include orange juice, lucozade and jelly sweets (our hypo fix foods).
My first twenty years of this disease I was unstable due to old fashioned insulin and poor and slow sugar testing methods. As a result, I too have had the maximum lazier treatment in both eyes. However, for the past more recent twenty years, with blood sugar monitors and fast insulin and a pump, I've got myself stable. My eye health is very good- not deteriorating at all.
I despair when I see so many people going on about what foods we can and cannot eat. The food we put in our bodies does not affect our health, its the insulin we take for that food. Read the DAFNE principles about insulin control. Even puddings are fine, never mind that fearful Jaffa cake. Take the right insulin, test regularly, learn about the insulin acting time and then how to adjust. It's not rocket science. Don't get me wrong, like anyone, to maximise our chances we need like anyone diabetic or not, to eat healthily and be a healthy weight. We should exercise to keep our legs and arteries working and help our cholesterol but harping on about reaching (or not) for the chocolate biscuits is not going to help anyone. Be DAFNE( dose adjustment for normal eating) educated. Demand this from your GP or consultant. It's your right and it WILL lengthen your tome on the planet.
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and the problem with DAFNE is the final two letters of the acronym... they supposedly stand for "Normal Eating"... which if you have a non or badly functioning pancreas is madness... to keep telling people they can eat what normal people eat and just inject insulin (or for T2's not on insulin to pop some pills) to cope with the excess glucose floating around in your bloodstream is lunacy...
I'm on diet plus exercise only... there's no way I can carry on eating normally ever again... certainly if I don't want to suffer the complications that others have posted about in this thread already... the concept of retinopathy terrifies me. I most certainly do not want to lose my eyesight at all, or my feet... or end up on dialysis...
oh and as for your comment that the food you eat not affecting your health and it's the insulin... balderdash..., complete utter rubbish... carbs in your diet cause the glucose levels to rise... elevated glucose levels cause the damage and injury to your health. If you cut back on the carbs, you wouldn't need so much insulin... and you'd be far less at risk of over or under dosing with the insulin you are using.
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