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Another question-cos you lot are good at giving answers

M

martin2410

Member
Is carbohydrate good or bad for diabetes type 2?

I go to fitness/diet group every week and last night I showed the trainer my food diary for the last 2 days. He said I had a lot of carbohydrate throughout the day. Now I thought with diabetes, you need more carbs. Im baffled by it all. Asking my nurse is close to useless, because I had my first appointment on Monday and I got the impression that she couldnt be bothered. Probably because a nurse sees hundreds of patients and 1 more wont be a problem, but the new patient knows nothing.

My blood result was 9 on Monday. She would like me to test my blood, but with no meter, thats impossible. I am waiting for a freebie off Abbotts though (about 4 weeks it will take).
 
Reducing carbs will certainly improve and lower your blood glucose levels. It's not always the obvious foods either, bread, rice etc. There are many carbs in foods which may surprise you. There is no need to cut out carbs completely but many on the forum adhere to a reduced carb diet and achieve good control of their diabetes
 
Carbs is some thing I think I need to look into a lo more myself. Far as I know and will stand to be corrected there are good ones that release the sugars slowly like wholemeal bread and bad ones that convert to sugar very rapidly and cause spikes in your BS like white bread or food made with white floor.

There are numerous people on here who follow a low card diet, which is a balancing act of eating enough carbs to match the medication your taking. If I am having a omelette and don't have a slice of wholemeal bread my BS plummets down fairly rapidly. On the other hand I used to have a Sunday treat of a freshly baked crusty fresh white roll, then found out it caused a massive spike in my BS, not had a nice crusty roll for ages .

I also like dry roasted peanuts and these are now out for me as these raise my BS again, yet roast salted nuts are ok with me.
 
So really, its a case of trial and error and testing the BS to see which keeps it low, high or inbetween. Im sure the diabetic dietician will have a completely different view. Its difficult maintaining the right balance and losing weight as well. There doesnt seem to be a happy medium.
 
Martin, some of it depends on if you're on medication or not. If so, what type ? If you are controlling by diet alone, minimal carbs is better. If however, you are taking insulin or glucose lowering tablets such as Gliclazide, you need to reach the happy medium as if you lower your carbs too much without adjusting meds, you risk having a hypo. As Pav quite rightly pointed out, some carbs are better than others and will affect different people in different ways. You'll soon get to know how your body reacts by testing a couple of hours after eating.
 

Everybody needs sugar because we are a carbon based life form. The body manufactures sugar from different carbohydrates. Diabetes is a condition where having manufactured the sugar the body has lost the ability to put it to good use and the amount stuck in the bloodstream rises. Too high and general damage to your body is the result.

Your mission, Martin, if you choose to accept it is to eat enough carbohydrates to keep you alive but not so many that the sugar produced is at a harmful level.

So carbohydrates are good for you but bad if you let the sugar produced clog up your blood stream.

In my opinion the best way to manage is to take the recommendation of this forum and use a blood test meter 2 hours after eating. If you have eaten too much of something you can make corrections next time you eat a similar meal.

The dietitian does indeed appear to have a different view. Mine said that I should eat carbohydrates with every meal without saying how much or how to control my sugar level. My enlightened nurse was appalled. The NHS also pushes the healthy diet which is manifestly not aimed at diabetics.

Some people try to avoid carbohydrates almost altogether and this is fine if it works for them. I find this makes for a boring menu and I therefore suspect it cannot be sustained. Eating smaller portions of carbs means you can eat some of things you like. I think half a portion of rice is better than no rice for example.

There are many ideas on this site for coping with the food. Some of them are very inventive. As for the others I have tried and got a 50% success rate. Fortunately I have a tame crow and she cleans up the other stuff. She doesn't have diabetes.
 
There is no evidence that we need to eat ANY carbohydrate at all. The figure given for recommended Daily amount has come about purely by guess work. Our livers can make ALL we need. Which isn't much
It used to be that Healthcare professionals treating diabetics, were taught to tell their patients to eat "plenty of slow acing carbohydrate with every meal". they don't learn that any ore, but there are still plenty of out-of-date "experts" out there.
If you keep watch on newspapers and magazines, you'll notice that the tide is turning against high carb diets. It could be your gym trainer is up-to-date on this stuff.
Problem is; we've all been indoctrinated with the "low fat is healthy" mantra, that many are finding it hard to come to terms with the changing climate.
I personally think 30g carbs per day is more than enough for health.
As long ago as 1926 an experiment was done in New York, where 2 subjects, one the polar explorer Vilhjamur Steffanson and the other a doctor called Anderson, undertook to eat a 100% meat diet[with no vitamin supplementation] for a year under supervision of the Journal of the American Medical Association. At the end of the year both men were fully healthy and Anderson had even survived an episode of Tuberculosis, where many people who were infected had died!!
HHana
 
May not NEED carbs but the more restrictive we make our diets, the less chance we'll stick to it. I am in favour of reducing carb intake but 0g would certainly not be an option for me. As with all studies on diet, you can Google an answer that suits your own beliefs. I'm certain I could find a study that shows 100% meat diet would be bad for you. Diabetes is restrictive enough as it is, we still need to enjoy eating and not turn it into a chore. My opinion only, if you are happy with 0 carbs then that's cool
 
As much as I like meat, youve go to have some spuds with it or rice or pasta. Plenty of good advice taken on board and clearly the only way of finding out how things are reacting is simply to start testing the blood. The only thing then is remembering to do it 2 hours after a meal-its hard enough remembering to take my metformin after tea.
 

A cooker timer can help. You have to get one that does more than 1 hour. There are some nice digital ones about. In fact I gave up using my multi function silly alarm clock and I now just tell a cooker timer how many hours I want to sleep. One big button basically, simples.
 

Depending on your meter,you may be able to set a reminder alarm. Mine is an Accu-Chek Compact which has two alarms. My hearing is too bad to hear the cooker bleeping from the kitchen whilst the TV is on and SHE is prattling on at the same time.
 
gezzathorpe said:
Depending on your meter,you may be able to set a reminder alarm. Mine is an Accu-Chek Compact which has two alarms. My hearing is too bad to hear the cooker bleeping from the kitchen whilst the TV is on and SHE is prattling on at the same time.
Click to expand...

My cooker timer is not attached to the cooker. I forgot to explain.
 

Ha! never heard of a detached cooker timer ... remote control cooker, you flash ******! However, since a meter needs to be to hand to take readings, then having it to hand with alarms set may be useful. Mad idea, I know. :crazy:
 
gezzathorpe said:
Ha! never heard of a detached cooker timer ... remote control cooker, you flash ******! However, since a meter needs to be to hand to take readings, then having it to hand with alarms set may be useful. Mad idea, I know. :crazy:
Click to expand...

No no no. I will give it one more shot at explaining. You can buy cooker timers in Tesco and they do not control a cooker. They are just gadgets that you set to ring after a period of time that you choose. You can place it where you can hear it and some are loud enough so that you can hear the beep above HER.

I must have had the alarm for pills or meter discussion about half a dozen times on this board and usually it has someone who says you should just use your mobile phone. That's fine if you carry one. I only bought one since my bank insisted on it for "security" reasons. It stays by the computer and gets the odd text message offering to claim back my PPI and stuff like that.

If your meter has an alarm then fine. I don't think mine has but it only has two buttons on it so it reminds me of my silly alarm clock.
 
metformin should, ideally be taken before, or during a meal, less chance of getting upset stomach that way, and it will help your insulin production BEFORE the food starts to digest in your stomach

Sent from the Diabetes Forum App
 

I was being 'tongue in cheek'. Anyway, my suggestion may be appreciated by the OP.
 

My Sony Xperia Phone now has a new feature called 'remote cooker timer'. :twisted:
 
Hi Martin
It seems that most of the responses are, that you should select to eating a reasonably low carb diet...
I have been on a low carb diet for the last 9 weeks.....I feel fine and have lost about 1.5 stone
I kept to, 20 carbs a day for a couple of weeks, to do this you will have to forget about the spuds, bread, rice and pasta, you`ll feel better without them.
Once the couple of weeks are up increase carbs to 25 then a week later to 30 and so on... I`m on about 40 to 45 a day now.

If you are on tablets you must speak to you doctor though, the low carbs in combination with tablets can cause Hypo`
I`m not on medication so I don`t have to worry about Hypo`

Good luck.
 

Hi, as a T2 diet-controlled person, my approach was to start from my current diet and make adjustments (e.g portion sizes rather than good/bad food) until I got my bG levels right and started to lose weight (which I wanted to do) rather than start from a low-carb diet and working upwards, so to speak. The end result is the same of course. Fortunately, I eat the same food as ever but, in my case, smaller portions, so I got there fairly quickly.

I couldn't tell anyone actual quantities of anything without measuring. I now rely on average bG over a period,HbA1C tests and look for any upward trend to make sure I avoid persistent high glucose. I don't concern myself with individual meals now as the high reading (e.g. curry) from one meal does not constitute persistent high glucose (chronically above 7.0 fasting and 11.0 after meals) which can lead, over time, to complications.
 
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