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Brown Rice, potatoes and pasta

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oliveview

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I´m a type 2 diabetic ( diagnosed 6 months ago) and have been told to get my cholesterol down it is 5.8 at the moment. I have not got my glucose reading to hand- but it was only one point over the diabetic borderline, the Dr was very pleased with that.
The thing I want to know is:
wholewheat pasta, brown rice and jacket potatoes are they ok to eat with every evening meal? Not all together :lol: I try to have a chicken or turkey fillet and no red meat. We have homemade soup (vegetable) at lunchtimes, I don´t have bread with it, or if I do it is very rarely. For breakfast we have porridge with 50/50 skimmed/semiskimmed milk. I´m about 1.5 stone overweight and have lost about 7lb weight in 5 weeks.
We have orange trees so I try to eat at least 1 orange a day and a tumbler of fresh orange juice- is that ok? I also have a banana, never a very ripe banana, once the skin goes too yellow I don´t like them.
I live in Spain and only have private health insurance- not eligible for the NHS Dr here, so there is no dietician to ask advice from.The Dr told me to eat more oily fish and drink a glass of red wine a night (I hardly drink a glass a month!)
Any advice?
Thanks
 
Olive,

Congratulations on the weight loss.

Each of us react differently to the types of carbohydrates you're talking about. One of the important things you can do is test after each meal to judge your own reaction to those foods. It might be that you can still eat those, but you may need to reduce portion sizes, and adding more veg.

One good book in this area is The Gi Diet by Rick Gallop, also have a look at http://www.glycemicindex.com/ for a database of the GI of foods. The theory is, the lower the GI the longer the food takes to digest and the lower the post prandial BG spike.

I would add that fruit juices are a very efficient way of introducing glucose into our systems, it might be that you need to eat the fruit rather than drink them :)

Regards, Tubs.
 
For me brown rice and wholmeal pasta does not raise my blood sugars, Basmati rice and normal pasta raise my bs very little. However potatoes, bread, brown or white send me soaring. Orange juice takes me way up up up, as most fruit drinks do including the unsweetened types.

The only way to really know whats best for you is to take the info from books like the one advised above and test before each meal and after two hours, see waht they do to your system.
 
I´m a type 2 diabetic ( diagnosed 6 months ago) and have been told to get my cholesterol down it is 5.8 at the moment. I have not got my glucose reading to hand- but it was only one point over the diabetic borderline, the Dr was very pleased with that.
The thing I want to know is:
wholewheat pasta, brown rice and jacket potatoes are they ok to eat with every evening meal?Theywon't help the cholesterol and might push your BG up. Not all together :lol: I try to have a chicken or turkey fillet and no red meatDoesn't affect the diabetes. We have homemade soup (vegetable) at lunchtimes, I don´t have bread with it, or if I do it is very rarely. For breakfast we have porridge with 50/50 skimmed/semiskimmed milk.For diabetes, cream is better than skimmed milk there's proportionally much less sugar.Does the porridge put your BG up? I´m about 1.5 stone overweight and have lost about 7lb weight in 5 weeks. Brilliant weight loss!
We have orange trees so I try to eat at least 1 orange a day and a tumbler of fresh orange juice- is that ok? I also have a banana, never a very ripe banana, once the skin goes too yellow I don´t like them. Oranges and bananas are full of sugar. Juice is worse than whole fruit. Even if they are delicious
I live in Spain and only have private health insurance- not eligible for the NHS Dr here, so there is no dietician to ask advice from.The Dr told me to eat more oily fish and drink a glass of red wine a night (I hardly drink a glass a month!) Pretty good advice
 
You sound to be doing pretty well so far.

Try doing this for a while

http://www.alt-support-diabetes.org/NewlyDiagnosed.htm

to fine tune things.

You really need a Full Lipid Panel to break down your cholesterol, the total number is not indicative of very much, except the test is cheaper.

The standard pattern (diabetic dyslipidemia) is low HDL, high LDL and sky high trigs. Dropping your carb intake to the point where your BG no longer spikes and your insulin level reduces will radically reduce the trigs and increase HDL. LDL may increase or it may actually also decrease depending on the balance of fats you eat: either way it will be of a less harmful type.

There's a lot of individual/genetic variation, but basically as with all other animals it's carbs rather than dietary fats that increase body and blood fats.
 
hi i am a bit confused about diet at the moment, i keep reading about low carbs and cutting them out in your diet but i thought diabetics needed carbs for the slow release of sugar in the bloodstream. my nurse always tells me to have some supper like cereal or a plain biscuit, i missed having some a few weeks ago and had a terrible hypo in the night my poor husband had to help me my blood sugars had fallen to 2mml, i am trying to loose weight after having breast cancer last year the treatment put me the weight back on which i had lost so i am back to square one. can anyone give me some advice about carbs i take insulin now as steroids shot my blood sugars sky high i would be grateful to anyone who can help,all the best to everyone from prinny.
 
Hi Prinny,

welcome to the forum! Could you give us your type of diabetes and all medications please. Also some blood sugar readings to give us a trend. If you are on any insulin affecting medications, all changes must be done much more carefully. I only take metformin so run a minimal risk of hypos and have seen my sugars go down to more or less non diabetic since ridding my diet of pasta, rice, potatoes, bread, cereal and mosy processed foods. I have recently tried dremafields pasta and it didn't have an effect on my sugars so will have that occasionally.
 
Prinny

It's a yes and no type question..

As you use insulin, cutting back on the carbs is a bit more difficult and takes a bit more fore thought to achieve, as the less carbs you have the less insulin you will require to keep BG's stable...

How one goes about achieveing this reduction will have some baring on the actual insulin regime that are using, as it is a lot easier to achieve when on a basal/bolus regime than a pre-mixed regime...

I would post these querries in the T1 forum, where hopefully Ferugus who uses a low carb diet and insulin will see it and can advice better than I...

A good book that actually covers the low carb diet and insulin, is Dr Berstien 's book, this will also give you the information that you need when complementing the change over..
 
hi saz, i am t2 diabetic have been for 4 years now , i was on metformin and well controlled until i was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. after 2 lots of surgery i had to have 6 mnths of chemo then radiotherapy. i was doing ok with my blood sugars then halfway through treatment they shot up to 24mml, the diabetes nurse came out to see me and put me on novo rapid but it didnt do much, by this time ididnt want to eat just drink iwas feeling really poorly what with chemo as well,i was then put on novomix 30 ,i have 34 units twice daily, i take metformin 500mg twice dailyalso simvastatin 20mg at night, i am also taking tamoxifen for the cancer. my blood sugars are very stable ranging from 5.4to 6.2 they sometimes go up to 7.4 but not very often. i just want to get this weight of that the steroids put on and its steroids that affect blood sugars too my oncologist said they would do,i do realise that i may still have to eat some carbs any advice would be welcome thanks, love prinnyx ,ps my nurse said that insulin would be reduced as the weight comes off.
 
Your nurse is eight, as the weight drops, the insulin resistance is also reducing thus reducing the need for large amounts of insulin too. Exercise is also important part of the fight against insulin resistance. Your blood sugars are at a stable level so if you experiment with foods and test, you will soon know what affects your levels. If you get spikes, then you should avoid that particular food. Some people are ok with controlled portions of pasta, rice and potatoes, but everyone reacts differently. I would say that test religiously after meals to find out your tolerances. But because you inject insulin, any changes to your diet should be done carefully since the need for insulin may change fast. You don't necessarily need carbs in the shape of grains, pasta or bread if they seem to affect you adversely. Fergus is a good example of low carbing type 1 with minimum insulin.

Good luck prinny!
 
There's some information of reducing carbs and insulin here

http://www.dsolve.com/

Sounds very likely that the steroids especially, and probably the rest of the chemo, has shot up your BG. Insulin is a good choice for reducing it but you've probably reached the stage where you are now overmedicated and are having to feed the insulin with carbs, which will work except for the weight gain!

Reducing the both while maintaining the BG numbers is doable but complicated, make sure you always have some glucose tabs or orange juice on hand for when you get the balance wrong. Professional guidance would be #1 plan, the help of expert patients who have done it would be #2 plan.

Best of luck!
 
hi thanks to everyone who has helped me with advice adout low carb diet, i have saved the website you have given me to my favourites and will study it carefully, i am going to start by reducing the amount of carbs i have but not omitting them alltogether, will keep you informed of how it goes, all the best to everyone,love prinny.
 
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