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Carb counting and high blood sugars advice

orry-kaplan

Member
Messages
10
Location
London
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
Hi all. I have a problem I can’t get my head around. I use the freestyle insulinx testing machine and most of the time it works really well and other times idk if it’s the machine or me. It basically lets you input the carbs you’re going to eat and then tells you how much insulin to take based off your readings and usually it’s excellent but today I carb counted my meal and tested before and I was 7.4. I then input the carbs I was about to eat for lunch and then I tested an hour later and I was 17.2. Now I know this is high but when I went through the machine to see how much fast acting I should take the machine said to take no more insulin as I still have insulin in my system which is understandable. I don’t know whether it’s normal to go this high once you’ve eaten and then the insulin will bring level back down or if I’ve carb counted wrong / ate something high in sugar. Anyone have any help or advice? Thanks
 
Hi @orry-kaplan what was your result like 3 - 4 hours later ? Blood sugar spikes literally depend on what you eat, some foods spike me high but I come down again 3-4 hours later so I know the carb/insulin ratio worked, I don’t tend to get too stressed up until this point but as I use the Dexcom G6 now and I eat moderate carbs then using this cgm shows me which foods I prefer to leave out of my diet. I also pre-bolus by up to 20 mins to avoid the spike where I can if I do want to go carb heavy.
 
Happens to me a lot with pasta, pizza ect. Stodgy carbs. I tend to turn up near target when the insulin is out my system. I have a pump to try split my insulin at once but on MDI I took two injections which are options. I split 40/60% and that may help. The 40 before dinner, the 60 maybe half an hour after.
 
Hi @orry-kaplan, From my experience as a T1D, not as professional advice or opinion:
Perhaps have a look at mendosa.com - GI, GL and Glycemic Values. This will show you that carbs are not all the same. Some raise BSLs quickly (high GI) and others less so (low GI).
I am not saying that GI and GL are be all and end all of carbs but it may prove useful. Ideally what I do is to try to match up when my BSL peaks from a meal with when my short-acting insulin's maximum effect will be.
And also the GI/GL values show that some fat in the meal shows down the BSL rise.
Carb counting is not perfect. Protein from a meal can be partly converted to glucose by the liver and may add to the BSL rise.
It is all about balance, accepting that life is not always perfect and that we continue to learn from each episode of high. low and normal BSL results.
Why do I get the impression that this M&M is laughing at our expense ??
 
I read something recently about stress and diabetes?
Blood Sugar is high but can be on 8 often don't eat any **** or sugar.
I would just like more peace, retired recently and to the day became care for my brother with alcoholic dementia. i hate every day with him so i go to the farm and set his meals out before i go.
Two years ago i had a heart attack stress work, brother replaced the stress with his ****.
 
It really depends with what you've eaten - even if you have counted the carbs right, but your meal consists of fast-acting carbohydrates, then your sugar will most likely spike before the insulin reaches the blood and begin to 'kick' in. It would be more beneficial if you stated what you ate and in how much quantity - along with the dosage of insulin. It could be that the amount of insulin in your blood was already quite great, that it was enough to bring your sugar down from the 17.2.
 
Unfortunately, different foods are digested at different rates. However, our insulin works at one rate.
Therefore, the glucose from some foods may reach out blood before the insulin has started to work.

Some people overcome this by pre-bolusing. Depending on the person and the type of food they are eating and the insulin they are taking, this pre-bolus may need to be 45 minutes before eating.
This could be a challenge if you do not know what you are going to eat.
On way around this is to do multiple boluses - one pre-bolus which covers some of what you will eat and another once you have eaten.
Another may be to consider a different insulin. For example, Fiasp works faster for some people ... but does not work very well for others.
 
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