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carb counting????help???!!!

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kirsty1702

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im struggling to deal with my t1 diabetes at the moment with severe hypos and very high blood sugar levels.ive been told by a few people on here to carb count,which ive never been told to do by my nurse or doctor to do.
how important is carb counting?
and how hard is it to do if you've never done it before?
does it effect your normal life? because it seems really hard to get my head round?
any advise would be great.. :)
 
Kirsty you're in the right place.

Shocking that your healthcare team haven't told you about this at all, it plays a huge role in your control, unless you are recently diagnosed when it becomes slightly trickier.

Without it, it's impossible to know exactly how much insulin you should be injecting, and your blood sugars will be all over the place. With it, you should be able to maintain almost normal blood sugars no matter what you eat. The consequences of each of these scenarios couldn't be more different in the long term so it's important to get to grips with it.

It takes me moments to work out in my head how much carb is on a plate of food, and then how much insulin to inject, but I've been doing it a long time. There are lots of useful tools to help you learn, and once you pick up the basics it's easy.

I'm currently putting together a basic guide to carb counting (Admin: I think that was me just volunteering there?!), so stay tuned and watch this space if you want more details...
 
kegstore said:
Kirsty you're in the right place.

I'm currently putting together a basic guide to carb counting (Admin: I think that was me just volunteering there?!), so stay tuned and watch this space if you want more details...
Click to expand...

This is a great idea Jo. Keep it nice and simple, something that people can print out and read without too many links.

I know from looking at the BDEC site that many people will think that their insulin to carb ratio is going to be 1 unit of bolus to 10g of carb. This is all very well but what they might not realise is that they have to adjust their bolus to suit the action of the basal that has been injected. According to BDEC I am also a 1:10 but I know that at breakfast time when I inject my basal and bolus I need to use a carb ratio of 4:10. This is so that I can get my bg to be no higher than 8 mid morning. BDEC's correction calculation might not be very correct either. I don't eat a great deal of carb at breakfast so am happy to eat just 10g carb and bolus accordingly. Mid morning I'm hopefully no higher than 8 so have used guesswork (trial and error ) and eat a bit more carb so that I can be ok by lunchtime. By lunchtime my basal insulin is in full swing so my insulin to carb ratio drops back to 2:10 but by evening meal time my basal has fizzled so my carb ratio is then 4:10 again. I inject my other dose of basal before going to bed. I have worked all these figures out by testing, testing, testing :)
 
It's frustrating, having said glibly that I can work it all out in my head, I should add "sometimes" to that statement. My normal carb ratio currently works out at 1:12, but in the evening this changes to 1:16. And I was never very good at maths...

So, I go everywhere with my faithful Palm PDA, on which I store my bg/food diary. Nothing more than a basic spreadsheet that also calculates insulin for food and any corrections, but it's very useful for review at clinic.
 
kirsty
for a T1. carb counting is essential
I know somw careteams dropped teaching it, for the "take more insulin" route, but You NEED to know how many carbs you are eating to judge your insulin doses. Too much insulin leads to hypos ( and weight gain)
too little to complications
 
kirsty1702 said:
im struggling to deal with my t1 diabetes at the moment with severe hypos and very high blood sugar levels.ive been told by a few people on here to carb count,which ive never been told to do by my nurse or doctor to do.
how important is carb counting?
and how hard is it to do if you've never done it before?
does it effect your normal life? because it seems really hard to get my head round?
any advise would be great.. :)
Click to expand...

Kirsty the counting of carb is fairly easy to do as the nutritian content of packaged food is clearly stated on the side or backs of what you buy. Carb content of stuff like fresh potatoes, oranges etc can be found by googling on the internet and for a while weighing food on some kitchen scales that will work out the carb content for you.

If you are fairly new to T1 your consultant or dsn should have given you a rough idea of what amount of bolus insulin to use and also daily basal insulin. If they haven't, then they need to be asked - why not ???

It will probably help you out a fair bit if you keep yourself to eating the same breakfast every day (work out the carb content) and then try and use a bit of guesswork to work out how much bolus you need to use and hope that yr calculation will give you a bg mid morning of being between 5 - 8. If you are way above 8, then you will know that you have got to increase the breakfast bolus. If you are way above 8, then you can probably skip eating a carb snack, if you are between 5 - 8 then you will most likely have to eat (but how much is all down again to trial and error and doing loads of bg tests. Do the same thing at lunchtime (eat a sandwich, work out the carb and then keep to eating the same carb content for every lunch. Keep carb content of evening meal the same also. This won't be for ever its only for a while so that you can calculate the exact amount of bolus insulin you need to use. Once your confidence with insulin grows, you can then start to alter your insulin bolus to suit the amount of carb that you want to eat. The key to really good control is to test before bk, mid morning, before lunch, mid afternoon, before evening meal and before bed. If you can bring yourself to do this then you should find yourself having far less swings from low to high.
 
carb counting is easy once u know how,if youve any specific questions just ask :D
 
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