Carbohydrate enjoyment

This made me giggle a bit tbh. I have on many an occasion weighed up my right toenail against a cookie & the cookie won. However as a T2 I have to largely ignore cookies despite how lovely they are. Plus I hate needles more than I love cookies & the thought of jabbing myself repeatedly on a daily basis makes me want to vom.

I think if they said the only way to avoid insulin was to cut cheese out of my diet it would be a completely different story though!

 

So could you live happily without your eyesight?

Genuine question.. It seems a bit counter intuitive to me but blindness has always been my greatest fear so a huge motivator.

 

Is Paul really saying that?, I don't think so. I think it's about weighing up the risk and being prepared to take it or not rather than an absolute choice between one outcome and another. The odds are that most diabetics can eat carbs or have retinopathy without going blind. Having said that, personally I minimise all risks in the best way I can. It's a bit like a smoker I guess, they carry on smoking not because they could 'happily live with cancer or no limbs' but because they have decided upon a risk they can live with.

 

Situations and choices are often not black and white.

Happiness is important. We make our choices based in many factors.

 

I don't know that's why I asked.
I do know that food addictions are incredibly strong things and need a lot of effort to overcome.
I found that using my fears as a motivator was very helpful.
Simply trying to understand.

 

My DN said exactly the same not accepting I was LADA. A year later she said I needed to go onto insulin!

 

Even T1s may need to control their weight by keeping the carbs down; I certainly need to.

 

The relative risks of fat and carbohydrate in the development of sight-threatening retinopathy can differ between between people. If someone is diagnosed late in life with type 2 diabetes, fairly soon after they develop the disease, they are likely to have little underlying damage in the blood vessels of the retina and a low carb diet may prevent future damage from hyperglycaemia. However, with somebody who has been diagnosed early in life with type 1 diabetes, has been diabetic for many years and has already got underlying vessel damage in the retina, it might be preferable for them to be slightly hyperglycaemic than to have a blood lipid profile which increases the risk of maculopathy. (Maculopathy is a bigger cause of sight loss than proliferative retinopathy.)

 

Could you enlarge on that a bit, do you mean lipids rather than glucose lead to maculopathy?

 

No, I'm saying that both are considered to be risk factors for diabetic maculopathy and that it's possible that moderately good glycaemic control with an ideal lipid profile might give an overall lower risk of sight-loss than perfect glycaemic control with a less than ideal lipid profile. The evidence is quite hazy and some of it is contradictory and a lot more research is needed - so I'm not saying that this is definitely the case. My point is that we can't assume that a low carb diet would be better for someone who is not overweight and may already have some underlying retinal damage.

 

I was told I had background retinopathy after my first check. A year of low carbing later it had gone away.
My doctor says my cholesterol is high (it is average) but being 70 and female, the records show that I am likely to live longer than if I lower it, so I will continue to resist statins, or any similar drug.

 

@PaulAshby, couldn’t agree with you more but I’m type 1 like yourself. I know my carb ratios, I understand when to pre bolus for certain meals etc. So if I want to eat a tonne of carbs one day then why the hell not. Don’t get me wrong I diet & train hard all week apart from a Saturday, the days I’m dieting I eat around 130–150g of carbs per day. On a Saturday I probably eat 300 + grams of carbs. If I want a great big pizza & a bag of chocolate after then I’ll eat it 100%!

Few people might of seen me blag on about it before, but I know a few type 1 bodybuilders who are currently eating 450grams of carbs a day 7 days a week.

You could easily consuming 450grams of low fat healthy carbs & bolus accordingly. On the other hand you could eat 100-150g of unhealthy fatty carbs and spike your readings. It’s all about decisions


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I'm type 1 but matching insulin to carbs to avoid big spikes followed by big drops is stressful. Lots of carbs just makes me feel hungover - so I don't these days. I miss pasta!

 

And herein lies the problem with two distinctly different conditions having the same name and at times the same treatment options.

 

@Circuspony have you tried cooking pasta, swilling it under a cold tap then reheating? I’m T2 diet controlled and find that provided I don’t have too big a portion it doesn’t affect my BS too much doing this way.