CARBS

Its a very personal thing.
I try to have fewer than 20g of carbs per day which some say is extreme but it works well for me.
I find the diet doctor site incredibly helpful especially the pictures of carb content by food type.

https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb

As @bulkbiker says, its down to each person as an individual. Personally, I range from 30/40 to over 150 some days ... it just depends how I feel on the day. With regards to working out carb content, a great reference is either the "Carbs and Cals" book, or app, of the same name. The beauty is you get a picture that you can use as a reference and is a good starting point

Yes, we all have different tolerance levels and different carbs affect people differently.

The best way to discover your own carb tolerance is by testing with a home glucose meter and keeping a food diary including portion sizes. Without a meter you are working blind.

The book and app "Carbs and Cals" available from Amazon is an excellent resource for the number of grams of carbs in foods.
You can also use the major supermarket websites as all the products they sell are listed with details of the nutrient amounts, including total carbohydrates. Just Google for the food item plus Tesco/Sainsbury etc.

Ideally we want to keep a post meal spike of less than 2 mmol...because for many, especially pre-diabetes with functional pancreas, a huge spike will also trigger a huge insulin response that results in a low...causing a vicious cycle...

A meal of proteins/fats (roast pork belly) gives stable glucose response for the whole day...


A similar meal with half portion rice ~50g ...cause a spike from 5mmol to 9 mmol.


Then a subsequent sharp drop to 3.8 mmol...which is shortly accompanied with heart palpitation and intense hunger...

@kokhongw I don't know about this sharp drop you mentioned. What is it about prediabetics or diabetics that would cause this effect?

Mr_Pot said:

@kokhongw I don't know about this sharp drop you mentioned. What is it about prediabetics or diabetics that would cause this effect?

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@kokhongw That sounds more like reactive hypoglycaemia to me, which is quite different from type 2 diabetes. If I have a carby meal I spike, just as you say, but I come down gently, taking maybe an hour from peak, and then stay at my normal base level after that. Others with a lot more insulin resistance will stay up high for a very long time and take forever to come down to base.

Laurence63 said:

Is there a chart on here with basic foods and their carb. gram content please?

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Just Google the food and you'll get all the nutritional values you need. There are apps for the phone/tablet and similar programs for PC. There are numerous carb/cal counting books available as well.

If you calculate your calorie intake using something like the Harris Benedict formula, divide by 3 to give you how many CALORIES should be carbs as far as NICE and the NHS are concerned. Then, as a gram of carb is about 4 calories divide by 4 to give you grams of carb recommended by NICE/NHS.

It will be 200 grams or so which for most of us is way too much. I got down to 40 gms per day just by cutting out bread/pasta/rice/potato. The only reason I haven't gone lower is I'd have to start omitting some of the vegetables that I like to eat and until recently there was no need.

The important thing is to try it and see because we'll all be very different in what's good for us.

Mr_Pot said:

@kokhongw I don't know about this sharp drop you mentioned. What is it about prediabetics or diabetics that would cause this effect?

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A look at Dr Joseph Kraft's insulin response graph would give us a good model.
https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/understanding-joseph-kraft-diabetes-in-situ-t2d-24/


The fact is that for Prediabetes and often early diagnosed Type 2 diabetes, even with impaired beta cells, we still have very robust, but delayed insulin response. So we may have 2-3 times the circulating insulin level/response of a metabolic healthy person.

It is this excessive delayed insulin response that is causing the glucose rollercoaster that many of us experience with high carbs meal.

Take away the trigger...in this case carbs and sometimes protein...we have a more stable glucose condition.

I have type two diabetes but when in my teens and twenties would often feel a distinct drop in energy levels in the mid afternoons.
Now that I am seeing lower BG levels for a few weeks due to low carbing I am having similar drops, for which I eat a few grapes and then seem to recover, if it isn't after going very low carb and then going out walking or doing exercise of some sort.
I suspect that I have had an undiagnosed problem with carbs for a very long time. Since having a blood glucose tester I have been able to work out how to eat to cope well most days, and as I am not taking medication I have to adapt as best I can as things change - which they have done.
I needed to eat low carb for a day or so to drop my blood glucose levels and then increase my intake just a little to stop false hypos as my blood glucose dropped, then I worked out what I could eat, or should avoid, and then just tweaked as things altered over the weeks.

@kokhongw I cannot see how that chart tells us that after a high spike due to carbs we will crash sharply to hypo levels. . Your chart is simply showing the insulin levels dropping over a period of 2 or more hours.

A crash in BS levels from very high to very low in a short time does happen in Reactive Hypoglycaemia but not normally with diabetics, pre-diabetics, or non-diabetics.

Bluetit1802 said:

A crash in BS levels from very high to very low in a short time does happen in Reactive Hypoglycaemia but not normally with diabetics, pre-diabetics, or non-diabetics.

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Tell me about it I went from a reading of about 12 to 4.3 in the space of around half an hour or so not pleasant.

I went from 9.6 to 3.7 today in 1 hour

JohnEGreen said:

Tell me about it I went from a reading of about 12 to 4.3 in the space of around half an hour or so not pleasant.

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So have you got RH?

Bluetit1802 said:

@kokhongw I cannot see how that chart tells us that after a high spike due to carbs we will crash sharply to hypo levels. . Your chart is simply showing the insulin levels dropping over a period of 2 or more hours.

A crash in BS levels from very high to very low in a short time does happen in Reactive Hypoglycaemia but not normally with diabetics, pre-diabetics, or non-diabetics.

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You are probably right that for Type 2 who are severely insulin resistant, no matter how much insulin is secreted glucose remains high for a long time...perhaps even beyond the 5 hour, which is pattern 4. High fasting insulin, delayed insulin response, elevated insulin after 5 hrs. This likely happens when people follow the advice to graze contantly...regular 2-3 hours meals.

However this post meal spike and crash likely happens more often than we all realise. Most of us would simply pass it off as being very hungry...Few except perhaps those on CGM would monitor their glucose response hourly for up to 5 hours. And unfortunately even fewer have access to a insulin assay to match it up.

I have not seen a similar overlay against a glucose response. Dr Joseph Kraft insights was that insulin response provide better diabetes classifications than glucose response. http://meridianvalleylab.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/GITT-Article-Re-type1.pdf

What I see from the chart is that area under the curve remains much higher for patter 2/3. This basically means large amount of insulin remains in our system for up to 5 hours pattern 2 and 3. The difference between 2 and 3 is the delayed insulin response, ie insulin peak after 1 hour and a slower return to normal.
I attribute this delay in pattern 3 to
1) Loss of 1st phase insulin response
2) Increased insulin resistance

This provides the reasons that as we move from pattern 4 towards 2, we will begin to experience more frequent hypos/hunger, because there is improving insulin senstivity but still a mismatch in the level of insulin secreted/signalling...it is a spectrum that may fluctuate between pattern 2 and 3 depending on our diet/exercise/stress etc. This is often interpreted as reactive hypoglycemia.

Don't know how to count these carb things not something I ever knew how to dnly ever counted calories.

Thyroiddiabetic said:

Don't know how to count these carb things not something I ever knew how to dnly ever counted calories.

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Just look at the total carb amount per 100g on the nutrition label then calculate how many grams of carbs in the portion size you are eating. Or Google. The Tesco and Sainsburys websites are good - they detail all the nutrient amounts in the products they sell. There is also an excellent book and app called Carbs & Cals, available from Amazon. This shows you, in pictures, all the different foods we all eat with the weight, amounts of carbs, calories, protein, fibre and fat.