Fatty foods

Padders91 said:

not been on the forum for a while so apologies, if this has been mentioned before, it seems when ever I have fatty foods eg, pizza,s, takaways, eating out at restaurants, my sugars seem to increase by a lot after the 3-4 hour mark, I know it's because of the slow absorption, but trying to bolus for it seems to be quite tricky, admittedly I have only started doing dual injections after the meal to try to contract the high but 9 out of 10 I get it wrong. At the moment I am injecting before the meal and then 2-3 hours, any ideas would be great


Cheers

Click to expand...

I have had the same problem for 28 years. I also take extra after 2-3 hours to try to reduce the highs, I find It worse if I eat late, I try not to have large quantities of fatty foods, and fill up with veg/salad, but any at all can still causes problems.It is very difficult to successfully reach a good blood level afterwards as sometimes it seems to be super glued up high or it is easy to overdo it as it varies so. I am currently (3 days now) trying a basal injection at 12 midday to see if that helps as i read recently that it can. I normally only have basal at night. We shall wait and see. Also having to be careful with my other injections to allow for the background basal. They always said to avoid fatty food and as well as for helping prevent high cholesterol and heart conditions, i think this is probably why, perhaps there is not an answer. You can read on other threads where many diabetic trim drown on all carbs to help with balance and control so continuing to eat a high fat carb diet with its extra complications, will not lead, I can clearly see, to an easy time balancing blood glucose levels.

You are experiencing the pizza effect @Padders91. It is well known amongst T1s. The combination of fat, protein and carbs in pizza causes an effect that results in an extended raising of blood glucose levels post eating.

Personally, having used the Libre to observe it, I have found that this can last up to six hours post eating and for me personally requires a bolus of 50% of the carbs + protein on offer just before eating, then the equivalent amounts at about 1.5 and 3 hours with about 25% at four hours. That was the only way to control it. In addition, the fat causes a temporary drop in insulin sensitivity, hence why you need so much more insulin.

Welcome back @Padders91

I found on injections the only way to deal with high-fat meals was to split-dose to allow for the late spike, but even then sometimes the 2 injections were not enough and a third injection would be necessary.

You may find that when you do eat a high-fat meal you need a lot more insulin than you would if the meal was lower in fat, high-fat food can cause some insulin resistance so you need to keep this in mind if your just bolusing for the carbs in your meals.

@Padders91, a pump would be invaluable here as you can set TBR's (temporary basal rates) to deal with the slow bg rise after eating high-fat meals, but if your not keen then all you can do is keep trying your best at finding a way round using injection techniques, for difficult meals I always keep a record of the doses and food eaten so I could refer back to it when eating the same meal again.

Unfortunately it's trial & error..................