- Messages
- 194
- Type of diabetes
- Type 1
I've long found carb-counting and/or GI totally inadequate as a way of calculating my insulin doses - when reduced to one or two numbers, important information about how the glucose will be released over time is lost.
Instead I tend to picture the curve for different foods, and try to match the timing and doses of my bolus insulin so that the resulting insulin curve counteracts that (also factoring in things like basal,exercise,sleep,stress,etc.).
My ideas of the curves for different foods are just built up from experience though, and are quite vague and uncertain, because they are mostly based on only a few point readings from finger pricks, and it's often hard to separate just the effect of the food from all the other variables. Starting on the Freestyle Libre recently has been helping me get a bit of a better picture, but I'd still like to improve it. So I'm wondering now what resources are out there to help with this?
I'm imagining a catalogue of different foods/meals, along with their curves. Just breaking things down into components and summing them doesn't seem adequate either, because the interactions between them are significant - e.g. fat delaying the effect of carbs.
Of course these could only be approximate as they will vary depending on the person, and the existing contents of their stomach before eating, and many other factors, but just as a starting point that we could then adjust according to our experience it could still be useful.
Instead I tend to picture the curve for different foods, and try to match the timing and doses of my bolus insulin so that the resulting insulin curve counteracts that (also factoring in things like basal,exercise,sleep,stress,etc.).
My ideas of the curves for different foods are just built up from experience though, and are quite vague and uncertain, because they are mostly based on only a few point readings from finger pricks, and it's often hard to separate just the effect of the food from all the other variables. Starting on the Freestyle Libre recently has been helping me get a bit of a better picture, but I'd still like to improve it. So I'm wondering now what resources are out there to help with this?
I'm imagining a catalogue of different foods/meals, along with their curves. Just breaking things down into components and summing them doesn't seem adequate either, because the interactions between them are significant - e.g. fat delaying the effect of carbs.
Of course these could only be approximate as they will vary depending on the person, and the existing contents of their stomach before eating, and many other factors, but just as a starting point that we could then adjust according to our experience it could still be useful.
