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Spike

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Hello, I've just joined and wanted to cut straight to the chase.
I don't know what the **** I should be eating. My blood sugar numbers are all over the place. My dietitian tells me I need to eat bread and pasta but it doesn't make sense to me. Is she right?
Are there any dietitians here that can explain it to me?

Spike
 
Spike.

Now it's your turn to give us some answers.

What are your Bg readings on waking, before meals, and two hours after meals ?

What is a typical daily food intake consist of ?

Just put the Dietician on the back burner for now. :twisted: We do have a sometime resident one but you may like to listen to some of us first.

We just need some information.
 
Thank you Sue and cugila.

My blood sugars can be anywhere from 2 to 20. No really obvious pattern other than the sine wave.
But I'm eating according to my dieticians advice. Cereal and semi-skimmed milk, sandwiches, pasta, fruit. A healthy diet? Not according to my HbA1C, 7.8 the last time out.

Either there's something wrong with me, other than the obvious, or there's something wrong with my dietician?

Cheers, Spike
 
Spike. ( might well be an apt title ? ) :)

Sine Wave......not really heard that one as a description of Bg readings before ?
Usually it's something that occurs often in mathematics, physics, signal processing or electrical engineering perhaps ? Maybe you have a technical background ?

We still need specifics though. Generalisations are not really helpful ?

As you seem up to the technical side of things maybe a little light reading wouldn't go amiss ?
Take a look at this post : viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7215&p=64246#p64246

It is an extremely informative and comprehensive guide to lo-carb from one of our more talented and enlightened moderators, Fergus. Should give you something to ponder on while you sort the Sine Wave out in more detail ?

I am sure you will get plenty of dietary advice from all shades of opinion shortly.

Ken 8)
 
Thanks Ken, I appreciate that mate. I had a very good physics teacher many years ago, so things like sine waves must have stuck in my imagination.
That's what my blood sugars are like tho. I should test more, but it's so ****ing depressing to see bad news all the time. Probably 7,8,9 first thing, rising to the teens mid morning, dropping towards lunch, high again p.m, dropping before dinner, rising again in the evening. High blood sugars, being chased down by big doses of insulin. A sine wave.

Instinct tells me that the foods I've been recommended to eat aren't working. Have I been sold a pup? It's worse than that though because I've been warned off eating the foods that these low carb people seem to scoff.

Spike
 
Well, I do think it's your diet that needs tweaking.
You must be a quick reader to get through all of Fergus's info in such a short time ?

Now, where are the b****y Dietic(t)ians when you need one..............suppose one may come along in a minute or two. :twisted:
As for the one on the back burner, I should leave it to simmer, they can boil uncontrollably if neglected. :wink:

Ken :D
 
Hi Spike, I had the same problems, although not quite as high as 20. I reduced my carbs to around 50g a day and my Bg readings seemed to have stabalised at between 5-7 at the mo, sometimes 9. I still want them to be lower but I am not long diagnosed and also have a fair bit of weight to still shift so the low carb thing might be something to try. I was recommended the collins little gem carb counter and that really has been a little gem in helping me. I have also started walking for half an hour at least every day and if nothing else it makes me feel awake. I used to hate any form of bodily movement but I do enjoy a walk now... never thought I would be saying that mind :lol:
 
Spike, I was anywhere between 17 and 27 BS. Three weeks low-carb and my BS waking is around 8. Try it; if it does no good, it'll do no harm, as my gran used to say...
 
Hi Spike
I too have been warned off low carbing as potentially dangerous, but after about a year of it, I'm slimmer and fitter( resting pulse below 60) and never ill.
I have tried to find what it is I'm meant to be missing out on nutritionally. I have failed.
It works!
Hana
 
I really appreciate your advice guys. You seem like a decent bunch who are having lots of success with your approach to diabetes.
I think I said before that I'm by nature a sceptic. Life has taught me that a certain scepticism is a good tool for winkling the truth out of awkward, hard to reach places.
Mind you, I'd thought that the dietary advice I've had might be based on some reliable evidence and that it must surely work for most people if it's offered to all?
Has my scepticism failed me?
Does the advice to eat starchy carbohydrates at every meal not work for you lot either?

Spike
 
Spike said:
Mind you, I'd thought that the dietary advice I've had might be based on some reliable evidence and that it must surely work for most people if it's offered to all?
Click to expand...
Unfortunately the evidence appears to be donkeys years old, and quite possibly flawed even when it was written :evil:.

Spike said:
Does the advice to eat starchy carbohydrates at every meal not work for you lot either?
Click to expand...
I think it has less of an impact on some people and more on others. I've never eaten buckets of carbs, but something hasn't been right - look what's happened to me! I can get away with some carbs (flat bg numbers post-meal) and not others. The only guide (apart from the good people here) is how it affects you, and your actual blood numbers throughout the day. There's an excellent post today from jopar that in my view very succinctly sums up the difference in how HbA1c are actually achieved.
 
Like I said in my other post, I carried on eating, all be it smaller portions, of carbs. I was well impressed with myself but my BG was still quite high. Someone on here asked me to put up a typical days food and I proudly typed what I had eaten, while thinking to myself that people on here would tell me how fab I was and that my BG levels were a mystery, as I am too a little skeptical. I was amazed by the replies pointing out that I was still eating too many carbs and once it was pointed out to me I realised they were right. I then went in to meltdown as carbs are the best thing in the world. I followed the advice on here though, I haven't found it too difficult to adapt and wow they were right :D
Give it a go Spike and you might just be as shocked as I was.
Edited as I forgot to say that there are small portions of some carbs that I am fine with, wholewheat pasta and new potatoes being 2 of them, but I have discovered this through regularly checking my levels so really it's trial and error.
 
According to your first posting.Spike, you are type 1 If your blood glucose levels are all over the place I think that you should be looking at your total regime not just one part of it. Control involves the three major variables of food/exercise/insulin with all the added extras like time of day, insulin sensitivity etc.
What you can eat and when does depend to a certain extent upon your insulin regime. Are you using mixed insulin or basal/bolus ? (hopefully the latter). If you are using the latter method do you count your carbs? (Have you been on a DAFNE or similar course? )Have you tested your basal insulin recently? Are your hypos because of exercise or because of too much insulin for that time of day. Are your highs during the post meal period (ie when the bolus insulin is working) or when fasting?
Lots of questions but obviously I don't know what you do or have tried to do.
 
Hi Spike.
I am an amateur here Spike so this is the simple approach. I hope the experts don't mind me posting this!?!

As written here in so many threads, reducing carbs is the way to go to control your BG numbers.
Try to get it down to 50gms a day, which isn't much! Two slices of wholemeal bread or a half portion of rice or pasta. Just eat more sauce and less of the white stuff. One meduim sized potato will do it too. Try this for a week or three and I am pretty sure, as the others have said already, your numbers will come down and stabilise.

The other weapon is exercise, try it little and often to begin with. Don't train for a marathon. Try walking or swimming if you are unfit, just begin with something, even ten minutes and you will feel a difference after a week or so.

Once you have them under control you can add a little more starch each day and see the effect on your numbers straight away. I found that I got so used to going with 50gms of carbs a day that I don't need or want any more now.

Although having just written that I could murder a big cheese and pickle sandwich!
 
kegstore said:
Spike said:
Mind you, I'd thought that the dietary advice I've had might be based on some reliable evidence and that it must surely work for most people if it's offered to all?
Click to expand...
Unfortunately the evidence appears to be donkeys years old, and quite possibly flawed even when it was written :evil:.
Click to expand...

This is true

http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/ ... tween.html

For a Type 1 probably this is one of the best resources

http://www.dsolve.com/

and although you're not pumping

http://www.insulin-pumpers.org.uk/

and the US site
 
well my cousin eats the bread and pasta as long as she take cares of the amount she eating and her blood suger , so it tells me its ok for her
 
hi.
If your cousin can eat all the starchy carbs and get good Bg levels, that's really good. Is he/she on Insulin maybe ?
Problem a lot of us have is that these foods are just not a viable option.
Bread, Potato, Pasta ,Rice and certain Root veg all raise my Bg levels alarmingly. So it is not quite as simple as it at first seems.
I did ask you in another post what you define as a healthy diet. I think I now know.

We are all different. What suits one may not be suitable for others.
 
hiya, I started low carbing about six weeks ago and have been amazed at the difference it makes to my control. I have drastically reduced my basal insulin and even replaced my novorapid with metformin at meals.For me it is the answer and I now almost think of myself as 'carbohydrate intolerant' rather than diabetic.

At first I did think what will I eat, as we are conditioned to think that most of our meals should be based around starchy carbs. But its amazing how quickly you adapt to a new way of eating, and now I don't really miss those foods. I effectively eat more protein and replace what would have been the carbs with (non starchy) veg. I even went to Gourmet Burger Kitchen last night with a friend and had a virtually no carb meal of beef, blue cheese and bacon burger, with coleslaw on the side- I just left the bun. So it is easier than you think to eat out and stuff like that.

It's worth a try as the others say. I try to keep my carb intake below 50 which isn't too hard once you have some recipes up your sleeve and replacement ideas for all the carby foods you used to eat.

Try it for a month and see if it makes a difference, let us know!

Best of luck

Gina :D
 
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