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Insulin dose

W

wysiwyg1

Newbie
Messages
2
Type of diabetes
Type 2
HI. I am currently taking Novorapid and Tresiba to control my diabetes, and I currently carb count to ascertain my insulin dose.
If a product contains 20g of carbs of which 2g are sugar, and another product weighs the same, but contains 18g of sugar, do I take that into account when calculating my insulin dose, or do I calculate purely on the amount of carbs? Many thanks.
 
Personally, for the purposes of calculating insulin doses, I count the carbs. So product 1 has 20g of carbs and product 2 has at least 18g of carbs. (You haven't said whether product 2 has additional carbs other than the 18g sugar).
If by "weighs the same", you mean that product 2 has the same total amount of carbs, then I'd give the same amount of insulin for both.

(But I might reckon that product 2 is likely to have a higher glycemic index than product 1, so will spike my blood sugar higher before the insulin brings it down?)

Having said that I am T1 and not T2 and so all my insulin is injected. As a T2 you may or may not still be making some of your own insulin and so I don't know if that affects your insulin calculations.
 
As all carbs are converted to sugar when we digest them, we can ignore the "of which is sugar" when calculating our insulin dose.
Over time, you may notice that foods with higher sugar content will raise our BG faster so some people take this into consideration with pre-bolus timings.
 
Thank you for your reply. I was thinking if I needed a different dose for, e.g. 20g of Shredded Wheat (low amount of sugar) and a 20g cream bun (high sugar). Sorry for the confusion.
 
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