Insulin for tea?

[PaulinaB]

Hi all,

Does anyone takes insulin when drinking tea? From what I see a cup of tea has 0.7g of carbs, and I tend to drink big "cups", so mine have probably at least 1g.

I saw sitting in front of the TV recently with my sugar stable at 7mmol, had a cup of tea and it spiked to 7.7mmol! And it didn't really want to come back down on its own, so I made a correction with a next meal.
I thought that at least the tea is my "free" pleasure (I love tea), but I do drink quite a lot of it... should I take basal for it? (Urgh...) Or maybe increase my bolus (though I know, covering usual carbs with bolus is bad...)?
If I drink tea after lunch, my sugars take much longer (an hour or two!) to come down

Any thoughts?

 

[AndyS]

Maybe try pitch your target to be around the 5mmol/l mark, that way you can absorb a few cups of tea and still stay in a good range.

I also like a good brew but I don't count them and just correct later on.

 

[Wurst]

I was having this problem with green and black tea's so I switched to decaffeinated black tea and swapped green tea to ginger tea. No caffeine! Caffeine can raise BS. Too much of anything is bad for BS in my experience.

 

[Hooked]

I know everyone is different, but I wouldn't have called going from 7 to 7.7 a spike in my levels. Blood test machines aren't 100% precise either. You could get a 0.7 change testing the same drop of blood a few times.

 

[mo1905]

I agree with Hooked, a 0.7 rise is not enough of a rise to act on really. The error margin on these machines can be as much as 20%. However, it's your diabetes and if you continue to get higher than desired levels from tea, there's no reason why you shouldn't inject although bear in mind the QA can stay in your system for 4-5 hrs so depending how often you drink tea, try to avoid "stacking" of insulin.

 

[Spiker]

Is this tea with milk, or without? The carbs in the milk will cause a rise, and the caffeine may also cause a rise. I take half a unit of insulin with a latte, just for the milk (I drink decaf).

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[PaulinaB]

I know everyone is different, but I wouldn't have called going from 7 to 7.7 a spike in my levels. Blood test machines aren't 100% precise either. You could get a 0.7 change testing the same drop of blood a few times.

I was actually testing my basal at that time and I was getting consistent 7.0 readings before I drank the tea. Usually I would blame it on the meter as well, but that was way too weird.

Is this tea with milk, or without? The carbs in the milk will cause a rise, and the caffeine may also cause a rise. I take half a unit of insulin with a latte, just for the milk (I drink decaf).

Black tea, no sugar, no milk, no lemon, only tea.


What concerns me most is that it seems to "delay" the bolus action, or at least make it slower... if that's possible?

And I do tend to regularly get rises in BG after drinking tea. Maybe I'll just add an extra unit to the meals if I'm going to be drinking tea afterwards?

Is it possible to get Novorapid pen with half units?

 

[noblehead]

Try Decaff but can't say it will make any difference. I wouldn't bolus for tea, I mean if you drink say 4 cups between meals you could end up on 7/8 injections a day, the problem with that is the insulin stacking which could lead to more hypo's.

 

[Daibell]

Hi. The blood sugar increase you are seeing is miniscule and doesn't need any insulin shots. I think you may be confused about which insulin is which. Basal is the 24hour one and Bolus is the meal-time rapid. As long as you can get the fasting blood sugar somewhere between 5 -7 mmol and try to get the Bolus carb-count right then you should never need to worry about tea/coffee drinks with no-sugar added.

 

[Spiker]

Is it possible to get Novorapid pen with half units?

Yes. Novopen Echo or Novopen Junior.

 

[runner2009]

Is this tea with milk, or without? The carbs in the milk will cause a rise, and the caffeine may also cause a rise. I take half a unit of insulin with a latte, just for the milk (I drink decaf).

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Spiker

If you add heavy whipping cream to tea or coffee it supposedly has no carbs or sugar. Does it act the same on your BG as milk?

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[PaulinaB]

Hi. The blood sugar increase you are seeing is miniscule and doesn't need any insulin shots. I think you may be confused about which insulin is which. Basal is the 24hour one and Bolus is the meal-time rapid. As long as you can get the fasting blood sugar somewhere between 5 -7 mmol and try to get the Bolus carb-count right then you should never need to worry about tea/coffee drinks with no-sugar added.

My bad, I meant it delays my bolus, not basal.

 

[Spiker]

You say you are drinking the tea after meals, so how can you tell that the insulin rise is not due to the meal?

But if you are consistently, repeatedly getting a 0.7 rise or thereabouts just from drinking plain black tea, without any food, then I would guess that is the caffeine. Some people have the same response to Diet Coke. If you want to control that 0.7 rise then by all means take an appropriate bolus dose with the tea. As Noblehead says, most people wouldn't, but if you get a consistent rise then it does make sense to dose for it.

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[PaulinaB]

You say you are drinking the tea after meals, so how can you tell that the insulin rise is not due to the meal?

But if you are consistently, repeatedly getting a 0.7 rise or thereabouts just from drinking plain black tea, without any food, then I would guess that is the caffeine. Some people have the same response to Diet Coke. If you want to control that 0.7 rise then by all means take an appropriate bolus dose with the tea. As Noblehead says, most people wouldn't, but if you get a consistent rise then it does make sense to dose for it.

Because it doesn't seem to happen when I don't drink tea after a meal :

I guess I'll do some testing to see what exactly is my reaction to tea and how big is it... Thanks everyone!

 

[Spiker]

Because it doesn't seem to happen when I don't drink tea after a meal :

I guess I'll do some testing to see what exactly is my reaction to tea and how big is it... Thanks everyone!

So are you saying you can predict what your post-meal blood sugar should be so accurately, that you can consistently detect a variation of 0.7 (or thereabouts) and attribute it to the tea, as opposed to a carb counting error or a bolus ratio error or a food labelling error, etc? For me I would need to have perfect control and lots of repeated incidents, to make that judgement. I'm not saying it's not possible, just quite surprising.

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[PaulinaB]

So are you saying you can predict what your post-meal blood sugar should be so accurately, that you can consistently detect a variation of 0.7 (or thereabouts) and attribute it to the tea, as opposed to a carb counting error or a bolus ratio error or a food labelling error, etc? For me I would need to have perfect control and lots of repeated incidents, to make that judgement. I'm not saying it's not possible, just quite surprising.

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Hehe, ok, maybe I'm just overreacting and blaming tea for my poor control That DOES sound like something I would do...

 

[itconor]

I Drink a lot of Tea and coffee. i even use small drop of milk in these, never really seems to effect me

 

[Spiker]

Hehe, ok, maybe I'm just overreacting and blaming tea for my poor control That DOES sound like something I would do...

Your control's not poor, it's pretty good. Just not perfect, but nobody's perfect, and trying to be perfect in this game is the route to madness.

 

[shaynie]

Mo


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[Hooked]

What about drinking decaffeinated tea? That's what I have at home, with a tiny drop of milk, more for colour than anything. Doesn't seem to affect me at all.... not that I've noticed anyway.