lentils and insulin cover

[Sanober]

Hi my DN said don't cover pulses with insulin
I had lentil curry. No other ingredients bar onions.spices water ginger. I felt awful and knew i was high
3 hours later i was 13.7 ( am on fixed small.amounts of basal/bolus).

 

[noblehead]

Lentils are 15/17g of carbs per 100g cooked weight and quite low on the glycemic index at coming in at around 30.

I still need to cover these meals with insulin and would expect to see a rise much like you have if I didn't, really it's up to you to experiment to find how much insulin you need to cover your curry....it might be you may need to give a very small dose initially then another 2 hours later....similar to eating a meal with a high fat content.

 

[Sanober]

Thank you Nigel!

I will try a wee half unit next i have soya, lentils, beans, hommous etc and see how I go. I've been pigging out a wee bit (back to normal weight now) over the festive period so now back to healthier regime. I do tend to eat pulses for lunch so this is handy info. Where do you check GI contents?

 

[noblehead]

Where do you check GI contents?

I use a reference index in a book by Rick Gallop which explains all you need to know about gi and eating sensibly, here's a list of foods with their gi rating but it's not comprehensive but covers most everyday foods:

http://www.the-gi-diet.org/lowgifoods/

 

[smidge]

Hey Sanober!

Hope you're well! I find that i need to cover beans and pulses exactly to the ratio I would for any other carb - I'd have your experience if I didn't! The whole GI thing doesn't seem to work for me - a carb is a carb :roll: You'll have to experiment to find out! When this has happened to me, I've given a correction dose of bolus of a single unit to bring it back to a more reasonable level. People say you shouldn't in case it takes you too low, but it's always worked for me!

Smidge

 

[Snodger]

I was talking to a DAFNE dietician about this the other day, and she admitted that although they are supposed to teach that pulses don't need to be covered by insulin, experience had taught her that everyone is slightly different. So now she says, err on the side of caution but you may need to inject for it; it's a question of working out what works for you.

which is all basically what noblehead said, but I thought it was interesting that very specialist HCPs have begun to realise this/teach this too. An ordinary dietician without experience might not have reached this level of understanding though.

The other thing to bear in mind is that if you are eating fat with the lentils, (eg ghee) it will make the GI of the whole meal a bit lower.

 

[phoenix]

I certainly include the carbs from pulses when injecting but you do have to be careful with very low GI things that you don't go low if the insulin starts kicking in before the food . WIth a pump I can give a bolus over a period of time. With injections I occasionally used a split dose (difficult to do if you are on tiny amounts)
If you want a comprehensive data base then you can use the one on the GI website..sometimes though it can be a bit too detailed as includes so many variations. (lentil has 24 records, various types of lentils and cooking methods)

http://www.glycemicindex.com/index.php
You might want to investigate chana dal,(bengal gram dal in the GI data base) extremely low GI.
http://www.mendosa.com/chanadal.html

 

[Sanober]

Thanks for the information and links everyone.

Despite my concern, the DN insists I shouldn't cover as I did come back down later. Yes, but about 5 hours later... she's worried that I could go hypo as it's a low GI food. Here's my readings to show.

12:00pm 7.6 (pre meal read)
2:45pm 13.7
5:00pm 9.8

Next time I'll take half a unit to see if it helps.

 

[Fallenstar]

Hi Sanober
Hope things are settling for you, Dieticians and DAFNE don't want you to/or think you should need to Bolus for A LOT of foods, but you will find over time as you did with the Lentils that you probably will have to, as many of us do. And because there is no official guidelines for doing this you will just have to work it out over time with testing , but you will!
I, like Smidge use very small correction..or split doses , of say 1 or 2 units and it works fine for me.
You will have to experiment , and over time see how you go, but you don't want spikes as high as that on a daily basis, so you may either have to forgo the pulses, or Bolus a tiny bit and be ready to test and have a small fruit snack later etc.
Glad you are feeling better and good luck with it all