Thank you all for your replies. Yes she is pretty much off insulin for the past week or so. We didnt do it by choice, she was going hypo every night when she was on insulin.
When she eats around 30g of good carbs per meal she needs no insulin. She spikes to around 200 and then back down to 100 within 4 hours all by herself no basal no bolus in time for the next meal. There have been no nightly hypos since she went off insulin either.
If she eats more than that or eats bad carbs like juice or pancakes or similar she spikes higher stays there longer. It only happened once. We gave her insulin and she came back down albeit she was already on her way down.
So she eats 90g of good carbs a day and needs no insulin. This is less than what we were advised around 150 which led to me posing this thread. Thinking back, if i remove all the junk she used to eat prior to diagnosis she was still eating similar to what she eats now. All we have essentially done is replace white rice with brown and bread with whole wheat and taken out juices and replaced chocolate milk with goats milk.
We also have a cgm so we watch her glucose like a hawk.
Hope this helps clarify
I brought up two ordinary children of a fairly low carb diet and they were/are absolutely fine, both have become tall slender adults - neither had acne as teenagers. Even as tots, though, they would far rather have minced beef than chips, and once they could open the fridge my boiled eggs were gone, the roast chicken lost its legs and the cooked meat had teeth marks.
I know a lot of T1s maintain excellent sugar control by simply eating less carbs <30g a day. This is contrary to the advice we were given when leaving the hospital. We were told my 6 yr old T1 daughter needs 45-60 g carbs PER MEAL. Works out to around 130-180g carbs a day.
We try to stick to around 100g carbs a day. She is in honeymoon now so we have done this without any insulin for 3 days. I do see it spike to around 200-250 but it always comes back down within 2-3 hours. I wonder if I further reduce the carbs, would it harm her? Is there research on low carb diets for diabetic kids - long term growth issues? Once she is an adult she can certainly do keto - but she's just 6 now.
When she eats around 30g of good carbs per meal she needs no insulin. She spikes to around 200 and then back down to 100 within 4 hours all by herself no basal no bolus in time for the next meal. There have been no nightly hypos since she went off insulin either.
If she eats more than that or eats bad carbs like juice or pancakes or similar she spikes higher stays there longer. It only happened once. We gave her insulin and she came back down albeit she was already on her way down.
I'm not in the honeymoon based on my c-peptide being lower than a trace, I'm just really sensitive to insulin. If your daughter was hypoing on 6 units, you need to ask your consultant for dosing advice. I also use short-acting for meals. I stayed off insulin for two years (I'm older so had a longer honeymoon period than the average of 3 months.) I wish I'd just started with long-acting injections like suggested in a post above by @tim2000s, to preserve beta cells and possibly extend the honeymoon period, and in the end, it was more difficult to have to start with two types of insulin, when I had to start MDI.Do you bolus at meals? Are you in a honeymoon phase? My daughter started with 6 units of basal. Kept going hypo everynight until we eliminated basal altogether. Humalog is on an as needed basis.
I had not, thank you for sharing - I did read a lot about type1grid and Dr Bernstien, so this is right up that alley and pretty much similar to what I read elsewhere.
It is still fascinating to me that we are not able to conclusively, decisively, and authoritatively answer this simple question:
"How many carbs a day does a 6-year-old child MUST have for normal growth and development"
No - just ordinary - though they are special to me. I have been told that children on low carb diets are stunted in growth - but that does seem to be untrue - my son is about 6ft 3 and my daughter about 5ft 9 or 10. The problem is then switched to intelligence - both offspring have high IQs and university degrees. I think that a diet lacking in high carb foods ought to be considered the normal one, not the one usually given to children - the parents need to follow suite in order to keep up with them and the multitude of grandchildren - my son has 5 offspring so far.Hi there, did they have diabetes at all?
No - just ordinary - though they are special to me. I have been told that children on low carb diets are stunted in growth - but that does seem to be untrue - my son is about 6ft 3 and my daughter about 5ft 9 or 10. The problem is then switched to intelligence - both offspring have high IQs and university degrees. I think that a diet lacking in high carb foods ought to be considered the normal one, not the one usually given to children - the parents need to follow suite in order to keep up with them and the multitude of grandchildren - my son has 5 offspring so far.
There’s a lot to unpack in this thread, as a low carb T1 myself, there’s a lot I could say but just don’t have time right now.
But can I respectfully suggest that you modify the way you refer to carbs around your daughter - words like “good” and “bad” in relation to food can be incredibly psychologically damaging. Perhaps consider words like “fast” or “rapid” in relation to carbs like juice/pancakes and “slow” or “slower” in relation to the kind you’d think of as “good”. Talk about them in relation to the speed at which they impact her blood sugar, not as a moral judgment. Sometimes she’ll *need* fast carbs to get her out of a hypo - how do you think she’ll feel about that if she’s being conditioned to believe they’re “bad”?
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