SamJB said:Lantus is used to cover glucose produced by your liver between meals and overnight. This doesn't stop when you low carb, so you will need to continue your Lantus. My Lantus dose has not changed since low carbing.
In fact, when you low carb your body will enter a state of glucneogenesis where your liver creates glucose from protein and fatty acids that you eat. So you will need to continue your fast acting insulin, but at a reduced rate.
Even if you consume almost no carbs in a meal, you will need fast acting insulin. This is because when you eat your large intestine stretches as the food enters. This triggers glucogen production in anticipation of the meal so that you get an immediate high benefit from the meal. Therefore your fast acting dose is determined by how full you are. This is what I go on. Works a treat, hardly any hypos or highs.
Hope this helps.
Happy_Horse said:Hi, I'm thinking of going on a low carb diet and I want to know if you come off your night time dose or you just reduce it. (I am currently on 15 units per night)
how do you work out what to bolus for your protein based meal. I'm really struggling with omelettes and a bit of bacon in the mornings. I'm having to guess, i've kind of got it down to 2 units now which semi seems to work. Same with Chicken on it's own I think I need about 1.5 units but it's so hard to determine.
SamJB said:how do you work out what to bolus for your protein based meal. I'm really struggling with omelettes and a bit of bacon in the mornings. I'm having to guess, i've kind of got it down to 2 units now which semi seems to work. Same with Chicken on it's own I think I need about 1.5 units but it's so hard to determine.
I'm going to distinguish between bolus for meals and bolus for protein. When I bolus for low carb meals, it doesn't matter what's in it meat/veg/cheese/eggs - I will need to bolus for how full I am, or judge the volume of food based on previous experiance. I'm careful not to eat too much protein as it causes a spike around 2-3 hours after eating as it's converted into glucose by my liver. I go by the rule that a chicken breast sized protion of meat requires 1 unit of insulin 2 hours after eating.
For example, when I have a chicken breast with salad for lunch my 2-hour-after-eating level may be consistent with the before meal reading, but my before dinner reading will be 2 mmol/l higher. For me that is what one unit of insulin will reduce my levels by, so I give myself one unit of insulin 2 hours after lunch. Anything smaller than a chicken breast doesn't affect the spike I get from protein.
I tend to stick to smaller portions as I don't want to be pumping myself full of insulin. Because for me the escence of low carbing is that small amounts of insulin leads to smaller mistakes, both high and low.
noblehead said:Faith, they say protein in the absence of carbs converts to glucose by around 50%, this is why low-carbers often have to inject several times a day due to the delayed spike, I didn't know this till I joined the forum and tried low-carbing!
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