SimonP78
Well-Known Member
In my n=1 experience of dieticians and children (I was 7) I found them distinctly unpleasant and useless. YMMV of course.
They were completely mainlined on no sugar anywhere (despite my being very active and running low all the time with an old-school HbA1C of ~4.7, so rather low), I often got told off when I admitted I had sugar on my Weetabix for breakfast and that I ate chocolate bars (e.g. Penguins and other normal foods available at school at breaktime). Not very a useful approach for anyone but least of all for a child IMO. As soon as I no longer needed to go (out of paediatric care and into the adult system) I stopped going.
Perhaps the mantra has now changed, but certainly then they were inflexible and read from their sheet of teachings even when a little bit of common sense might have indicated that not everyone should be treated the same, and not everyone's diabetes is the same.
Avoid, imo, just eat sensibly and bear in mind that things that are sweet should probably be treats/hypo treatments. Life is easier nowadays with MDI, you can dose for sweet things. I wouldn't go low carb, especially not for a growing child, though sometimes eating less at a given meal makes life easier as any errors in carb-insulin ratio produce a smaller high or low (the latter being of more concern). But this very much depends on ratios and how much your daughter is eating - it's more a thing for adults I'd say. e.g. I could eat 150g of carbs at a single meal, but then taking the 15U of Novorapid I'd typically require would not work, it would need to be split into ~3 doses and any inaccuracies would cause massive under/overshoots. Equally unless I'm doing exercise (so don't need the bolus anyway) eating this many carbs isn't very good for you at all, so it goes back to eating sensibly and not mainlining on solely carbs.
They were completely mainlined on no sugar anywhere (despite my being very active and running low all the time with an old-school HbA1C of ~4.7, so rather low), I often got told off when I admitted I had sugar on my Weetabix for breakfast and that I ate chocolate bars (e.g. Penguins and other normal foods available at school at breaktime). Not very a useful approach for anyone but least of all for a child IMO. As soon as I no longer needed to go (out of paediatric care and into the adult system) I stopped going.
Perhaps the mantra has now changed, but certainly then they were inflexible and read from their sheet of teachings even when a little bit of common sense might have indicated that not everyone should be treated the same, and not everyone's diabetes is the same.
Avoid, imo, just eat sensibly and bear in mind that things that are sweet should probably be treats/hypo treatments. Life is easier nowadays with MDI, you can dose for sweet things. I wouldn't go low carb, especially not for a growing child, though sometimes eating less at a given meal makes life easier as any errors in carb-insulin ratio produce a smaller high or low (the latter being of more concern). But this very much depends on ratios and how much your daughter is eating - it's more a thing for adults I'd say. e.g. I could eat 150g of carbs at a single meal, but then taking the 15U of Novorapid I'd typically require would not work, it would need to be split into ~3 doses and any inaccuracies would cause massive under/overshoots. Equally unless I'm doing exercise (so don't need the bolus anyway) eating this many carbs isn't very good for you at all, so it goes back to eating sensibly and not mainlining on solely carbs.