Protein to glucose

A lot of Diabetics do not realise this Carol. If you need to gain weight then look to increasing calories rather than carbs. If you can eat more fat then do so as fat has more calories than protein or carbs.

The body has the ability to convert protein to glucose when required which explains why people who eat a predominantly protein based diet still have the energy to function well !

Re: Protien to glucose

roughly 58% of protein and 10% of fat convert to glucose along with the carbs, they take a lot longer.
Some people take this into account when bolusing and inject a bit up front for the carbs and then inject some more later to take account of the other components of the meal.
It is a lot of calculation, personally I only take protein into account if it is a meal that is heavy on protein/fat and low carb. I only have a few meals like that and use an educated guestimate ( in reality often not enough ) Normally I expect my normal ratios (or even the basal) reflect my day to day protein intake.

If you want to know more about bolusing to take account of protein and fat, there is a group elsewhere that discuss it .
If you google: protein diabetes "Total available glucose" , you will find a couple of blogs with links to these discusssions.

sorry!
The proportions are still the same though.

Best this is to test before and two hours after a meal with protein that is low carb to see how it is affecting you.

carty said:

I saw on another thread that 60% of protein turns to glucose can someone explain please I eat a lot of protein because I need to gain weight and i dont want to eat many carbs I have just got HbA1c to 6.9 with a struggle so maybe I ought to look at the amount of protein I eat
CAROL

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Carol.

Hope this helps........

Proteins are usually used for structural and enzymic purposes and only broken down when there is an excess or during starvation.

When there's an excess of proteins, proteins can be broken down and converted (depending on its structure) into acetyl-CoA, pyruvate or oxaloacetate. Acetyl-CoA is usually used for fat synthesis and pyruvate and oxaloacetate can undergo gluconeogenesis, making glucose in the process. However, fat is a much more efficient storage molecule.

During starvation, proteins are broken down as a last effort to provide nutrients, and the acetyl-CoA, pyruvate and oxaloacetate generated are usually used directly in the Krebs cycle. However, in the liver where more nutrients are stored, gluconeogenesis can still occur to provide glucose for the rest of the body.

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:wink: