Thanks very much for your response.
Actually, I don't take any significant amount of long-acting insulin at all: I take just a tiny amount of Insulatard last thing at night. (This prevents my blood sugar rising overnight.)
I take 11 units of Actrapid first thing in the morning, then a further 11 units at 11.00am. Also, I take 6 units of Novorapid at 4.00pm. (I find that the effects of the 11.00am Actrapid and the afternoon Novorapid both run out together at 12.00 midnight.)
I check my blood sugar at 11.00pm. And so long as I didn't eat unwisely during the evening, I know that my blood sugar will fall by 2mmol/l by 12.00 midnight. (If my blood sugar is 4mmol/l at 11.00 - which it usually is, more or less - then I know I need to eat half a slice of the Co-Op's wholemeal wheat bread to balance the fall of 2mmol/l.)
Without the 'basal' insulin, I know that I will sleep safely. And I start each day anew.
So, to answer your question, I start off eating rye bread slowly. And as the insulin kicks in, I eat more, and then again more. I continue eating it until 4.00. (It's very good with Biona Pear & Apple Spread.) I don't eat any after 4.00pm. (If I did, then my blood sugar would become elevated later in the evening and perhaps even overnight.) And I find that the blood-sugar moderating effect lasts throughout the evening. (I'll explain what I mean below.)
I eat other stuff too, of course. But I never have to do any 'carb counting'. I only need to check my blood sugar quite a lot: on average, once per waking hour. (Mostly I use the ultra-cheap and thoroughly reliable Betachek Visual or Glucoflex-R - they're produced by an Australian company, incidentally.) I find that I eat around 225g of rye bread per day.
Apparently, what I do is called 'feeding the insulin'. And without the rye bread, I couldn't possibly do that safely.
And indeed I find it very striking that, even at 11.00pm, I can comfortably tolerate low blood-sugar readings - and relaxedly take action - which previously would have left me on the floor.
I was diagnosed about a year ago I'm also in uni (doing a chem degree with electives in biomed) I felt then very much the way you do now and I can honestly say what brought me the most comfort and satisfaction was gaining knowledge on how to control my blood levels, the effects of different macronutrients and metabolic factors etc. So the advice I would give is: accumulate as much knowledge as you can and just control the hell out of your levels. You have almost complete control of your diabetes there's no need to increase the risk of complications, just get a firm handle on it now and you'll be grateful for it in the future.
Hi, Omar101, while i very much agree with your posts re diet - veg and beans are a staple - i am not quite sure re your comment about being able to have 'almost complete control of ...diabetes' - maybe it works for you, but it has not always worked for me, and i would have been very l fed up if i had hoped that i could exactly control things day to day and then found i could not - over the years I have accepted i don't always know why something has happened, and then have just adjusted insulin and/or food. The problem , as one consultant explained it to me, is that there are so many different hormones circulating at any one time - some of which may have an anti insulin effect, and others the opposite, and that this means that control is an inexact science, different for everyone, partly depending on genetic factors, and also on any residual insulin, C-Peptide, amylin, etc.
So I got diagnosed with T1 a couple of weeks ago, and at first I was surprisingly OK with it. Obviously I was shocked as it's a pretty rare disease, and I thought I was past the most common age for diagnosis, but at the time I just wanted to get out of hospital. I went back to uni the Monday after I was discharged and normality resumed.
However, lately I've just been so angry at everything. I know I shouldn't be as everyone around me has been really supportive and there are worst things that could have happened. It's just that it's all so unfair. I know that's how life is but seriously, the chances of me getting this were 17 in 100,000 - that's 0.017%. Yeah, maybe I should go buy a lottery ticket.
People keep telling me that it will get easier, and I believe them. But easier is a comparative....it's never going to be easy, and Iife's already hard enough as it is without this thrown in the mix. It dawned on me the other day that I will never "get better", there won't be a recovery, I'm just going to have to deal with this every single day for the rest of my life. It's rather sad when you realise that you can literally die by eating.
I'm scared because it's a chronic condition with the cure still a good ten years away (at least), I'm scared because I'm a recovered anorexic who used to suffer from anxiety/depression and this is going to make everything bad again. I'm stressed because it's March already and my end of year exams are less than two months away and I don't have the time to go to endless GP appointments and clinics even though I know they're necessary.
It annoys me that there are so many foods out there that I haven't tried and now I probably can't. It really irks me that my stomach is now a plateau of small bruises (yes, I'm very vain). I'm just so sick of everything and I would sell my soul to have a normal functioning pancreas that produces insulin.
The worst thing is I'm a biomed student so I know exactly what's going to happen if I don't manage my diabetes properly. I also know that even with proper management I might still get complications. Because even if it's a small percentage, I'm part of the 0.017%.
(Sorry that this is basically a reeeeally long rant)
XIX
Re ALMOST - thanks, Omar101, for clarifying your meaning - I realise you are very aware of the complexities, and also that things are so much better these days, but my own early experience over 30 years ago comes back to me when i see a thread where someone says 'more than a little scared' . ......... i was fairly confident in the early years of Type 1, i had good control, i was on the same insulins i had used since diagnosis, I was buying extra test strips, doing a lot of tests, and was on a many injection regime with no base rate, due to my insulin sensitivity. - i was swimming regularly, a once a week routine, at a time the pool was nearly empty, and i wore a warning bracelet. My consultant had discussed hypos and exercise, and in particular swimming dangers, and i had followed all the rules . I tested just before and after every swim, and always had a larger pre swim snack than I usually needed, just to be safe, but, even so......................i have no memory at all of what happened less than 15 mins into a slow swim............. just that I came to flat on my back, on the cold, wet, poolside concrete, with the 3 lifesavers who had dived in to rescue me standing over me. i had apparently passed out and all 3 had noticed me suddenly sink underwater. An ambulance arrived. I realised i had been handed a mars bar. I recovered quickly but my lungs had taken in water and i developed a painful chest infection. However, the main effect was that my confidence was shattered - I realised that, at least for me, things were rather more scary than i had thought ......ALMOST
I guess I should explain that I mean everyone has their off days and blood sugar incidents but noting them and taking into account your own personal factors can really make incidents like that negligable on your overall (yearly?) blood sugar averages especially when you have a good routine going as I do. For example realising that stress can be affecting your cortisol levels and in turn your body's absorption of glucose allows you to either compensate for or simply understand what is happening and why, to me that's control as opposed to seeing a rise in bs and simply accepting that it will happen for no reason and going on with my day not knowing what to do about it.
Thanks for sharing your experience, you're right those kind of incidents can be hard to predict/control. I was talking specifically about limiting long term complications however, which in my opinion is very controllable in comparison.Re ALMOST - thanks, Omar101, for clarifying your meaning - I realise you are very aware of the complexities, and also that things are so much better these days, but my own early experience over 30 years ago comes back to me when i see a thread where someone says 'more than a little scared' . ......... i was fairly confident in the early years of Type 1, i had good control, i was on the same insulins i had used since diagnosis, I was buying extra test strips, doing a lot of tests, and was on a many injection regime with no base rate, due to my insulin sensitivity. - i was swimming regularly, a once a week routine, at a time the pool was nearly empty, and i wore a warning bracelet. My consultant had discussed hypos and exercise, and in particular swimming dangers, and i had followed all the rules . I tested just before and after every swim, and always had a larger pre swim snack than I usually needed, just to be safe, but, even so......................i have no memory at all of what happened less than 15 mins into a slow swim............. just that I came to flat on my back, on the cold, wet, poolside concrete, with the 3 lifesavers who had dived in to rescue me standing over me. i had apparently passed out and all 3 had noticed me suddenly sink underwater. An ambulance arrived. I realised i had been handed a mars bar. I recovered quickly but my lungs had taken in water and i developed a painful chest infection. However, the main effect was that my confidence was shattered - I realised that, at least for me, things were rather more scary than i had thought ......
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