Rolled Oats...

[GlazedDoughnuts]

Hi All,

I tend to eat a lot of rolled oats on gym days, bulking for muscle mass and all that.

I'm perfectly aware that reducing my carbs and adopting a ketogenic diet will help lower my blood sugars, and the easy way to stop elevated levels would be to cut down on the carb intake, but I'd rather not do that and try reach my goals of gaining muscle mass.

Anyway, I'm noticing huge spikes/elevated blood sugar levels with rolled oats. I deal with plain sugars and wholemeal bread much better than rolled oats.

For example if I eat wholemeal bread and count 40g carbs worth and inject 4 units of Novorapid that tends to bring me back to near enough whatever level my blood sugar was at before eating. The same applies for Basmati rice and various other things I eat.

However my last protein shake contained 35g protein, 120grams (67g of carbs per 100g) of rolled oats and 25 grams of dextrose. As my blood sugars were at 8.8 I decided to count 3 units for correction, 15 units for the rolled oats + dextrose and 2 units for the 40-50% of protein that may be converted to glucose.

My blood sugar reading 2 hours and 15 minutes later was 14.4 :***:

I've just taken 8 units for correction and will test in an hour to see what's happening.

Is this normal? I'm quiet happy to simply inject more Insulin to counter the high blood sugars to bring my levels back to normal after 2 hours. However I get huge spikes after an hour, seeing figures of 15-18 is a regular, will these spikes cause issues down the line?

 

[AMBrennan]

I see two confounding variables here...

Any chance it's the exercise doing it? Depending on the intensity of the exercise, you may see an increase in BG. Try having the shake for breakfast without the exercise and test again.

Another thing is the amount of carbs - based on your example it's 3x normal meal. What happens if you have 120g carbs worth of rice?

Personally, I haven't had any bad experiences with oats which I have for breakfast (*much* less of a spike than Weetabix or other cereal) and at the gym... I tend to stick to 50g worth of carbs though

 

[noblehead]

120g of carbs in one go is a lot and would send my bg shooting for the stars. To be honest I've never experimented with these shakes but the oats are highly processed so will undoubtedly cause a postprandial bg rise, you're far better (time allowing) having a bowl of Jumbo porridge oats with some seeds, yogurt and fruit added, that way you get a good mixture of carbs, fat and protein.

 

[AMBrennan]

Oh and another thing: Sports supplement manufacturers quite like Maltodextrin which is not usually listed as sugar on the nutrition label but acts, in my experience, just like pure glucose on BG. Maybe some of that has made it's way into your shake.

 

[Anonymous]

Do you have to do it with rolled oats ? I use a low carb protein shake - total is about 6g (from memory) including the milk.

 

[Hellbunny]

Could it of been the 25grams of dextrose which spiked you? Could you cut that down to say 10g of dextrose and see what happens

 

[GlazedDoughnuts]

Good Evening All,

Sorry I've not replied, been very busy.

AMBrennan, the morning shake is taken and no exercise is done afterwards, other than walking to the bus stop, I normally lift weights at the gym in the evening.

noblehead, you hit the nail on the head, the reason I resort to protein shake+oats is the lack of time to cook a wholesome meal. I tend to cook a lot from scratch as it is, but trying to pre-cook every meal for the next day would mean I never leave the kitchen.

swimmer2, I was using a low carb protein shake, but as I'm trying to maximise muscle growth I'm eating a fair bit of carbs.

Hellbunny, unfortunately these spikes have been in place before taking dextrose, I purposely added dextrose into the mix.

One thing that's a bit iffy about my insulin is that I don't have a full long acting insulin, I have Humalog Mix 50 instead and the trouble there is I can't increase Basal without increasing fast acting Basal. Ill book an appointment with the docs and ask for Lantus/Levemir as I am on fast acting now and not sure why I still have a mix...

Thanks for the input all, I'll try other sources of carbs, I hope it's simply not a case of I have to lay off the carbs!

 

[maureen-williams]

I began to wonder why my bg went up and stayed up after breakfast, when I usually have a sugar free cereal. I tested all my cereals, and the one culprit was Porridge (made with rolled oats and water, adding a small amount of soya milk). I still cook it - but not so often!!
Maureen :thumbup:

 

[Hopeful Alfie]

I don't have a problem with rolled oats, and have porridge with semi-skimmed + water every morning, BUT I DO benefit from them as they have reduced my cholesterol from 6.8 to about 4.0. This pleased me AND my GP