Super low carb but high blood suagrs

There are 42 things that can affect our blood sugar @MikeMc , including stress, weather, illness. Having said that, are the high levels a new thing or has it been going on for a while? Have you checked your basal rate recently as that can and does change over time. Type 1's usually need to give insulin for protein when ultra low carbing as well.

I'd also change both of your insulin cartridges, in case that's the problem.

MikeMc said:

I eat super low carb. Pretty much the only carbs I have each day is the milk in my tea and coffee and yet I am battling high blood sugars all day long. Why?

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Do you mean you are battling highs today, or that you are usually battling highs all day?

Hi @MikeMc - welcome to the low-carb T1 high BG world!

It's mostly caused by metabolic stress and the hormones (cortisol, somatotropin, adreanalin and glucagon) will sense a long low BG and insist on maintaining a sufficient level for your organs to work. The dawn phenomenon and the Somogyi effect or other rebound mechanisms are examples of this and it's likely the latter is more relevant for the spikes you are seeing.

The recommended solution is to eat more carbs and use your insulin, because carb intake tells the hormones they're not needed.

I should also say that if your want to go all the way to keto you can also suppress the hormone response by adapting your metabolism to use fats as a source of glucose. There are some keto experts on here who can help.

Hi @MikeMc sorry to tell you that you cannot avoid injecting insulin by not eating carbs.
There are many things that raise our BG and our body needs insulin regardless of what we eat.
With Type 1 our injecting the insulin that our body would produce if our body had not attacked our beta cells.

You should have two different types of insulin - a fast acting and a slow acting.
The slow acting insulin works with the glucose that is constantly @dripped into your blood by your liver.
The fast acting is that one that works with shorter term rises caused by what you eat (not just carbs - in the absence of carbs, you body will break down protein into glucose) and your "mood" - stress (both mental and physical) can cause our BG to rise.
I am confused because both Levemir and Lantus are slow acting insulins. Do you have another insulin such as NovoRapid?

Whilst some people with Type 1 do eat a low carb diet they still need to take insulin, especially the slow acting one.
I tried a low carb diet for a short time but found it too much effort - different types of protein require different insulin to protein ratios and are broken down to glucose at different rates. It is much much easier to eat carbs.

I strongly recommend
- eating carbs
- talking to your doctor to get a fast acting insulin if you don't have one
- never ever ever stop taking a slow acting insulin

@MikeMc said he took Novorapid @In Response

Welcome to the forum @MikeMc. Given that you are nearly full carnivore, the rise in your blood sugars is the work of your liver converting protein to glucose for reasons beyond your current understanding. This is hard to calculate for but can be done. Dr Richard Bernstein gives info about doing so but I don't have any links. It's also near impossible to know when the liver does this conversion. I do low-carb, less than 100 carbs/day, and some days only around 50 carbs. I don't calculate for the meat but have found that the lower in carbs I go, my insulin(fast-acting) to carb ratio changes, from 1:10 for a day of 95 carbs and 1:5 for a day of 50 carbs and I believe the difference is due to the protein factor. If I were you, after checking to make sure I'm taking enough basal, I would record what and when I am eating /drinking and frequent blood sugar readings to see if light is cast on the situation. When your blood sugar is high it means you need more insulin, so if your basal is good, I would gradually increase the amount of the fast-acting insulin until my sugars are where I want them. Hope this helps.

Did you ever get to the bottom of this? Very intrigued as experiencing exactly the same. T1D for over 30 years and eat mainly protein based diet but do carb count and inject when eat carbs. However, when I eat full protein my sugars still go really high. I wondered if tgere is such a thing that if you have an intolerance this could be the reason for sugar to go high and maybe I need to try and figure out if this is the reason

jes27 said:

eat mainly protein based diet but do carb count and inject when eat carbs. However, when I eat full protein my sugars still go really high.

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Many of us have found we do need insulin for protein, especially when eating very low carb.

jes27 said:

Did you ever get to the bottom of this? Very intrigued as experiencing exactly the same. T1D for over 30 years and eat mainly protein based diet but do carb count and inject when eat carbs. However, when I eat full protein my sugars still go really high. I wondered if tgere is such a thing that if you have an intolerance this could be the reason for sugar to go high and maybe I need to try and figure out if this is the reason

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I'm low carb and eat most of it during the day. Evenings I have a high-protein meal and as others have said it "spikes" over a number of hours (5 to >10 for about 40g protein). Unfortunately, fast acting insulin is too quick and slow acting not fast enough, so I end up injecting small doses of fast acting over several hours - bothersome!

But it gets really complicated if that high protein meal is also high fat, which almost neutralises my insulin. So a big cheese feast ends up in an unstoppable slow BG rise - I can inject 10 units with no effect over 6 hours before it slowly comes back down.

Antje said: “Many of us have found we do need insulin for protein, especially when eating very low carb.”

I confirm this. Most of my injecting is for protein. This morning, *after two boiled eggs & two cups of tea*, ie almost no carb at all, I was up to twelve mmol [for some reason I can’t type figures in, so have to use words!] because I’d injected a bit less Fiasp than usually for fear of a hypo.

I can’t relax for a moment. It drives me wild.

Fully concur with the above comments!