• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

Type 1: Rice.... not so nice?!?

Postleneo

Well-Known Member
Messages
293
Location
West Midlands
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
Hi guys - Just thought i'd share and seek your views, opinions advice regarding white rice. Thought id have a treat for my tea last night and have a chicken curry with rice... mmm nice some may say may say... but not for my BS levels!. Read up on eating rice and have been lead to believe that rice is very easy to digest with a high GI factor and normally digests within 1-2.5 hours which i thought would cause a quick spike in glucose levels. Just before tea last night was quite high readings at 8.7 so gave a correction dose with the insulin needed to cover my meal. Two hours post meal reading was 10.2 .... success I thought as normally they are about 13-18 mmols!. Anyways.... i thought Iwould just check at the 2 and a half hour mark post meal and they had plumited to 6.3 mmols... inorder to prevent a further drop i gave myself 27g carb snack.... an hour later my levels were 11.1. As at this stage i still had IOB i predicted that by bed time my BS would be in the region of 6.5 - 7 mmols.... not the case!! 2 hours later my levels were 16.8 mmols - as at this time i had no IOB i gave a 2 unit correction which should have brought me down to acceptable levels considering the possibility of a slight drop in the night - however by 5am my BS was 14.2mmols!!! is anyone else effected this way by rice?? - if so how do you deal with it?? would be interested in knowing how rice really does effect BS... is there an initial rise... followed by a drop...followed by a delayed spike??? I am totally at a loss.... my hope is to understand the effect as i really do not want to give up on one of the very few "luxury" foods i have left!!
 
I don't eat rice because I just can't get it right! To be honest though since stopping eating rice I have dramatically reduced my carb intake in any case, just for general ease of control, but when I was eating rice I would get what I would call the 'rice attack' many, many hours later. Many a morning I have woken up with a massive high where the rice has been haunting me...

I'm sure there is a way to get round it - but for me I now have 250g defrosted, microwaved and food-processed Waitrose frozen cauliflower (10g CHO) with salt, pepper and a pinch of nutritional yeast to add flavour - often I'll whizz a load of frozen coriander into it too -, and have my curry/stir fry/chilli on top of that.

I appreciate it's very different to rice - I consider it an alternative rather than a substitute - but it's so yummy that even my husband eats this now instead of rice as well! Saves me cooking tandem menu options!

As I say, @Postleneo , there is in all likelihood an approach for rice that will work after trial, error and testing, and I'm sure someone who's got a good handle on the rice thing will be along soon to give their ideas.

 
I agree with snapsy, rice is a no no food for me, like eating sugar and I can never reliably predict where my BG levels are going to end up so it's not worth the mental strain, I now whizz cauliflower in the blender to a fine grain, add chilli flakes and seasoning and then microwave for 2 minutes with a tablespoon of water and it's as good as rice with a curry for me.
 
I'll eat rice as an occasional treat but do see a very late rise like you experienced.

I just make sure that if I'm going to eat rice I'll have it for lunch as that means that I can keep an eye on my Libre readings for the rest of the day. I tend to bolus about 60% upfront and spread the remaining insulin over the next 6-8 hours as corrections. By bedtime the rice has thankfully (mostly) stopped raising my blood sugars but I do end up doing a fair few corrections throughout the day.

I have still not perfected my approach but would much rather do battle with the rice during the day!
 
I personally am ok with rice but noodles are a different story And consequently i haven't eaten any for quite a while now.

Its only since i have been using a pump that i have really noticed this extended and delayed rise in BG. I have to say that when on MDI i wasn't that good a diabetic and my carb ciunting was pretty poor too so some how all this seems to have been hidden.

I intend to give the freestyle Libre a go soon so it might be a worthy exercise to have noodles whilst using it to monitor the effects of my noodle meal.

Regards

Martin
 
are you using a pump or MDI?

Because the curry is full of (good) fat, it slows down the absorbtion of the rice hence your post meal drop. You would need to split your injections/ bolus over about 4 hours if anything like me which is where a pump is handy.
 
Maybe I’m interpreting the story incorrectly, but the situation reads a bit different for me:

-You mentioned taking a correction dose (insulin) before eating. That presents the possibility of overcorrecting.

-You corrected (glucose) at 2.5hrs after a reading of 6.3mmol with 27g of carbs. Did you give yourself insulin at this point or was that strictly a correction? If I ate 27g of carbs I’d just 10 mmol/l too.

-You mentioned that you still had insulin on board, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything to me. With a meal like chicken curry you have a variety of possible foods that affect your blood sugar differently: rice which often causes a short but volatile spike, chicken which is high in protein with some fat that can cause a delayed (but very minor) spike, and other foods like potatoes, carrots, and onions (the former being much more to consider than the latter).

I guess what I’m suggesting is the possibility that the rice wasn’t the issue. It was a combination of overcorrections with both insulin and glucose to create this rollercoaster experience.

For me, the good thing about high GI foods like rice are that they spike me very quickly, but my levels return to normal shortly after. That can be a little scary and tempt you to correct, but that’s literally the nature of a high GI food versus a low GI food: one spikes you quickly and returns to normal while the other causes a very gradual spike. I'm fortunate to be on a Dexcom CGM so I can monitor this spike, but I realize that's not always an option for others.
 

I put however much cauliflower we want through the food processor for cauli rice. I would usually say it's also much cheaper that way, but currently caulis are relatively expensive and small. However to my point.

I found microwaving the cauli rice made it too wet for my taste. I stir fry it in the wok, over a high heat. You can either add a tiny amount of oil (as I usually do to keep my fat intake up), or use a dry pan. It works best with a very hot wok, keeping the "rice" moving. It literally takes no longer than the microwave option, and in my view results in a much close assimilation. Yummmmmm.
 

Probably would have spiked had you eaten the rice in isolation or with other foods that were low in fat, but chicken curry tends to be high in fat so you can experience a dip (if you inject all your insulin for the meal upfront) and then experience high bg levels several hours after.

When eating Chinese food on MDI (injections) I would split the bolus dose, injecting some ahead of the meal and the rest 2-3 hours later, on a pump you can use a Dual-Wave bolus.
 
The only thing to do in this situation is to try it again!

I agree with @Engineer88 in that it was a combination of rice/fat, your insulin started working before the carbs had chance to be absorbed. and then adding more carbs as a correction for the 'low' added to the later high. Although I haven't cracked the rice and curry verses insulin conundrum 100% I do 40-50% basal just before I sit down to eat, then do the rest about 2 hrs later - much like a pumper using a dual wave pattern. In your situation and I got the low reading I wouldn't have taken a correction as I know the meal was still adding to my BS and would continue for quite some time.

edit: and ergo agree with @noblehead too!
 
I eat rice in moderate portions. I usually have basmati rice as I find it spikes slower. I always measure my rice carefully as calculating by eye can cause errors.

I agree with @TorqPenderloin I think your later high may have been due to,your 27g carbs to correct your low. Personally I wouldn't have eaten anything if I was 6.3. I'd just have kept checking frequently to see if my BS was going to drop too low, and correct with extra carbs at that point. I'd have corrected with glucose tablets and then had a smaller amount of long acting carbs.

I think starting high before the meal and overcorrecting with food after are a big part of the problem here.
 
Thanks for all your input guys will take it all on board - still very much on a learning curve after 13 months - cant wait to go on the DAFNE course as at moment im just taking account of carbs eaten and not the effects of fat and protein etc and like with the chinese meal with rice a sudden drop of about 4 mmols within half an hour pannicked me a little hence the correction with food. I must say i appreciate all your indepth responces and find your advice and comments more informative that my diabetes nurse and consultant who have merely stated the likes of "just try changing your ratio from 1:12 to 1-11 at lunch and see how it goes" and "dont really need to know the post meal readings just the pre meal readings" etc thank you so much this forum and people are so helpful and will definately give the 'colliflour rice' a go!!!
 
Hi,

Have you tried brown rice? It is lower
on the glycemic index and so takes longer to digest and that means that you shouldn't have such a spike. White rice, is obviously full of starch. Before you boil it, wash it thoroughly and after it is cooked, pour boiling hot water over it, that would rinse quite a lot of the starch away too. Fried rice would not spike so quickly, because of the fat content, but not good if you are on a diet.
 

I eat rice, but only a small amount, it goes around the outside ring of the curry, so it does look there is more. It can spike, same as pasta, but I find rice to be more of the culprit.
 
Sugar is bad for you. Rice is a readily degraded polymer of sugar. Apart from caries, rice has the same effect as a slow intake of sugar.
The vitamin, mineral and fibre content of rice are trivial compared to vegetables.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn More.…