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What's your diet and hba1c

What diet are you on and what's your hba1c?

  • low carb, hba1c less than 40

    Votes: 4 22.2%

  • low carb, hba1c less than 50

    Votes: 2 11.1%

  • low carb, hba1c greater than 50

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • reduced carb, hba1c less than 40

    Votes: 1 5.6%

  • reduced carb, hba1c less than 50

    Votes: 3 16.7%

  • reduced carb, hba1c greater than 50

    Votes: 1 5.6%

  • full carb, hba1c less than 40

    Votes: 4 22.2%

  • full carb, hba1c less than 50

    Votes: 1 5.6%

  • full carb, hba1c greater than 50

    Votes: 2 11.1%
  • Total voters
    18

zjed

Well-Known Member
Messages
110
Location
Melbourne, Australia
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
Dislikes
Lazy Doctors and Endos
I'm interested to see how T1s are going with various diets.
Have you been on a low carb or reduced carb diet for more than 3 months?
Can you get a low hba1c on a full carb diet?
For this poll please treat low carb <= 50g a day, reduced carb <= 100g a day.
 
I'd classify my diet as moderate carb - I generally have around 180g - but using your figures that'd be full carb. My last HbA1C was 28.
 
I have just started looking at my diet properly this week with a food diary and I have been having about 150g-170g of carbohydrate a day and managed to get a daily average b/g of 5.9 so if I kept that up that would be a HbA1c of 35 ish (5.4%) in a few months x I have been looking at the low carb diets too x
 
Yet another poll regarding how much people eat?
Any reason for it or just a thread to start ww3 yet again?
 
CarbsRok said:
Yet another poll regarding how much people eat?
Any reason for it or just a thread to start ww3 yet again?
Click to expand...
The best way to start ww3 is to criticise information other people are interested in.
If you're not interested, then just move along to the next thread, no one is making you read it.
I am interested in trends on how various carbs levels affect hba1c and have not seen a similar thread since I've been on this forum.
 
@tim2000s I think a low hba1c is around 30 but I'm having trouble getting there and am not sure if it's worth the effort (food restriction wise). I think anything under 40 is fantastic (reasonably low) and will hopefully stop long term complications.
 
@zjed, 30 would be considered to be lower than most non-diabetics.
 
According to Dr. Richard Bernstein a normal, healthy, thin, non-diabetic A1C will be within the range of 4.2-4.6 (well below 30).

30 is in the middle of the range http://www.diabetes.co.uk/what-is-hba1c.html has for non diabetics. It's what I consider low.
For the purpose of this poll, I set the lowest level at 40, which I think shows great success no matter what diet you're on.
 
I eat 30-35 g carb daily and my last two HbA1cs were 37 and 39. On MDI, sometimes with Libre.

OTOH, my hair is getting thinner and thinner.
 
zjed said:
According to Dr. Richard Bernstein a normal, healthy, thin, non-diabetic A1C will be within the range of 4.2-4.6 (well below 30).
Click to expand...
Yes, Bernstein's view is interesting, however, statistically, you'd expect the Hba1C to be distributed on a normal or maybe slightly skewed curve. Given the "normal" range is 20-42 mmol/mol, anything below 30 is going to be less than half the population. I'm not saying that this isn't possible, just that in some cases, Bernstein's views can be quite extreme.
 
see Mendoza's blog how he investigated Dr Bernstein's claims about HBA1c norms http://www.healthcentral.com/diabetes/c/17/59130/normal-a1c-level/
also this is from the US NHANES data (National health and nutrition examination survey)
The first table shows an increase in HbA1c levels in the last 2 evaluations and they withdrew the data for double checking; the paper I got it from is discussing this. They released the data again with a caveat that they couldn't determine whether it was laboratory method, survey design or actual changes in the population that had caused the increase. http://wwwn.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/2005-2006/GHB_D.htm
The second table shows how age effects HbA1c . These were all participants without diabetes (sorry I can't reference it as it was saved to my computer without one)


You can see on the age related chart that the average age of the people with the very lowest HbA1cs is higher than the group in the next bracket . There are also very few in that bracket.
HbA1cs less than 4% are actually associated with higher mortality (probably because certain serious conditions cause changes to blood )
http://circoutcomes.ahajournals.org/content/3/6/661.full

At 63, I'm quite happy that mine comes very much within the norms of someone who is non diabetic.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I'm on less than 30 grams of carb a day (or thereabouts) and my recent HbA1c was 43 or 6.1% in old money.

I'm Type 1 and am pretty happy with that; I'd like to get back into the 5% club though; but haven't been in there for a long time.

The key thing for me is that whilst I don't believe in a specific tipping point there seems to be good evidence that when your bloods go over 7.6 mmol/l that is when damage is being done. So, my levels equate to average blood sugars of about 7.1 mmol/l

This is all complicated by aggregates, averages figures and things but there you are.

An Hba1c of 4.9 (30) would be very difficult for me to hit I think.

Best

Dillinger
 
azure said:
I'd classify my diet as moderate carb - I generally have around 180g - but using your figures that'd be full carb. My last HbA1C was 28.
Click to expand...
I agree that reduced carb set at 100gm per day is very tight. Bearing in mind many non-diabetics may have 300gm/day'ish I would have set the figure nearer 150gm for Reduced carb as 150 is certainly not full carb.
 
Agree with Azure & Diabell about your definition of low, reduced and full carb @zjed.

Somewhere on the community pages of DCUK it says a very low-carb diet is below 50g a day, low-carb 50-130g, reduced carb 130-200g: I follow what could be called a reduced carb diet (150-180g a day) but I'd rather call it eating all things in moderation, and as its near enough half of the RDA for a man I would never in a month of Sundays call it 'full carb'.
 
Its not necesarily the hba1c results that T1 get or the carb quantitys. Its the SD people should be aware of.
Standard Deviation ideally needs to be minimal.
The swings of highs or or lows are what impacts on the T1's most....
 
Yes, I'm probably eating about 150g per day - a lot less than the reference intake of 260g but higher than your indication of 'reduced.'.

Had a1c results last week and came in at 6.8% (which is around 50mmol/mol I think.)
 
mine is reduced card above 50 (7.9%) ...but my hba1c is going down ive stopped milk for breakfast and reduced carbs for lunch and i can definitely see the difference... it was 9.1 in november and only because i wasnt taking good care of my diabetes
 
claire_786 said:
mine is reduced card above 50 (7.9%) ...but my hba1c is going down ive stopped milk for breakfast and reduced carbs for lunch and i can definitely see the difference... it was 9.1 in november and only because i wasnt taking good care of my diabetes
Click to expand...

Can you quantify whether your improvements are from reducing carbs (less swings) or possibly from other things such as testing more, adjusting doses etc?

Only being nosey.. Well, I am actually interested because hospitals and GPs should lusten and learn from real people that get improvements and find out if it is less carbs for a T1 (as well as T2's)
 
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