My 6-yr-old daughter likes to chew gum on the way home from after-care, about 5:30. She gets home and checks her sugar, somewhere between 5:45 and 6pm. How much is the 1 or 2 grams of carbs in a piece of SF gum raising her BS? The CDE told us it was okay (“let’s not take everything away from her,” she said), and some websites call anything under 5g “free” (which seems crazy to me), but then I found another site where people reported 1g raising their BS by 10 or 15 points. She’s on just NPH 2x daily, so I’m trying to keep those doses right, and wondering if she’s tending to be higher before dinner because of the gum, rather than because we should adjust her AM dose/afternoon snack/exercise?
If she chewed 10 pieces, that might make a significant impact. But if we’re talking one piece, it might raise her somewhere around 5-7 mg/dl, but of course this varies by person. 15g raises me by about 40-50 mg/dl, so this is just an estimate.
hi @srozelle , i have to guess, based on your daughter is only on 2 shots of NPH, that she makes quite a bit of her own insulin and so it is likely 1 piece of gum is not going to make any rise in blood sugar.
what you are actually asking varies a lot in different people, for me 4 grams glucose raises my bs by 15 mg/dl and I only know that because glucose tabs are 4 grams each so I am pretty close to angivan’s number(don’t forget we are probably larger than your daughter, 1 gram could raise her blood sugar by 2x as much )
also - just thinking, please don’t go crazy hoping her NPH requirements won’t change, because it is likely the requirement will change, by a lot, and it won’t matter if she chews gum. for me, the balance of food with insulin and activity varies hourly, and the goal is good bs control, not constant insulin. anyway, hope you are okay.
She’s definitely still honeymooning: 7 units Novolin in the AM and 3 at night at the moment, and I do vary that as needed. We even got the 1/2 unit syringes, which were ridiculously difficult for the pharmacy to find, because she’s small enough that 1/2 units make a big difference.
I just feel like the Novolin is a pretty blunt instrument, you know, and smaller changes on the fly (like, 50 mg/dl or so) seem easier to make with food and exercise. (Insert pump ad here, right? But she’s newly diagnosed, and the endo wants to go slow with the tech, which I’m fine with.)
So anyway, thank you, angivan and Joe, for helping me keep perspective. I’m really glad you’re all here.