Parent of a 16 year old boy with T1D for five years now. He takes care of himself well and Ac has been ok. We were with an endo I liked a lot in San Antonio who emphasized appropriate body mass ratio and he did well with her. Now we are in Austin with a new endo and I am getting frustrated. It’s all “Ac looks great, see you again in 3 months!”. He’s gained a lot of weight in the past two years but his height has flattened out with no real increase. There’s no discussion of body mass ratio at the visits and I expressed concern and their answer was “well we advise portion control and exercise and he does walk an hour a day…”. But I said he isn’t doing muscle building activities. He seems to be needing more and more insulin. I guess maybe the insulin is working harder at getting through more fat and less muscles. I need advice. I am seriously considering going back to the San Antonio endo for him, it’s only 1.5 hours drive away anyway.
hi @Lelan,
insulin is a necessary hormone for normal metabolism. it is also a growth hormone.
if his a1c is great then I’d have to guess that his daily blood sugars are predictable and relatively speaking. in “control”.
then you say he needs more and more insulin, which then says, I am guessing, his sugars are starting to run higher…and this is the reason for needing more insulin.
if you eat a lot of carbs and take a lot of insulin you will get larger. exercise may be able to balance the difference and would then be the only thing keeping him from getting larger. just like if he didn’t have diabetes, less calories in general and less carbs in particular, should reduce his need for insulin and then , in conjunction with his walking, should result in a loss of weight.
BMI is no mystery, you can go to any of a number of web sites and put in your height and weight and compare your BMI with ideal BMI, but it kind of generalizes and truly doesn’t tell the whole story.
if he is reducing his carbs and maintaining his walking, and his blood sugar is still climbing and he needs additional insulin… then it is possible he may be highly insulin resistant and may benefit from going to an endo and perhaps if the endo thinks it is appropriate, can add “type 2” medication to help him absorb the available insulin. Insulin resistance can increase with infection, with steroids, with stress, or by metabolic disorders such as type 2. I urge you to check in with the endo and I wish you good luck.
I am in the same boat with my 14 year old hard enough to deal with T1 but the added weight is so hard
Looking for advice to steer her towards better choices