Recently I find myself giving up the higher carb foods I enjoy (bread and potatoes mostly). It seems that any meal over 20-25g carbs sends my bg shooting up to 200+.
Any recommendations or insights into why this is happening? I don’t so much mind giving up sweets, but your girl loves her potatoes haha. I was diagnosed in March 2019, so this is all fairly new still. I am currently using the Dexcom G6 and Omnipod with novolog.
Hi @Dev_Renae Devin, learning how to use insulin is a lifelong college course. It took me many years to learn how to use fast acting for my favorite pizza.
For fast carbs, bread rice potato, you want to give the bolus in advance. I suggest starting with 15 minutes (bolus, wait 15, eat). And work from there. You have to have a good basal rate and you have to be reasonably sure of your carb to insulin ratio. For general tso chicken I use a 30 minute head start. Your mileage may vary. Always be careful.
“Pumping insulin” and “Think Like a Pancreas “ are great references for ideas. If you insurance covers it, working with a pump savvy CDE or nutritionist may be another way.
Be a good scientist and record your results.
2 other thoughts:
Synthetic insulin stinks. If you start with 125mg/dl and eat a ton of fast carbs let’s say 60 grams, at hour 1 (after eating) you will always be over 200. Period. Then at hour 2 you will be 175mg/dl and at hour 4 you will be back to 125. That’s just the way the carbos bounce.
Also you can clip the top of the peak by walking or other mild cardio but you must be careful because any activity, even walking, with insulin on board can cause you to drop very and uncomfortably fast. Please keep fast carbs around and watch that CGM but be aware, your CGM lags reality (actual blood sugar) by up to 30 minutes.
Cheers good luck!
Hey! I was diagnosed this yr too on January 18th. my family loves rice and potatoes and we eat a lot of it. So as joe said try bolusing 15 min before and see how it goes. For potatoes and rice I usually try to do it 30min before depending on what my blood sugar is at the moment. Everyone’s body is different so just trying bolusing at 15 min and if that works great! If it doesn’t try 30 min next time. Sometimes I even bolus 45min to an hour before but that usually only if my blood sugars are a bit higher. It takes a little bit of experimenting to figure out what works best for you. Good luck!
Everyone has their secret tricks, and the ability to adjust your basal for high carb/glycemic foods works for me. I just started on the Minimed 670, but pumped for 12 years on the Animas Ping. Rice I can handle directly with fast acting, straight on (dose at time of eating) but will check in an hour if it’s anything other than old fashion white rice and correct as needed. Potatoes, I increase my ratio by about 5%. My basal rate also gets increase by 10% for two hours, as soon as I know we are having potatoes, for best results, but at the time of eating if all else fails. Pizza, my fondest enemy, 35 carbs per slice, dose for the carbs, and increase the basal by 10% for 5 hours. I may have to correct in about 2 hours, by a small amount to level things out. There is a heck of a learning curve, safe travels!
I haven’t given up those foods, but very often I just decide it’s not worth the “glucoaster ride.” It’s a few minutes of struggle with temptation, versus a few hours to get my numbers back under control! I like the “small numbers, small mistakes” approach, especially since I’m still in the honeymoon phase and things keep changing.
keep a diary… .its not all the carbs… you have to see what works for your body… for example . when i eat oatmeal . for some reason its like i ate 20 bags of skittles… but many fruit which have more and faster carbs… like cherries my body handles . no problem . like not even a blip… something in the food not the actual carb count is bumping you… at least that has been my experience
Something else you might experiment with is the nutritional mix of the meal. The problem you’re experiencing is not just with the carb content of the food, but is also associated with the glycemic index of the food – the rate at which the glucose is absorbed. When I eat a meal with a high glycemic-index food in it, I find it helpful to balance the meal by including something with significant fat content. Often this results in a much slower increase in blood glucose, allowing the insulin time to cope with the heavier-than-usual carb load. YMMV.
. What I usually do is look up the carbs(I use my fitnesspal or CalorieKing) then I dose beforehand and then see how it does with my bg. And you can always correct too, but maybe a reason why if you have high carb food and your blood sugar goes flying after 2 hrs it could be bad pod placement and it doesn’t work as well. I know several times I have had 200 all night and have had to change pod placement in the middle of the night. Anyway those are just some suggestions hope it helps!
Yes I have noticed this same issue I went from eating about 220 carbs a day to eating about 60 per day Then when I ate 75 at one seating my bs would scream into the 300’s for hours and have a hard time getting into range again. I call this my fasting phenomenon. Bolusing early helps and going to a higher temp basil for about 2 hours helps also after about 6 months the body starts to adjust and the effects lessen but be sure to communicate any changes through you’re endocrinologist 
Lot’s of good suggestions here. I found the book, “Think Like a Pancreas” very helpful. It’s a LOT of information and I had to sort of pick and chose what seemed important at that time, and I still go back and reference it at times. The MOST important thing I learned was the TIMING of the bolus. The author has a chart which includes the glycemic index of the food and your starting BS range. I reference that chart quite a bit.
I also found that after having diabetes for about a year (I’m at about 18 months post diagnosis) things calmed down a bit in terms of spikes. I still spike at times, but much less. I think part of the early difficulty is your body is adjusting the something new injected into it (synthetic insulin) and learning how to respond.
Lastly, I can’t stress how much hormones play a role. At different times in my cycle I run high and low, and am more reactive to carbs.
Hope this helps. Give yourself time to get used to all this, and forgive yourself when you make a mistake.
Jess
Basically, we’re told we can eat whatever carbs we want, we just have to cover them with insulin, and we learn that’s just not true. Potatoes and white bread are difficult for most diabetics. It does help to add greens and salads to the mix. Also, I’m using Fiasp insulin which acts slightly faster than Humalog or Novolog–but not by much. Cutting back the heavy carbs except on occasion is probably the best way to go. I’ve had T1 for 53 years.
I was diagnosed back in 2009 at ten years old. I know a decent bit about proper nutrition and the answer to your problem is to just eat protein in-front of any type of carb so that the insulin has the chance to grab it as it takes an average of 30 mins for insulin to absorb and take affect depending on which type you use. If you eat carb by itself, you’ll shoot up fast. And with fatty proteins, your body works on those first, so do half of your fast-acting before the meal and then the other half 35-50 mins later so you don’t dose yourself into a low. You can eat sweets and whatever you’d like within moderation, just counting carbs and making sure you have protein in-front of it to lower the food’s glycemic index and give the insulin the chance to work on it.
Read Richard Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution.
Diabetes is a carbohydrate intolerance disease. Using excess insulin to cover foods that you need to medicate for causes more problems than they’re worth, in my opinion. Insulin is a fat storing hormone; using more than you need will pile on the pounds. There are also studies showing how excess insulin leads to other problems.