Hi all. My son has been T1D for three and a half years. He’s been doing very well with it - my only real worries have been regarding overnight lows. He’s been doing peanut butter + Ritz crackers as a nighttime snack to help avoid them, to mostly good results. Now, we just found out he has celiac disease, too. Any thoughts/suggestions on the best night snacks now that crackers are out?
@bigwave My wife eats rice crackers. I think there are other gluten free wafers (with carbs) too.
Hi, David, and I feel your pain. My daughter was diagnosed with celiac at 5, and then T1D at 6, and I’m grateful the celiac came first, because we honestly found it harder to deal with. Gluten is in so many things we never imagined (Play-doh? Seriously? Yup. Soy sauce? In this country, almost certainly yes, even though soy sauces made in Asian countries almost never do. Live and learn. And on and on.)
And cross-contamination is a real thing: we learned to think of gluten like a germ. If you’ve touched a pretzel, you have to wash your hands. Which means eating anything prepared by anyone else involves trusting them to have washed their hands after they touched anything with gluten, which is not something most people do. I mean, it’s a bagel, not raw chicken, right? Plus you’re trusting them to have used a different work surface and different utensils, and not to have put the toast on the plate with your omelette, realized you’d said no toast, removed the toast, and then served it to you anyway. I mean, it’s not like they sneezed on the omelette, right? It just touched toast is all. But then your kid gets sick, and you’re left trying to figure out what did it.
Sorry for the rant. I got carried away. 
Lance used to make GF peanut butter crackers, which were our go-to’s, but sometime in the last year or so they discontinued them. There are lots of GF crackers available, though, and so we just put peanut butter on them. Scharr’s makes “table crackers” we like, and Absolutely Gluten Free crackers are a staple for us, too. Snyder’s GF pretzels are actually better than regular pretzels (I think), and they go well with peanut butter, too.
I could go on, but this post is pretty long already. The good news is there are WAY more GF options now than there were only five years ago, and there’s a lot more awareness about it, too. Just for example, you can download the “Find Me Gluten Free” app to search for restaurants near you that have been reviewed by other folks who need GF, who will tell you things like whether the menu has GF options, whether the servers were knowledgeable, and whether they got sick after eating there or not.
PM me if you want more suggestions, and hang in there. It’s a journey, for sure, but like diabetes management, it gets easier with experience.
Oh, and yogurt is a good nighttime stabilizer, too, as is — I swear, our certified diabetes educator is the one who told us this — ice cream. 
or… jellybeans and a cheese stick 
1 Like
@srozelle if you would like a chuckle - a couple of years ago I was in a book group. One of the members hosted it and we agreed to take turns bringing snacks each week. Another member said she was in an extremely restricted diet - she didn’t go into a lot of detail but gluten was one of the items. I volunteered to bring snacks the following week - cheese and crackers are popular so I spent an inordinate amount of time at Target searching for - wait for it - gluten free Wheat Thins!
After a while I pulled out my phone and discovered - DUH! - that Gluten is found in wheat. Boy did I feel silly but I laughed at myself. Obviously gave up on the wheat thins in favor of something else with Gluten Free prominently displayed on the package.
1 Like
Thanks for all the suggestions, guys! Will look into gf crackers and pretzels. Don’t want to get started on ice cream - he’ll be off to college next fall, and I don’t think I’ve cream will be ready to pull off in a dorm. 
When I want a delayed overnight rise, I just eat peanut butter from the spoon. Organic peanuts and salt works for me.
2 Likes
Sorry to hear that. There’s a link as the mutation for T1D is on the same allele as celiac. I too am both and it’s a tad difficult to navigate but possible. There’s more & more gluten free products each day. However many are super high carb. But ones made with almond flour as less carbs that way to cause major swings. I know several stores carry them but definitely larger Whole Foods too. Biggest issue will be eating out. It’s a day at a time. If I can be of any help - please reach out. I’m living it and work in research.
Susie