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Permalink Reply by Gerri on February 12, 2011 at 11:15am

Gary Taubes is a wonderful source for current research on fats. Non-dairy creamers--bleech. I eat quite a lot of saturated fat & my lipid profile improved. Others have experienced the same. Can't be that much milk in your tea for you to have to give it up.

What I do wth MDI is take part of meal bolus right away & another several hours later for fat/protein as soon as I see BG starting to increase. Just from testing a lot experience I've learned that as soon as I see a 20 pt rise, I know a spike is around the corner. I have gastroparesis, so I'm not a good example having slowed digestion to begin with. Sorry!

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Permalink Reply by Natalie ._c- on February 12, 2011 at 5:39pm

Well, my childhood-derived idea of tea (when we'd ask for tea, my mother would put a few teaspoons in our milk), is one cup water, one cup milk in a 2-cup measuring cup, with sweetener. So it is rather a lot of milk -- say 2 - 3 cups of milk a day. My friend who used to live in England calls it "cambric tea". It definitely does a number on my BGs, although I have discovered that, for some unknown reason, the tea itself is partly to blame.

I COULD switch to cream, it's just that I haven't had the courage to do it. I'm due for a lab test next week, and want to see if my (at least) reduced carb eating has made any changes. I do know my weight has come down 20 lb. from my pre-coma carb binging (and I DO mean binging -- I was totally out of control!!)

It is really confusing to read varying sources, especially the ones that say that fat causes you to gain weight (don't want to do that -- I'm currently 5 lb. above BMI 24.9 -- can't lose that last 5 lb., but I figure my body is just plateauing, and I have to wait it out, but the other part of me says, "what's 5 lb. anyway??), and the ones that are so anti-saturated fat and red meat. Needless to say, my favorite is beef, of course!

I did have a copy of Bernstein, but loaned it to someone and never got it back. Maybe I should buy a new copy, and get Taubes' book too. The coma, plus the fact that my BGs are harder to control now than they were before the whole incident started makes me think I need some diabetes re-education, and re-thinking eating habits.

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Permalink Reply by Gerri on February 12, 2011 at 10:54pm

Oh, that is quite a bit of milk. I was thinking it was just a splash of milk in your tea. My mother did the same with coffee when I was a kid. I hated drinking milk & she'd put a little coffee in my milk. When older, I only drank cofee in the form of iced coffee (a NY thing) because coffee was a childhood cold beverage.

Understand how you feel about fats. It's a 180 from everything we've been told for decades. (I was a low fat vegetarian for around 30 years before D came to visit.) Saturated fat is the boogey man, but vegetable oils are good. Low fat is the best, healthiest way to go. All untrue. We've become phobic about fat consumption while shoveling in the carbs. Fact is that excess carbs piles on the pounds. I've never counted calories, but my low carb diet is high calorie. I lost too much weight at first. Protein & fat are essential, carbs are not.

Vegetable oils are unstable at high temperature. Saturated fats are the safest to use for this purpose.

I also eat fish, nuts, chia seeds & take EFA capsules (krill oil).

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Permalink Reply by acidrock23 on February 13, 2011 at 3:58am

I read about chia seeds (Born to Run) and was intrigued but it got lost in the maelstrom. Thanks for the reminder! Do they sell them in grocery stores or do you have to go to a health food place?

Permalink Reply by BadMoonT2 on February 12, 2011 at 2:47pm

Study after study shows a low carb diet does not have a negative effect on blood lipids. This is counter intuitive, but in this case science trumps intuition.

Here's a link to a study quoted in the original topic of this thread, which studied effects on blood lipids as well as other things.

This link which I also referenced earlier in this thread also contains links to other studies .

Although less well studied it seems that the deadly combination is saturated fats in the presence of high carbs and the resulting high insulin levels.

Another approach would be to adapt principals from the South Beach Diet or the 4 Corners Diet, both are low carb but , emphasize so called "healthy fats", it sure couldn't hurt.

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Permalink Reply by Super_sally on February 12, 2011 at 4:43pm

Since getting on lower carb diet, my cholesterol profile is the best it's ever been. My cholesterol has always been extremely low, with HDL well below range. Finally HDL is in range. First time ever! So I'm definitely a convert.

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Permalink Reply by Natalie ._c- on February 12, 2011 at 10:02pm

Thanks for the links, Bad Moon. I read them, but I still need to think about how they apply to me personally. Like, basically, I need to get my act together!! LOL!

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Permalink Reply by BadMoonT2 on February 13, 2011 at 2:21am

My point isn't that everyone needs to go low carb, but simply that some of the reasons given have no scientific basis. If someone says I couldn't eat like that, that's certainly valid in my view.

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Permalink Reply by Natalie ._c- on February 13, 2011 at 7:15am

Actually, the milk is the last thing to go. I could start using cream instead. I'm a rather limited eater, and need to work on eating more vegetables, but I like meat, cheese and nuts, and have lately eaten some Greek yogurt, which seems to help regularity!

But I would definitely have to change my insulin dosing, because fats and protein do raise my BGs and keep them up for a fairly long time. Not as high a peak as with carbs, but a longer one. Which means learning to use a square-wave bolus, which I have only occasionally experimented with. Not too old a dog to learn new tricks, I think! :-)

Like I said before, it's more a matter of courage, than inability to do it.

Thanks for all your help! :-)

Permalink Reply by Susi (Ladalife) on February 8, 2011 at 6:33am

Here is a testament to low-carb and the author, a T1, is friend for many years. Because of him, and low-carb, I am sure I was able to prolong a T1 (LADA) honeymoon for years longer than average.

http://www.diabetes-low-carb.org/

At the very least, lower- and low-carb is beta-cell preserving (for T2s and some T1s) and reduces insulin/medication requirements.

Insulin for me, packs the weight on like you wouldn't believe, so lowering carbs for me has definite benefits.

There's much evidence now (there's wasn't before) that lowering carb recommendations for people with diabetes is the way to go for a myriad of reasons.

At the end of the day, it's whatever works for you!

The debate rages on but it looks like an increasing number of people with diabetes are seeing the benefits of lower carbs.

I have experienced the benefits, but find I can't always do really low-carb. Under 100 gr per day is what I aim for and mostly do. Some days it's 40gr. Some days it's 100 gr.

I don't want to know on cake days.

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Permalink Reply by LiL MaMa on February 8, 2011 at 7:25am

I personally am a low carber but only to stay on the smallest dose of insulin as possible. I'm sure once I get more comfortable with using insulin I may even eat some ice cream or a cookie once in a while and bolus for it! :) I'd say each person is different and whatever works for one may not for another so if you wanna eat that cookie bolus for it (or run for an hour if you are type2lol) and enjoy!

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Permalink Reply by Natalie ._c- on February 8, 2011 at 8:52am

You DO know, of course, that as your pancreas continues to shut down, your insulin doses will go up, even if you don't change anything in your routine. I liked the analogy I found in one of Joslin's old Diabetes Manuals: How much water do you need to put out a fire? Answer: Enough. The same thing with insulin. Some people need more, some need less, but we all need ENOUGH!

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