Hey all!
I am newly pregnant and am trying to find things I can eat to keep my blood sugar in good control, however I have a terrible time with all whole wheat products from bread, to pasta, etc. Does anyone else have this problem? I will be fine, and then spike for no reason! Also does anyone have any tips on doing the dual wave boluses, maybe that will help? I ate a grilled cheese sandwich at lunch today with a cup of tomato soup and at first I checked and 180 then i gave a correction, with a lot of insulin leftover in my system still active, then it came down to 153 then back up to 180 again?! grrrr! I used a dual wave for lunch and it split my carbs perfectly in half and I set it for an hour and a half, what am I doing wrong?!
Spike to just 180 after eating bread or pasta is very good result. Many people spike much, much higher from this kind of food.
No, you are not alone. My body reacts to all carb the same way, regardless of whether it is a āsimpleā or ācomplexā carb. GI value also irrelevant, and in fact I find I spike less with high-GI food.
I keep reading about the āgoodā complex carbs versus the ābadā simple carbs but my meter has yet to find a difference between them.
Is this a new problem you are having because of pregnancy? Some PWD do find that wholegrains are better tolerated, was that the case with you before?
Hi -
I donāt tend to spike right after a meal so I canāt help you there but I have found sprouted grain bread (Ezekial Bread is the one I use) is much easier to handle than regular whole wheat bread. It has a glycemic index of about 36. Canned or boxed soups tend to push me up quickly. You might think about bean soups if youād like something hot and wet with lunch.
Congratulations on the pregnancy!
Maurie
Congrats! Iāll just throw this out there ā the spike you saw could have been due to fat rather than whole wheat bread. The grilled cheese contains a fair amount of fat (butter for toasting, and cheese obviously), and tomato soup depending on recipe can have cream or 1/2 and 1/2 in it. A dual wave will help. How long after you ate was the 153 and the 180?
I am still kind of new to type 1 and still learning, but I wonder if maybe whole wheat as a slower spike vs white bread and pasta products works better for type 2? My friend with type 2 is often suggesting whole wheat to me, as she eats much greater quantities of bread and pasta than I can tolerate despite bolusing, but I have found that for me, at least, there is no difference. Both cause equal increases in blood sugar and I must eat very small amounts and sometimes bolus for double the amount of carbs. Do other type 1s have this problem, or is this maybe just a YMMV thing?
Does your friend the T2 actually test after meals? many T2s donāt, and so donāt realize that they are spiking badly.
I donāt understand how the spike could have been due to fat. As far as I know, fat does not have much of an impact on blood sugar. But what it can do is delay the digestion of the carbs and proteins. So fat has an impact on the timing of the blood sugar changes. It does not cause them. So it could just be changing the timing of the spike; the spike was brought on by the bread.
It sounds to me more like you arenāt counting the carbs correctly, or your BG wasnāt where you thought it was before you ate. I eat a fair amount of whole wheat bread and pasta. I donāt find it to be much slower than other bread and pasta - I just prefer it to white bread/pasta. Donāt assume that it is low-carb just because its whole wheat - make sure you measure how much youāre eating and know how many carbs are in it (I donāt subtract for fiber) and bolus accordingly.
Lunch with whole wheat bread is very predictable for me - I will rarely go up to 180 unless I really screw up the carb count by eating something extra or something else is going on.
If you eat the same bread every day for a while and adjust the amount of insulin and timing of bolus youāll be able to get it to work. (Assuming you can eat the same bread every day for a while)
Congrats on your pregnancy.
Weāre all different in terms of our responses to various foods. I prefer whole wheat but it doesnāt seem to make much difference in what I can and canāt manage. I canāt eat cereal or rice at all. I can eat small amounts of pasta, too little to be satisfying, and when I eat more when I go out and that is my only option (Iām a vegetarian) I have very varied results bolusing for my usual I:C ratio. I can eat one slice of artisan bread in the morning or lunchtime so I avoid sandwiches, and actually have switched to refried beans at breakfast. At dinner I can tolerate a vegie burger on a Double Fiber orowheat english muffin, and usually am fine but this isnāt 100%.
I disagree that you made some kind of mistake to get the 180. For some of us, that is just the inevitable result of eating certain foods. I agree that fat doesnāt cause spikes but only slows the timing. Iām still experimenting with combo boluses but havenāt gotten the knack of them yet. Iām interested in hearing other peopleās responses on that. Personally I donāt expect to be able to eat foods I totally couldnāt before, due to using combo boluses, (not unless I used a lot more insulin, which I donāt plan on doing). But Iām hoping it can help me with the occasional unexpected spike and I can learn to utilize it when Iām at the mercy of other peopleās restaurant choices.
This definitely seems to be an area where YMMV.
For some people, fat had a definite impact, not just a delay. If you donāt see this you are lucky 
The TAG group here at tudiabetes is a great way to learn how both fat and protein can impact blood sugar. In some people a % of both fat and protein is converted to glucoseā¦it is not just a delay of carbs. Unfortunately, fat does spike my daughter (not a delay or she would go low after her full insulin is given).
I have major issues digesting complex carbs too. I had to stop eating pasta completely for a year. I slowly re-introduced it into my diet last summer and I can eat pasta in small tiny amounts now. I still avoid potatoes though. But a spike to 180 is great after pasta. For me, my spikes would go to 300s and then wouldnāt come down for 6 hours after regardless of how many bolus / injections I did to correct. (Iāve posted many threads and blogs about this)
Iām type 1 for 13 years and 17 weeks and am seeing that my carb to insulin dosages have doubled in the past week due to pregnancy. My ratio was 1 : 4 for the morning, but now itās 1:2. I am learning that I may need to cut out morning carbs altogether for my second trimester to avoid highs.
Good luck!
Hey Mariah. CONGRATSā¦and welcome to the curve ball that isā¦placenta hormone! It is very, very antagonistic to insulin. Youāll probably find your insulin needs climbing and climbing and climbing as the weeks tick by. I was low all the time during my first trimester ā a bit counter-intuitive, but common. Then, almost like flicking a switch, my basals were nearly 200% of normal in my 2nd trimester. My I:C was 1:1 in the mornings and 1:5 for the rest of the day by my third trimester (whereas it was 1:10 in the am and 1:15 the rest of the day in the non-pregnant state, and Iām pretty much back there now, 8.5 months postpartum.)
So pretty much all the things you thought you knew about how your body handles carbs, stress, etc, are going to pretty much fly out the window if they havenāt already! (Oh, and your spikes arenāt necessarily related to your intake at all.)
Pregnancy was tough, and I learned a lot, including the tricky but very helpful āpre-bolus.ā (I had twins so TWICE the placenta hormone monkey wrench.) My daughters were born with no complications and at very healthy weights. Please feel free to message me off this discussion if youād like.
Best of health and happiness to you!
Laura
Congratulations!!! I have a different ratio for grain-based products. I usually need about 1.25 X the amount of insulin for something like a slice of bread compared to something like an apple. It probably has something to do with the amount of glucose compared to the other simple sugars in one food vs another, as well as the other components that affect digestion. I guess the best way to test it out is to eat something with just grains and try to fine tune that ratio. It makes it more complicated, but it may be best to develop different ratios for it.
Iām having pretty good success using a super bolus when ever I eat grain products. I front load one hours worth of basal, or almost one hour, using my prime function and then set a temp basal at 0.1 for that hour. It does help keep it down
hth
Ressy
Hi Zoe,
Thanks so much for responding and backing me up, I am pregnant and watching my carbs more closely than ever, I am a crazy tester, 12 plus times a day and I count everything! I am especially careful now that I have another life to look after, so that was definately not my issue, i am also on a pump so even if i was slightly high my pump would have given me a correction added onto my food. I do agree with you that we all are different and not everyones bodies work the same way. So you can do the Orowheat Double Fiber english muffins well? I tried that yesterday morning and it was great!
Thanks so much for your response!
Hi marps!
Thanks for the reply! I have a friend who is in her second trimester also and she isnt able to eat until 10 in the morning to avoid spikes 
So hopefully your doctors can figure something out and you wont have to do that Doesnt it suck that some of us just have trouble with complex carbs and others dont?? I wish so much that I could eat bread normally but that is just not the case, I have as well cut out pasta and rice For a pasta replacement though I do spaghetti squash and that is pretty good
I hope you are having a good day! I go in for my first doctors appt on Thursday
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Glad to hear youāre testing so much - I think that makes a huge difference. Note that Zoe is not a T1, so her own insulin production may be complicating her response to food. Are you a full out T1, or are you also a T1.5 (LADA) and maybe have the same thing going on?
Iām surprised to hear that people find they ācanāt eatā certain foods. I used to think I couldnāt eat white rice - but that was before I actually measured the amount of rice I was eating and saw that a serving of rice at a restaurant is often huge and far more than I was estimating. Once I started paying better attention to the serving size, I found that a cup of white rice is about the same as a cup of whole grain rice is about the same as a cup of white pasta is about the same as a cup of whole wheat pasta in both carb count and in the BG effect it had on me. I prefer whole grain rice or whole wheat pasta - but if Iām eating out and donāt have a choice I find I can substitute what they have without a huge impact as long as I know how much I am eating.
The huge impact would happen if I ate three cups of rice and bolused for one cup (been there, done that) or visa versa (been there, done that too).
I donāt mean to imply that this is simple - because there are always other things going on that complicate it - like the food we are eating the bread/pasta/rice with (lots of fats and protein will be different from lots of vegetables) and of course hormones (I certain donāt envy you trying to balance BG when pregnant - that must make balancing and predicting incredibly difficult) or response to exercise (which can make my I/C ratio differ from day to day). I just havenāt found anything other than candy, chocolate, desserts that I absolutely ācanāt eatā without facing a BG storm.
Uh, Jag, first of all, I am a Type 1. LADA is merely a variation on Type 1 that relates to the onset. Two years ago my c-peptide was only .38, so given that and the fact that when I had a failed infusion set during the night I woke up at 175 and by noon was in the 300ās, I seriously doubt I am making any of my own insulin any longer. My clinical picture at this point doesnāt differ from any other Type 1, only my etiology.
Second of all, Iām not sure why you have to āqualifyā my experience with foods. We are all different and if you review this and other threads you will hear many other type 1ās who say they cannot eat certain thingsā¦at all. Many others like yourself, can. I do measure all my food and found that with some foods the amount I can bolus for with any degree of accuracy is too small to be useful. With others it is utterly impossible. If you havenāt found anything other than sweets you canāt eat, than you are very lucky, but for me and some others that is just not the case. Oh Iām sure if I doubled or tripled my insulin dose (1/2ād my I:C ratios) I could probably manage it, but Iām not going to do that.
Youāve had LADA for three and a half years. Iāve had T1 for more than ten times that long. I think itās not unreasonable to expect this could cause some differences between us. Sorry if that offends you.
Second, letās be clear here. Are you saying that a slice of bread (15g carb) takes significantly more insulin - like ādouble or tripleā - to cover than an orange (15g carb)?