Controlling Type 1 Diabetes with the Paleo diet

If I got offended every time someone assumed that all programmers are: aged 14 to 34, male, white or Asian, addicted to violent video games and hackers?

I’d have a stroke. ;0)

Most of us need to develop a thick hide and a sense of humor when dealing with criticism and assumptions about our professions.

i think you’re half right. a lot of people think that “eat whatever you want and bolus for it” means that you can literally eat whatever you want, whenever you want, in whatever quantity you want. it doesn’t. it means that you can occasionally have small portions of “junk food” if you eat a healthy diet the rest of the time (this is the famous 80/20 or 90/10 rule that a lot of people swear by).



portion control and moderation are really the name of the game, not completely forswearing anything with carbs or sugar. you don’t get fat/insulin resistant by eating a cookie occasionally, and as long as you’re not eating more than 75-90g of carb in a sitting once in a while i don’t think you’re going to have big problems with insulin action.



fwiw i would never give this advice to young children, precisely because they lack the self-control to avoid eating chicken nuggets and pizza and candy with every meal. i’d hope most adults could apply some moderation and common sense when making nutritional decisions, but then again if they did i’m not sure who exactly is buying the 64oz cups of soda at 7-11…

My nephews. Gah.

This guy may be having a relatively long honeymoon, because eating low-carb does spare the beta cells, because some of the antibodies are against insulin itself, and not the beta cells. It won’t last forever, though, if he is a true Type 1.

I despise the “Eat whatever you want and bolus for it” approach.



High amounts of fat affect my DD’s insulin resistance for sure. It’s another one of those things not ever mentioned by the RD’s. Once you hit a certain amount of carbs you need an exponential amount of insulin to cover it, and it all becomes a giant guessing game complete with mood swings, and roller coaster blood sugars. Real healthy approach. When my daughter has a huge carb out, sometimes even the next couple days are affected and we have to tweak her basal a bit.



The day an RD comes up with a precise insulin formula that allows my child back into range 2 hours after she eats “anything she wants” is the day they are allowed to spew that crap. Until then, I don’t want to hear it.

They didn’t “typically” die – they ALWAYS died. Healers have known about Type 1 since ancient times, and tried everything they could think of to heal it (including some really nasty stuff!), but until the 20th century, there was simply nothing they could do.

Aren’t you glad to have been born when you were, instead of 100 years earlier?

what is a “huge carb out?” what is the “certain amount of carbs” that makes it difficult to cover a bolus with insulin? what timeframe are we talking about? not trying to be argumentative, but i’m genuinely curious because i’m not quite sure we really disagree in principle…

I can’t tolerate alcohol, either. It makes me feel sleepy and ill. But everyone LOVES a designated driver, so I’'m home free! :slight_smile:

Actually, there are still tribes in the Amazon, and in New Guinea that eat pretty close to what our Paleolithic ancestors must have eaten. The men do a lot of hunting, and eat pretty much ALL of whatever animal they catch. The women dig for edible roots and collect edible leaves and berries. They eat fruit in season. They also eat insects!

When we talk about eating Paleo, we don’t really do what these tribes do. We don’t eat the brains and organ meats and eyeballs and testicles. Most of us don’t eat insects. We have abandoned a great many plant foods because they really don’t taste as good as the few we do eat.

What I wonder is whether, genetically, the Peruvian and Bolivian natives are more adapted to eating potatoes than we are, because they subsisted on them for many thousands of years – they didn’t have to be cultivated, just dug up. The North American and Mexican natives ate teosinte, the ancestor of modern corn for a long time, too. These are foods that are new to European-derived digestive systems, and I wonder whether we are just not adapted to eating them. On the other hand, humans are pretty omnivorous, and it may not make any difference at all.

I’ve also read in some papers that low- or reduced-carb is really not necessary nor necessarily good for non-diabetics, but that it does help with BG control for diabetics. Especially for Type 2’s who have no way to get high BGs down but to wait it out. I think there may be more questions than answers at this point!

When I was in the convalescent hospital after my coma, one morning, the only thing on the menu was cereal, hot or cold. I threw a fit and told them that I couldn’t possibly eat cereal, and the dietitian came in and talked to me, and managed to get them to substitute eggs and cottage cheese for me instead. Then we discussed lunch and dinner – it was the same every day – some kind of meat and a small salad for lunch, and a Caesar salad for dinner. Boring, but it helped get my BGs down to where they would discharge me. It took 3 weeks – never want to go through that again, but I do appreciate the dietitian’s efforts to work with me. Funny part was that some of the patients couldn’t understand why I was there in the first place (not physically disabled) nor could they understand why I got a special menu.
One of the realities of diabetes is that you ALWAYS have to advocate for yourself!

Even if an RD did have this magic formula would you honestly be willing to listen to them to get this formula? You said previously you avoid RD’s…

Like all have mentioned before, you have to find out what works best for you. The RD could be the opposite of everything you obviously despise and still there would be no reliable way of guessing what that certain amount of carbs is or how high fat that meal has to be before it difficult to cover the bolus or messes with your DD’s insulin resistance.

Like Ultravires said I really do not think we even disagree with each other. Obviously whoever educated your DD went a little overboard with the eat what you want campaign. I notice people often times hear what they want though as well (I am not accusing you or your DD of this, just saying it does happen a whole lot) Eating what you want and bolusing for it obviously needs to be balanced with attaining good glycemic control and eating a reasonably healthy diet for a young PWD. I know that I certainly wouldn’t want to deny my kids the oppurtunity to occasionally be just like the other kids and be able to indulge now and again. I remember being young like that with one of my highest priorities being to try to fit in. Tough to do for a youngster with DM. I well know those painful struggles. But, I also understand the value of moderating carb intake to achieve better control. It is a tough wire to walk on which requires constant re balancing for everyone, but especially the younger adults and kids with DM. I really do wish you and your daughter luck on trying to find that balance.

Speaking just for myself, ultravires, the tipping point is at about 50 grams for a meal. Once I cross that threshold it seems pretty hit and miss to cover with my usual dinner I:C ratio which is a very generous 1:18. I am doing better with the pump, because with that wide a ratio it’s pretty hard with only 1 unit ranges, but I still have that barrier at the same point where I have gone both too high and too low trying to cover. For me it’s the 50 gram line (more or less) as well as certain foods such as rice and cereal which are “unsafe at any speed” (don’t confirm to the I:C ratios I usually use).

I always think when someone says “huge carb out” or “whatever you want” they are talking about much higher carb numbers than that. But I think defining it is a good idea.

Excellent points, all, ultravires! I absolutely agree on the “eat whatever you want” renamed “don’t consider any food totally forbidden” is a very different kettle of fish (or plate of rice) and that nobody gets IR from an occasional cookie. But I also agree that children are not the only ones who would take this as permission to live on junk food.



For me, 75-90 grams of carb in a sitting would definitely put me over the line, both in terms of weight gain, developing IR and dosing difficulties. I am a post-menopausal women however and that’s a big factor. When I was 25 my metabolism was very different. Of course children grown up and young people get older, and the price of years of high carb intake might be higher than many would like. Type 1 with insulin resistance sounds hard, hard, hard!

Gerri - I hear ya! I remember getting this stupid papaer that equated a slice of “whole grain bread” with 3 sugar cubes. I remember thinking “WTF - I am diabetic, WTF would I want to eat sugar?” I have recieved the line, “You need to eat carbs to cover the insulin.” My response has always been, "Why don’t I just take less insulin?"
Of course, no dice there. LOL

The other line I’ve heard is “You need 135g of carb a day for your brain”. If that was so, the Inuit on a traditional diet would have died out long ago.
Plus, “You need carbs for energy”, but again, the Inuit don’t seem to have suffered any lack of energy – they needed lots of energy for hunting, and house building (sometimes igloos, sometimes houses made of driftwood), just to name 2 strenuous activities.
I don’t think this issue will be resolved for decades – there have to be good quality studies, and so far, there haven’t been many.

I got so disgusted trying to reconcile exchanges with carb counting (one protein serving is the size of your palm–hmm, how many eggs will fit in my palm?) that I threw it out in the trash & started over on my own. The diabetes ed class lead by a dietician was useless. Foam models of food were passed around. Oh, so that’s what a hamburger looks like. I dropped out after the second class.



Thou shall take large amounts of insulin to keep pharm companies & ADA & CDA in business. Every healthcare person I’ve told that I eat low carb to take smaller insulin doses, among other reasons, looked at me liked I had three heads. Don’t raise the bridge, lower the water.

I remember when I mentioned low carb to a friend who is an RN during a discussion on diabetes management she said, “do you mean for weight loss, I’ve heard people have success with that”. I said no, for diabetes management and she looked blank. I asked her if she knew that carbs were the main thing that raised blood sugar and she did. Sooooooo…



I get this image of a medical person looking through the PDR (guide to medications) for ways to control diabetes and locating insulin, Metformin, etc, than having a patient say “I used exercise and carb reduction” and trying to find those things in the index.



When I had my visit with a dietician after diagnosis, I informed her, smart ■■■ that I (think I) am. “I already eat very healthy; I’m a vegetarian and haven’t eaten suger for 13 years.” She told me what I wanted to hear, that I would then “probably have to change very little.” If I were seeing someone who said that today I would say, "that’s great, but let’s take a closer look at your diet, because many vegetarian diets are very heavy on rice, pasta, cereal. Mine sure was. Today I’m still a vegetarian and haven’t eaten sugar for 17 years now, but I had to radically change my diet. There is no way I could have continued to eat my “healthy diet” and had decent blood sugars.

I’m a type 1 who did this a close version of this diet for a few months and my A1c was a 4.7 as a result. I also lost weight and felt really energetic, more mental clarity, just downright good.

DKA doesn’t occur from low carb dieting, just high blood sugars. Ketosis occurs from low carb dieting where ketones spill into the urine at no more than 20mg/dl (not at all harmful) while DKA results in ketones of 200+ mg/dl in the body-and this state is utterly different. Nutritionists and Dieticians have gotten this wrong for a long time.

But this guy says he’s not using insulin, so either he’s in his honeymoon period, or he’s not a true Type 1. If his pancreas was truly not producing insulin, he would definitely go into DKA eventually, even if he ate nothing.