Wow! I can’t believe the response here! I thought no one was going to answer it.
I guess I’m wondering if this is something temporary & maybe my body is readjusting? Somewhere I read a theory (I think here), that if you eat less carbs your liver could step up & start pumping out glucose to compensate?
I am VERY glad to read that other people have noticed that low carb may not work for everyone. Sometimes It seems like that’s all I’m seeing. BTW - My diet is very restricted right now. I eat NO refined carbs, no sugar, no gluten, no dairy, etc. Most of my carbs come from fruit, quinoa, beans, veggies.
The reason I brought this up was that my post meal readings are fine, 120 - 140 range. However, 3-4 hours later I’m at 140-180? That’s why I think it’s my basal rate which I need to adjust. I’ve tried playing with little - no protein or low fat & those factors don’t seem to matter, I was getting the same results.
Molly,
It could be your basal dose. If raising it doesn’t help, you may have gastroparesis. That’s what I was experiencing. My two hour BG was low or perfect, but steady BG rise over the next 3-5 hours. It’s difficult to dose bolus properly without lots of trial & error because digestion is unpredictable. I had to change to Regular insulin because rapid acting was too fast for me & left my body too quickly.
Eating less carbs doesn’t cause your liver to dump more glucose, Stress, strenuous exercise, dawn phenonmenon & other things do.
Hi Gerri,
Thanks for the suggestion. I did alter my basal rates, which put me back where I like to be.
But, don’t you think it’s odd that I would be needing more insulin?
i’ll never go low carb. look at all of those people on the atkins diet that had severe liver and kidney failure because their bodies couldn’t handle so much protien. your body needs grains. i do however feel though if you are going to eat carbs you need to do it a healthy way and not eat carbs with loads of saturated fat and cholestrol in them. i find it sooo much easier to control my bs’s when i eat carbs then when i eat protien.
Hi Molly,
Glad that helped!
It’s perplexing that you’re eating less & needing more insulin. I go through times when I need more & than it drops back down again. You could be getting resistant to the brand you’re taking. It happens. Talking to your doctor about changing might be worth trying.
The other thing that may be happening, if you’ve been eating more protein than before, is that you’re experiencing a rise later when the protein is being digested.
Amanda,
There are no “all those people” on Atkins diets who had severe liver and kidney failure. This is an urban legend.
Over the last decade I can think of one case reported in the media where someone was on a starvation diet–not an Atkins diet, and their electrolytes got completely out of whack and they died. This has nothing to do with carbs, however.
Please educate yourself before you pass on this kind of nonsense.
The thing about doing low carb is to eat the proper amount of protein, not going overboard. There’s a formula to knowing how much protein you need based on weight (or ideal weight), age, gender & level of activity. Eating a 12 oz steak & munching on fried pork rinds is not the way to go.
The human body doesn’t need grain & especially in the amounts most people eat.
Low carb may not be for everyone. Individual chemisty & metabolism are unique. The people I’ve seen who have the better A1cs, more level BG & good weight control are those who limit carbs quite a bit.
You noted you changed basal rates, with better results. If you continue to have problems, you may want to look at how you bolus, too. It sounds like your after-meal glucose is peaking later than expected (instead of at 1-2 hours, it’s peaking at 3-4 hours). This can be from eating high protein/high fat meals.
Have you played with the type of pump bolus you use? An extended bolus (some insulin right away to deal with the carbs in the meal, the rest doled out over the number of hours you set to deal with the conversion of other nutrients to glucose) can help. Unfortunately, you have to do a lot of experimenting and testing to see what works for you and what works for certain meals. There are some good discussion on bolusing on this site! Good luck!
Dear Yvonne.
The only downside with insulin that I can see is weight gain. However if you use some to prevent your pancreas from dying completely it will be a small amount and much less of a problem than if you wait until the pancreas is dead and you are insulin resistant to boot. This will be a horible nightmare instead of a manageable disease.
In Canada the Canadian medical ■■■ treatment protocol was no insulin before your pancreas was totally dead. This prehistoric attitude ruined my life. Now I have to take massive amounts of insulin 100 units per day and not even look at carbs and this makes weight loss impossible.
Running no blood tests and eyeballing your diagnosis is really bad medicine cause it is possible you are a type !.
I am not sure if this is appropiate to mention but here goes : same/simelar amount of exercise during the 4 seasons , however during winter cold spel ( about 20 fahrenheit ) I require MORE insulin , or summer heat ( 85 plus fahrenheit ) I require LESS insulin to avoid highs and lows. …same amount of carbs : average 195 grams daily …does NOT include " junk food " , does include a ballenced ( spell check please ) meal plan and red wine !!
Weight since pumping steady @ 137 pound ,5 .6 " tall and shrinking , living with type 1 diabetes over 26 years, no complications …re my weight don’t want it any other way .Yes I do have osteoporosis , due to type 1 diabetes( I don’t think the red wine did it ).
Molly , I am putting it here out again …is your thyroid working ??..autoimmune disease.
I know, I tend to play with my basal rates fairly frequently because of many factors.
There is definitely some kind of shift happening, I just don’t know if it’s good or bad. I just came back from a good round of tennis & usually I take my pump off to prevent myself from going low. However, (and this is what I was noticing last week too), today I questioned if I should have left it on. I was at 127, which isn’t bad, but I’m used to being around 80 at that time.
I don’t think there’s an answer to what I’m questioning. I’m really good about monitoring myself & figuring out where my highs & lows are coming from. I think I may need to just observe for another week or two & see what happens. Maybe things will change.
Thyroid is s a very good question, I always have it checked. As of Feb. I fall in normal ranges according to the lab, but the dr. who requested it was not my endo & he thought I was a little out of range. I worry about autoimmune stuff, also have celiac so I’m tuned in. That was another theory, that maybe my switch was actually triggering more auto immune problems.
I don’t feel it’s nonsense thank you. This is suppose to be a website that offers support. It is not a social network to tell people what they have expeirenced is nonsense. I know a women personally who was on the atkins diet who was in the hospital for over a month due to severe kidney failure from the diet. Much to everyone’s suprise I’m sure not everything reaches the media. We all share a common thing on this site and we all deal with this disease in different ways. The poster was just asking if anything bad could happen from a low carb diet, which would mean eating more protien, which can have just as many carbs as a slice of bread, and veggies. Eating a lot of protisn can have a negative effect on your body over time. I’m pretty sure this has been proven scientifically.
I agree that some people eat too many grains-moderation seems to be the key there but I would think that your body happily recieves them because whole grain foods help lower bad cholesterol and raise good-something all of us need since heart disease strikes diabetics hard.
Anthony, my good friend was on 100 units of Lantus and injecting Byetta. I know her insulin units have gone down a lot and she’s lost a good amount of weight. Have you thought about Byetta?
There’s a lot of good research that shows it’s not fat that gives bad lipid profiles, but carbs. Hence, one of the reasons diabetics typically have elevated bad fats that contribute to heart disease since we don’t process carbs well & have excess glucose circulating.
Grains are extremely carb dense & turn almost instantly to pure glucose. Humans haven’t been eating grains that long, relatively speaking. Many other things to eat for fiber that are far healthier & nutrient dense–flaxseeds, vegetables, nuts. Don’t believe the Quaker Oats commercial:)
I’ve been eating carbs my whole life and less on the protiens and my cholesterol is perfect. I find it quite possible that people who obtain high lipids from carbs are eating “bad” carbs. In culinary arts we studied humanities and the time lines for food. Wheats were grown domestically ever since 10000 BC. Humans domesticated animals shortly after that which provided oxen to help in the grinding process. According to the book “cusine and culture” by linda civitello, flour was used in 800 BC (before the oxen the grains were hand ground). “Breads” were often what we would know today as flat breads. It is believed that leavened breads were first made in egypt around 2686 BC. Rice was domesticated in china and india in 5000 BC. Eating grains has been around forever.
There’s a lot of research to support this, if you want to check.
Humans have been around roughly a half million years regarding the time line, so 7000 years
ago (at the most) is a drop in the bucket. Many populations outside China & Egypt adapted grain eating far later.
Grain may not be the worst thing for you. when I first developped diabetes I was eating about 1000 calories per day as boiled rye just like my ancestor’s. This is the whole kernel, yummier than rice in my opinion. What is much more harmful is bread since it turns into glucose immediately and also patatoes a recent import to Europe about 200 years ago. also if you eat a very low calorie diet you can eat probably most anything and have reasonable BG. this is what our ancestor’s had to enjoy a hypocaloric diet most of the time. In america it is probably best for most of us in particular diabetics to stick to as low carb as possible diet.
Also I bet if you ate only sauer kraut this would be a 90% carb diet and BG would be fine.
Not everyone on a low carb diet eats tons of protein. I’m actually eating less protein on my LC diet than I ate on a “standard American diet” pre-Dx. The difference is that because I’ve cut out all those carbs, and I’m eating less food, the protein is a higher percentage.
Too much protein can be bad if you have kidney failure. Nothing but protein with no fat can be harmful. Otherwise, there’s no evidence that eating a lot of protein is harmful.
When you have type 1, about half the protein you eat gets converted to glucose, so it’s not a “free food.” But 100% of those “healthy whole grains” gets converted to glucose and the effect is faster.
If you feel it’s been proved scientifically that eating protein is bad, please cite your references.