My kidneys are fine eating low carb & no gout after two years low carbing it. I don’t eat an excessive amount of protein, but guess that’s a comparative thing. Eating higher fat/low carb has improved my lipid profile. This seems to be a common trend. I’m a small person & people have varying protein needs.
Not a meat/salad existence at all. Ugh, how awful that would be. I eat lots of veggies, just low carbs ones. The vast majority of vegetables are low carb. Easier to say what I don’t eat. No grains in any form, no beans, no milk (cream, unsweetened almond milk instead), no starchy vegetables, no fruit juice. Small amounts of berries are about the only fruit I eat. For baking, I use almond flour, coconut flour, golden flaxseed meal for pancakes, muffins, cakes, cookies.
There are many low carb recipes sites with delicious, creative meals.
So the night might be something to be addressed with priority. If you can achieve improvements here it will have great influence on your A1c.
Some ideas:
-you need to know what is going on at night: measure at 3am and 6am or use a CGM again
-maybe the liver is dumping glucose to prepare for the day. This reaction can be reduced by eating something that is digested slowly before going to bed. This way your BG stays above a certain treshold and this will pacify the liver. I eat one Wasa original bread with margerine to achieve that. Some pieces of chocolate might have the same effect but this is not recommendable for daily use.
-a small dosage of metformin can pacify the liver too - as a last resort
-do not eat dinner after 8pm (very important to find out the cause).
The low carb comments here have been great. My wife and I went on it a few years ago and it has made a big difference. I have had better control, I think it helped my eyes, it certainly gives me more energy, and it controls weight. Even the ADA has belatedly come around to face the truth. One thing that helps in the low carb lifestyle is Netrition.com which has great low carb food choices and they are the best at getting deliveries to you within a day. Another of our favorite places is a food store around here called Wilson Farms. If you can find a place like this that has great fresh fruits and vegetables and even prepared whole food meals it makes a meat and vegetable diet definitely not hard to take. Sometimes I miss the great baked bread choices I made at Italian restaurants in the past, but when I think of the 15 units of Novolog I used to take to cover bread and pasta and the see-saw blood sugars that resulted, it’s just not worth it.
Joshua, what was your A1c at when you started the low carb way and how long of a decline did you take to get to be where you wanted? E.g., 8.0Jan06–6.5dec06.
There was an amazing place called low carb life (creative isnt it) that we used to eat at. Most of their meals were extremely low carb and I was able to find a lot of good products there. They closed up shop about 2 years back. I live in Los Angeles which seems like the capital of exotic diets so I think I should be able to find another place like that.
I have begun the move though. Today for breakfast I moved to a slice of toast with chesse and turkey. The next step is to seek out low carb breads or something like a kavi krisp or wassa cracker. Thanks for the link!
Funny thing. My endo actually wanted my BS to go from 150-100 through the night. With an H1c of 7.6 I defentely want to see it drop and thus this new insulin regiment of less basal and more bolus. Oh and the nights sloping the other way. Logially, the night blood sugars are very important as they are 1/4 of my day that can be squared away. So, I attempt to control it tightly. Its one of the issues though.
I do check multiple times at night (oh boy less sleep!). Thats is how I know the trends. Fixing them is another step Im working on. There very well might be a dawn effect going on as I think my body produces a good amount of glucose. I can see it when I really spike from a fast LBS decline. Ill have to give the wassa cracker a try. I really dont care for playing with fatty foods (that doesnt mean the temptation doesnt get me) as trying to figure out when the sugar post fat gets broken down is always pretty tough. Im off work at 7pm and dont sleep usually till 1-2am so Im usually right at the cusp of 8pm for eating. Most nights I test every 1/2 hour for 2-3 hours prior to bed.
I think I need 3-4 nights with nothing consumed before bed and non fluctuating BG. That way I can really know which variable is effecting my BS. and then introduce 1 at a time i.e., wassa, insulin, etc
Check out Healthwise Bakery. They have zero net carb breads. I order from www.lindasdietdelites.com, but there might be stores that carry it in your area.
Healthwise breads have no effect on my BG at all. None. Their breads don’t have chemicals, or soy & some of the ingredients are organic. Healthwise’s nutritionals are certified, unlike most companies. I’ve tried other low carb brands of bread & had spikes.
I am not thinking this is just a T1 question, it’s a diabetic question. How do people keep control exclusively, day in and day out. It’s a matter of priorities and habit to me.
My prioriy at 58 is to be a healthy 59 year old, and see my grandchildren. In order to do that I have to follow a plan, I am the leader of a great team…of docs, and support people. I had to decide that this was important enough to me, to make it work no matter what. I had many stops and starts…read some of my other posts and blogs. But I watched my grandmother die from diabetes, have a good friend who lost both of her legs to diabetes, and now have many friends who are in the catagory of “I don’t care”. I do care. I care about growing old, about my kids, about me.
I test 3 - 5 times a day (type II on meds) I hate to cook, so I often ask my cook husband to cook with me, and we shop only for things that are diabetically friendly, which now days isn’t as hard as it sounds. We do all the tricks of smaller plates, more vegetables, less meat, fewer sugary snacks, etc. I plan a menu every day, sometimes a week, I shop off of that menu. Yes, It is tough, but I consider the alternative things I could have, and this isn’t so bad.
The hardest thing for me was to “ASK FOR HELP” and accept what came. Once I got a program of food, exercise, meds, etc. that worked for me, I passed it on to others. You can do it, you just have to make up your mind which is more important -----doing it, or “pretending” to do it.
“Morningstar sausages at breakfast, ham slices in a low carb bread sandwich, protein bar, or evening fish or substitute meat. Low low on potato and starch. So it is by constant testing things out that I have come to this.
I do not eat the same thing day after day”
This sounds like a plan I’d like. Can you tell me what else you substitute to give variety? I’m worried about not getting enough nutrition.
I try to stay 35 carbs or less per meal but I could certainly try less…I’m just afraid of being hungry.
Thanks Cathy. I see a good number of posts pointing to baby steps towards a larger goal which I think is a good aproach considering so many of us are in that “I don’t care” catagory.
About 10 years ago I picked up a freestyle flash and started testing on my forearms. While this isnt the most accureate method, what this did for me was show me that I needed to know what the heck was going on. Since then Ive been on the chase to get under tight control. Its ellusive to say the least. Toss in normal life… Whew! But I dont think there is any giving up and I dont think any of us who even take a single stab at control are “pretneding.” I know I personally had a huge physiological block for years about helping myself.
Right now, I average (per A1c) 170, my next step is 150, then 130, then 110. Thats the goal. Asking for help for me isnt that difficult (check out this thread!). Heck its been my utmost deisre to be under tight control for years. I see trends here (pun intended!) and Im curious about them. The small things that make up the big picture and how I can incorporate them into my hectic life.
I assume just like rapidly falling blood sugar is an issue, rapidly dropping trends would be harmful as well.
In my eye issue experience, things dont spontaneously combust. Youd need some moderate to severe retinopathy with a good amount of laser to get a vesel to burst. But then again this is just afaik and each of us is different.
also if you can, I’d see a retina specialist. I had just seen my regular eye doctor a few weeks before my first hemorrage 25 years ago. It’s very common to have retinopathy if you’ve had diabetes more than 20 years.
I was diagnosed with retinopathy in one eye with an A1C of 9.3. My opthamologist was, displeased, to say the least. He told me I needed to get my A1c under control, period, in no uncertain terms. He said nothing about how fast or slow it should happen. 7 weeks later, I was at 6.9 and all I did was comply with my previous insulin doses. I dont think it would have been possible for me to lower it any slower. When I saw my opthamologist 6 months later, my A1C was down to 6.0. For the first time, ever, I had an angiogram done and it showed more extensive retinopathy in both eyes, compared to the simple pupil dilation exam. but it was still mild and nonproliferative. I imagine that going from 9.3 to 6.0 that quickly resulted in some changes, but. my opthamologist stressed that it was much more important, long term, to just get in conrol and not worry about anything else. He did say I should strive to tighten it even further with a pump. I’ll see him again in 2 months for a follow-up, but he didn’t seem overly concerned compared to my last visit where he was just plain livid.
An average of 170 doesn’t necessarily imply he was always above kidney threshold - on the contrary. More likely he has been repeatedly bouncing around from 40 to 400, spending half his time or more below kidney threshold but with extended periods of time substantially above. There is a lot less room below kidney threshold than there is above it, so an average will tend to get weighted upwards if one is bouncing a lot. This is the pattern I have seen when I am in lousy control.
