Going straight to the point- how the heck does one bolus for these drinks?! for example, I bolused 4 units ( 10 carbs per unit) for a 30 grams of carbs bottle of ensure, i added an extra unit just in case …and my mother’s sugar two hours later was still abnormally high.
Has anyone tried to master the art of bolusing correctly with nutritional drinks/protein drinks?
I’ve also tried 5 grams of carbs protein drinks and they’ve spiked my mother’s levels tremendously. Mom lost so much weight from surgery ( she was thin as it is before). This is frustrating!
I have no experience with the drinks you’re talking about, so this is just for consideration. Over the years, I’ve read some about glycemic index. But I always thought with the typical meal of mixed foods that it would be difficult to account for. My understanding is that if you eat applesauce, your BS would raise faster than eating an apple of the same carb content. So, I’m wondering if the fact that these drinks are all liquid, results in a similar effect. If that were the case, taking the insulin in advance of consuming the drink might help flatten the curve. Of course, you have to be careful about where your mother’s sugar is prior to this liquid meal. But even a modest lead time might help.
Another possibility might be to split the consumption of the Ensure so the effect of the sugar rise is spread out over time. If I was facing this situation, I would be taking multiple BS tests to determine what is happening to the curve. Of course, a CGM would be great, but I’ve done this with just test strips in the past. Hopefully, a few intense sessions like this would get you dialed in.
It’s also important to note that if you are running high sugars, you are “peeing away calories” as Dr Bernstein has noted, regarding people unintentionally losing weight.
Do some of those drinks have sugar alcohols in them? I find that people’s metabolism of those varies a lot, and some people tend to have more of a blood sugar rise from them than others… with sugar alcohols I tend to have to count about half of the carbs, as opposed to what the label would have you think. It depends on the type though too; erythritol is a little better than the others at not raising blood sugars and not causing GI distress.
Also, you may need to cover some of the protein if there’s a lot… some people take either a delayed bolus or a later shot to do that, since it tends to kick in a bit later. It’s a bit trial and error how much she’d need. I usually don’t need to cover it when I also have carbs in the mix, but if not or not much, I cover about half the amount for grams of protein that I would for grams of carbs and take my shot after eating, not before.
