Sweet Potato Pie, in our house, means mashed sweet potato with marshmellows melted on top. So, never had experience with Sweet Potato pie, only pumpkin. The store has been out of Pumpkin and I trialed Mrs. Smith’s Sweet Potato Pie instead… gave a slice to my niece. Nice hunk of pie, with the back crust cut off, though, eaten with no other food, did not spike her BS, nor did it require more insulin, as other pies do. Still prefer pumpkin, though…
You’re kidding right? A slice of sweet potato pie would probably put me into the 300s. How much after eating it did you check her blood sugar? With the fat, it might take awhile to spike. I remember reading before that you regularly do corrections, not just for the occasional mistake. I can’t believe children can be that different than adults.
No, not kidding. She will spike into the mid-300s with apple pie, even if I give extra insulin. Children are more carb sensitive and more insulin sensitive, but she is an adult height now, though a low weight and I notice a better reaction to carbs spikes in general. Tested 1.5 hours after (using Apidra so we don’t prebolus with that) and she was 180. Which did surprise me. Teens often get more insulin than adults both as basal and bolus insulin. Her bolus insulin is 1 to 7.5 the time of day I gave it. Prior to this year, she was getting a lot less bolus insulin. I think it is unlikely she spiked and came down in an hour and a half; insulin does not effect her blood sugars until at least an hour and ten minutes (by that I mean, never a downward trend on the cgms until an hour and ten minutes after and BS will climb until then. She also did not have too bad a reaction to Marie Callender’s coconut cream pie (holidays and everyone is bringing pies over and I wish they wouldn’t). Not too bad, no spike over 200. I expected a lot higher. Definitely no fat spike with the coconut cream. If she starts to rise in the evening, I will give aggressive temp basals. Not possible for me to ascertain if spike is due to delayed digestion of fatty foods or growth spurts. I do cut off the back of the crust and only leave the bottom. I believe a plain apple, eaten without other food will spike her quite high. We have to give insulin for all food. And, I did weigh the pie both times.
Don’t you think 180 is high? To me that’s a spike.
Yep and “nothing over 200” would not make me accept the food as ok. When you say “everyone is bringing over pies and I wish they wouldn’t” why don’t you just say something like “I appreciate it, but we would prefer you didn’t bring pie to this house because of my niece’s diabetes”. It takes awhile educating friends and family, but nobody would think to bring pies to my house. When I lived in Guatemala it was traditional for neighbors to bring things like fruitcakes and candy as gifts at Christmas and I didn’t want to be seen as the rude American, so I just said warm thank yous and either found someone else to take it off my hands or just threw it away.
Zoe, any food that approaches a 150 BG is off limits to me. Simply not worth chasing highs & lows. I feel that they are enough variables we can’t control without looking for damage in the form of cake. Easier to avoid trouble than try to contain it. Taking a boatload of insulin isn’t what I want to do.
We have a neighbor who brings baked goodies to my husband for his help. She’s a nice older lady who lives alone. Yep, I toss her goodies in the trash or my husband brings them to work. I told her once that I have diabetes, but it didn’t compute.
Agreed, Gerri. I am not saying I don’t have spikes, but if a certain food spikes me above my target time and time again, well…:" insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results". Not that I haven’t been “insane”. I tried practically every “healthy cereal” in my market (and there are lots of them!), tried Dreamfield’s for pasta and spiked higher and later, reduced my portions till I needed a magnifier to find them, but I finally gave up on those two foods. And I’ve got a lot less years in which to build up complications than Jan’s niece. NWI. Not worth it.
Children spike higher than adults and it is not possible to achieve such tight blood sugar control, even with the use of cgms. The goal given by the pedi endo is 200 at the one hour mark, 150 or 160 at the two hour. And since Apidra still lasts 3.5 to 4 hours, if she is 140 at the one-hour mark, you will have to fill in with carbs each time she eats. This is something we do do, if she is lounging around at home, but we don’t do it if she is at school. I’m not even sure it will ever be possible to avoid a spike at the one-hour mark, even as an adult, unless she herself decides to go on a very low carb diet, and we have been told that extremely low carb would not be healthy. She is a true Type 1, dx’d at 8, not LADA, which I know has a completely different onset. If LADA, you may still have residual beta cells left for a while to help out. Our goal is to minimize the spikes and correct early; we cannot eliminate them. And, if she wants to have a piece of pie three or four times a year, we let her have it. If we deny any and all treats, she may rebel as a teen, and eat whatever she pleases every day. As it is, she chooses to have a healthy diet most of the time, with an occasional treat. I think that is healthy and a good way to handle the disease long term. I doubt if she will choose low carb as an adult, because she does not like meat, likes carbs in general. It will be her choice, not mine to force upon her. But, thanks for reminding me what I already know… that she has many more years than an adult in which to build up complications. From high blood sugars which she CANNOT control due to growth hormones which cause blood sugars to rise quite high, quickly. Her postprandial highs are quite tame, in comparison. Of course, had she had a choice, we would prefer she was diagnosed with Type 1 as an adult; better yet, not at all.
This is not what parents of children with diabetes are advised to do. Spikes will occur whether you eat eggs, bread and milk for breakfast. We do minimize cereal at breakfast. All carbs cause spikes, be it an apple or icecream. With use of the cgms, I have learned that icecream does not spike above 140, yet an apple will spike fairly high. Does this mean I push icecream and deny the apple? No. We find ways to minimize the spike, giving insulin upfront for the whole meal, with the apple at the end of the meal, thus the insulin will be more active, reducing the spike, prebolus (she can go low from prebolusing with Apidra), using Apidra, or giving more insulin, and filling in with carbs later on. Those are our choices. Putting a child or a teen on a very low carb diet is NOT an option, not a healthy choice for her. And teens are away from home and can eat what they please. I don’t have rebellion because she is allowed to eat everything in moderation and she has very healthy eating habits overall. Low carb? Hardly. A healthy, 180 to 200 carb diet a day and sometimes there are spikes on that, sometimes not. In fact, she can eat the same meal, same time of day, on tested basals with completely different results. She will spike because of the meal, or she will have high spikes related to growth spurts which have NOTHING to do with food. She can have a huge spike without food in her system from growth hormones.
" Children spike higher than adults and it is not possible to achieve such tight blood sugar control, even with the use of cgms. The goal given by the pedi endo is 200 at the one hour mark, 150 or 160 at the two hour. And since Apidra still lasts 3.5 to 4 hours, if she is 140 at the one-hour mark, you will have to fill in with carbs each time she eat."
Yeah, and the ADA recommends 180 as a reasonable 2 hour spike for adults. Most of us think differently. The concept of “filling in with carbs” if someone is 140 is pretty alien to me… But to each their own. I’m sorry, Jan, I just don’t understand the philosophy of “filling in with carbs”, spiking higher, than correcting, etc. When it’s a lot less work to just eat less to begin with. I don’t know about anyone else, but I certainly wasn’t advocating low carb for a teen; I don’t eat low carb myself. But “a healthy 180 to 200 carb a day diet” is, imho, an oxymoron.Teens are developing habits they will keep for a lifetime and high carb intake isn’t a good habit for anyone, let alone a diabetic. If you ask for feedback from the forum, and post numbers such as 150-200 as goals, you are going to get feedback, which you can, of course, ignore.
I had posted in this recipe forum before, stipulating we did not eat low carb but follow the advice of our pedi endo re meal plans, carb counts per day, which at 8 years of age was 180 grams a day and now she usually eats 180 up to 225 sometimes. I was told I was welcomed to post; this is not only for low carbers. As explained in prior posts, if we bolus for a 40 gram meal or 50 gram meal, usually will spike to 180 to 200 at the one hour mark, down to 140 thru 160 at the two hour mark, and she will continue to drop until hour 3.5 or hour 4. If at the two hour check she is 130 and has 3 units left on board (each unit dropping her approx 60 points now), she will obviously be at a deficit. And unless we want her dropping to the floor in a hypoglycemic episode, we have to “fill in” with carbs, depending on what her blood sugar level is. This technique is not foreign to adult Type 1s I have spoken to. If adults on the Type 1 board have significantly reduced carbs to gain better control, I have nothing against it. But she is a growing teen and teens are very hungry so I think I will run it by her VERY qualified pediatric endo before seeking advice on reducing her carbs per day. Such advice would not be sanctioned, as I have already asked and I do know how low carbwise she is advised never to go beyond (no lower than 125 or 130 grams). Not asking for medical advice from adult Type 1s. I may ask what they have discovered re optimum carb load per day, what works for them. As I think I have mentioned, same meal, same carb count, gives DIFFERENT results. I base on my observation of what usually works. She has very good eating habits, and having one slice of pie, four days a week on Thanksgiving week or thee desserts come Christmas week is nothing to guilt trip her over. Desserts were weighed and bolused for. If, as an adult, she herself wishes to eat low or lower carb, I would support her in her choice. Not at all sure she will, so would like to find advice from other Type 1s who eat basically a semi-normal diet. I80 grams of carbs per day is not too high at the moment. She is already super-thin; certainly don’t want to encourage an eating disorder. And, at 13 years of age, she herself chooses how many carbs per day she will eat, regardless of what I wish. She makes great choices most of the time. However, I do apologize for the post if it offends those who feel they cannot ever have a slice of pie. She did not even finish her pie Thanksgiving and it did spike her. If I found she started to ask for pie even once a week, I would start investigating (and I already have) some of the great low carb sites out there that have wonderful low carb deserts. I would not deny pie, just find a way for her to safely enjoy it. The low carb desserts are usually still too high in fat for her to safely indulge often. They are occasional treats.
Zoe, NWI is my motto.
Harder to control BG in kids. Non-diabetic kids have lower BG than non-diabetic adults, so aiming for higher BG in kids with diabetes doesn’t seem safe.
Actually, NWI is my motto for lots of stuff, increasingly as I get older; makes my life a lot more tranquil!
As far as food goes, one of the most valuable things I learned recovering from an eating disorder is to not assign food tasks it isn’t designed for. Food, fuel, nutrition, sensory pleasure, creativity, sharing with others are all good. Making me happy, filling emotional voids, soothing anxiety, feeling less deprived, avoiding feelings altogether…not so much.