Carb crazy wife is now diabetic, advice....

Man of Honour
Man of Honour
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I made a stirfry yesterday - god damn regular noodles are super high carbed!

Sent her blood sugars through the roof.
So short term you can 'slow' the carbs down with fat or protein in the meal and she won't get that sudden high blood sugar, but it's not a long term solution. A better solution is to switch to a slower acting carb like brown rice.

Essentially, the more processed a food is, the faster the carbohydrate acts and the quicker it gets into the blood. Rice is generally quite a fast acting carb, but in order of speed: American 'quick cook' is the worst because it's precooked before drying and processing, Basmati and long grain rice is next (still quite fast), then brown. Same with bread - processed white bread is very fast, traditional white a little slower and brown a little slower again.

It's worth experimenting with the different noodles against the type of insulin she's on though. You've got a selection of dried noodles, packet egg and rice noodles and fresh egg and rice noodles and one of those will work better :)

As has been mentioned. Read up on things like the Atkins diet and understand how GI and carb content works. There is no need to switch to an extreme diet such as those, or even a low carb diet, but there is value in knowing what sugars are in what foods. Essentially you're looking to avoid anything with glucose (or even further processed sugars like maltose), which is annoying because many supermarkets load their food up with it instead of normal sugar (sucrose and fructose) because it's cheaper and sweeter. An example is normal Sacla pesto has glucose in its ingredients, but the organic variant does not and it's only pennies more - just check the ingredients and compare and contrast :)
 
Associate
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That can be the case as some low fat ones are full of carbs which is what she needs to avoid. I have Total as it doesn't change my sugar levels at all. Try a few within reason and see. I think its about 6g of carb per 150g pot.
 
Man of Honour
Man of Honour
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With natural yoghurt, full fat is made with full fat milk (5% fat) and low fat is made with semi-skimmed or skimmed. Carb content is the same as milk which is a little bit. It really is as simple as that - have a look for my yoghurt making thread on here :)
 
Soldato
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Total 0% Greek yogurt is fine.

This stuff is amazing (if not a bit weird).

My recommendation is for nuts (be careful not to get salted ones all the time though!).

And also for hummus, with celery or carrots.

You an make the hummus yourself quite easily if you have a food processor.
 
Soldato
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Just posted this - my advice would be the same here too, Primal or Paleo (low carb, no 'safe starches') really help control blood glucose levels. People have strange reactions to the idea at first, but once you realise how rubbish bread and other grain based foods actually are, it's easy and you feel a lot better.

I've been doing this for about 6 weeks now (actually took it a step further and doing the bulletproof method) and I've never felt better. Plus the food I am eating actually tastes amazing. Do I miss bread? Yes, a little bit. I actually did have a slice one day last week and I had terrible brain fog afterwards. I used to eat that every day.

Besides, a diet where Steak and Kale with Hollandaise sauce is considered saintly must have something going for it!

My father's diabetic (type 2). I've persuaded him to try it, he'll be monitoring his glucose levels but Paleo/Bulletproof eating should actually stabilise his levels long term.
 
Associate
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It needs to be carb free for a type I snack, low GI isn't any better if you want to eat a snack without injecting / not stack insulin. The best idea really is not to snack, but you are left with basically eggs, cheese, meat and some veg. Some nuts are ok but peanuts (not even nuts I don't think?) need injecting for me. Try to keep carbs in snacks under 10 grams at least. Most people only see 2-3 mmol/l increase with 10 grams.

While you can snack as a type I it is hardly worth the hassle imo She is likely on rapid acting insulins but at set doses right now (they just don't have the time to teach dose adjustment in normal practice) so it isn't a good idea to change to low carb all the time until she understands how to match insulin to carbs. Low GI can be good and bad depending on how you time the insulin to match, it isn't like type II were slowing down absorbing is almost always good.

I'm not saying lower carb isn't something she might like to try for better results but I'd guess now isn't the time for it.
 
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