Munjeeta
Well-Known Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
Hello guys. I won't go into too much detail to bore you all to tears but I thought I'd share with you all my experiences of DAFNE this week. I'm feeling very hopeful 🙂 Remember, this is all from my own point of view, and although I will share as much info as I can remember it can't be taken as gospel, just my own persoanl ramblings!
Ok. So yesterday was the first day. Initially I was surprised to find out that there were only 6 people registered on it, I thought there would have been more. It's impressive, between the 6 (or 5 as someone didn't turn up) of us we have a DSN, a dietician and a diabetes specialist at our disposal for the whole week.
So first session was pretty general, back to basics, learning about what diabetes actually is, discussing our own experiences (between the 5 of us there is over 80 years' worth of experience 😱). No matter how many times I get told the science, I never seem to retain it (in spite of the fact I studied biology at degree level 😛) but this time, with it being referred to a put into practise I'm hoping it's here to stay! We talked about symptoms of untreated diabetes, and I found out that if your bg is over 10 sugar starts being lost in urine, I didn't realise this.
Then the dietician came in to do a session on carbs and nutrients. We began discussing the reasons we eat (a surprisingly large list!) and then discussed the impact diabetes had on these reasons (largely negative) - the aim for the week was conveyed then as enabling us to get back to enjoying food, not just seeing it as a necessary evil. We were tehn told about the main sources of energy in our diet and had to sort lots of appealing plastic food into categories of these: protein; fat; carbohydrate and alcohol with a '?' category for anything that didn't fit. Not as straight forward as it sounds! The most interesting bit for me was discussing the GI index. I vaguely knew about it (glucose high GI, foods that take longer to be digested, e.g.pulses, low GI), but found out that certain low GI foods (e.g. nuts, lentils) lower the overall GI value of a meal. So, although lentils do contain carbs, those carbs do not need to be covered by insulin because they are negated by the GI value. Mashing potatoes increases their GI value because you have done half the work of your digestive system already - fascinating! The last tip she gave us was that, as a rule when working out the carb content of certain foods using their total weight:
half the total weight of bread is carbs (so 60g of bread will have roughly 30g of CHO)
a third of the total weight of rice is CHO
a quarter of the total weight of pasta is CHO
a tenth of the total weight of fruit is CHO
Lunchtime was good! They provided food and we all had to try and work out the carb value of what we ate. Tricky as buffet style. But useful with the staff on hand to help and discuss. We all took 1 unit of insulin to every 10g of CHO.
After lunch was talking about targets and some useful questions to ask yourself before making any adjustments to insulin. The main points being to work out when the problem occurs, work out if there is any reason for this other than insulin doses, wait at least 2 days to ensure it wasn't just a one off and then try and work out which insulin is causing the problem and adjust accordingly. Obviously talked about in a lot more detail and was quite a useful flow diagram to remind us (me especially - over reacting and over correcting are definitely problems I have) to take a step back and consider things carefully.
The only other really interesting thing for me was finding out definitively the difference between blood glucose and HbA1c. I have been told recently about waht HbA1c is (a mesaure of how much glucose is attached to haemoglobin blood cells at the time they were made, averaged out over 120 days) but I always thought that my bg meter measured the same thing, just as a snapshot. But it doesn't. It measures the amount of glucose floating around in the blood plasma at the time of testing. So the 2 are actually completely different. I didn't realise they were SO different. 😱
And that, really is that. DAFNE day one in a nutshell. I realisd I've rambled on a little so if you've got this far well done!! (I'm not even sure if there is some clause somewhere that says you can't regurgetate DAFNE, so please if there is northerner, feel free to delete!) Bring on day 2...
Ok. So yesterday was the first day. Initially I was surprised to find out that there were only 6 people registered on it, I thought there would have been more. It's impressive, between the 6 (or 5 as someone didn't turn up) of us we have a DSN, a dietician and a diabetes specialist at our disposal for the whole week.
So first session was pretty general, back to basics, learning about what diabetes actually is, discussing our own experiences (between the 5 of us there is over 80 years' worth of experience 😱). No matter how many times I get told the science, I never seem to retain it (in spite of the fact I studied biology at degree level 😛) but this time, with it being referred to a put into practise I'm hoping it's here to stay! We talked about symptoms of untreated diabetes, and I found out that if your bg is over 10 sugar starts being lost in urine, I didn't realise this.
Then the dietician came in to do a session on carbs and nutrients. We began discussing the reasons we eat (a surprisingly large list!) and then discussed the impact diabetes had on these reasons (largely negative) - the aim for the week was conveyed then as enabling us to get back to enjoying food, not just seeing it as a necessary evil. We were tehn told about the main sources of energy in our diet and had to sort lots of appealing plastic food into categories of these: protein; fat; carbohydrate and alcohol with a '?' category for anything that didn't fit. Not as straight forward as it sounds! The most interesting bit for me was discussing the GI index. I vaguely knew about it (glucose high GI, foods that take longer to be digested, e.g.pulses, low GI), but found out that certain low GI foods (e.g. nuts, lentils) lower the overall GI value of a meal. So, although lentils do contain carbs, those carbs do not need to be covered by insulin because they are negated by the GI value. Mashing potatoes increases their GI value because you have done half the work of your digestive system already - fascinating! The last tip she gave us was that, as a rule when working out the carb content of certain foods using their total weight:
half the total weight of bread is carbs (so 60g of bread will have roughly 30g of CHO)
a third of the total weight of rice is CHO
a quarter of the total weight of pasta is CHO
a tenth of the total weight of fruit is CHO
Lunchtime was good! They provided food and we all had to try and work out the carb value of what we ate. Tricky as buffet style. But useful with the staff on hand to help and discuss. We all took 1 unit of insulin to every 10g of CHO.
After lunch was talking about targets and some useful questions to ask yourself before making any adjustments to insulin. The main points being to work out when the problem occurs, work out if there is any reason for this other than insulin doses, wait at least 2 days to ensure it wasn't just a one off and then try and work out which insulin is causing the problem and adjust accordingly. Obviously talked about in a lot more detail and was quite a useful flow diagram to remind us (me especially - over reacting and over correcting are definitely problems I have) to take a step back and consider things carefully.
The only other really interesting thing for me was finding out definitively the difference between blood glucose and HbA1c. I have been told recently about waht HbA1c is (a mesaure of how much glucose is attached to haemoglobin blood cells at the time they were made, averaged out over 120 days) but I always thought that my bg meter measured the same thing, just as a snapshot. But it doesn't. It measures the amount of glucose floating around in the blood plasma at the time of testing. So the 2 are actually completely different. I didn't realise they were SO different. 😱
And that, really is that. DAFNE day one in a nutshell. I realisd I've rambled on a little so if you've got this far well done!! (I'm not even sure if there is some clause somewhere that says you can't regurgetate DAFNE, so please if there is northerner, feel free to delete!) Bring on day 2...
