Dafne Questions

[mum2westiesGill]

1. If the course is in your area do you go back home at 5pm?

2. How soon during or after the course do you start on the carb counting & ratios ie 1: 10cp....?

My DSN has introduced me to the Carbs & Cals visual book & has shown me how to count / add up carbs for a meal then how much insulin to take eg 40g carbs in total would be 4 units of insulin / 180g carbs would be 18 units of insulin, i'm just too scared to do it & so end up sticking with the amounts of QA insulin she has said to do ie 6u at breakfast, 10u at lunch....

 

[Robster65]

I can't help with the DAFNE question because I've never done it but as far as carb counting goes, your meter should tell you whether your trusted method is working.

If you're getting highs or lows an hour or two after your meals, then it's clearly not doing the job. Unless you eat exactly the same carbs to match the insulin, which is very restrictive.

You could carb count but maybe subtract a unit from the total to start with to give you a safety margin. Then, if your BG is, for instance, 12 after the meal, you know you can at least trust in the ratio for that meal.

If you drop to 5 at 2 hours, you may need to adjust the ratio down a bit to prevent a hypo.

The best thing is to get in touch with your DSN and explain your fears so she can talk it through with you again. Once you trust in it, it's so flexible, it can open up your life to all sorts of meals and opportunities.🙂

Rob

 

[FM001]

The course is run over 5 days and you go home each day and record your readings and carbohydrate intake. They encourage you to start carb counting from day one and to work out your ratio's from what you've learnt.

Very worthwhile course and would encourage anyone to attend one given the opportunity.

 

[trophywench]

I didn't do DAFNE - I did our local version (CARBS 4 1) based on BERTIE and the answer to your Q is, lunchtime on the first day. We did 1 day a week for 4 weeks, starting at 09.00 and finishing at 4pm-ish.

They had the Rosemary Conley scales, and the lists of foods/weights/values so we could work our lunches out. The other 3 weeks, lunch buffets were provided sponsored by all the usual names (Roche, One Touch, Novo Nordisk etc)

They broke off at points during the day and asked us to test ...... and they gave us acetates and we had to bring 3 days diary results (All BG readings, food, carbs, insulin dosages .... illness, exercise, stressful occurences) the following week and they were gone through one by one where we could all (participants, DSNs and Dietitian) comment eg could have done with another 1u there, or Ooops, could have done with 2u less, needed more/less fast acting carbs, if you'd lobbed a bit of full fat cheese on top of that it would have slowed the carbs down a bit, you didn't eat much protein last week, not very balanced, blooming heck - yours looks brilliant .. whatever ....

 

[Immy1992]

I haven't been on a course, my diabetes team just ran through it with me.

I took to carbohydrate counting quite easily, and the longer you do it, the better you get at guessing the amount of carbs just by looking at the size of the portion.
I've always found jacket potatoes to be the hardest to work out cause they vary so much in size, and when you're out and about you can't weigh it :/