New to T1 might be a silly question

[Jennyninja]

After nearly 13 years misdiagnosed as T2 I'm now confirmed as T1. Today is day 2 of basal/bolus insulin and I'm being closely followed up by the local diabetic care team. I've spent years generally avoiding high carb food and cutting out sugar apart from some naturally occurring ones contained as part of good nutrition. T1 insulin therapy is all about carbs, not sugar. I'm just beginning to get my head around this. Question: So as long as I get the correct dosage of insulin for grams of carbs does it matter if the carbs are mainly sugar ? I don't think I can bring myself to eat sugar to excess so this is more of a hypothetical question. As I said I have access to a great diabetic care team but this question feels almost too silly to ask.... views?

 

[Thebearcametoo]

If you can match your insulin to your carbs you can eat anything. In theory. The thing is that injecting is a blunt instrument and the timing of the insulin hitting your system may not match when the sugar hits your system. Ways to help this are to time your injection so that you have insulin on board before you eat (everyone will be slightly different as to how long) or to eat sugar with a meal that includes fat and protein which will help slow down the hit of the sugar. It will take you a while to get the hang of what makes you spike (can be sugar can be things like rice) and what gives you a delayed spike (lots of fat) and to time your insulin injections accordingly or to split the dose. Keeping a note of what you’re eating, how many carbs and how much insulin will help you to see the patterns. It can be helpful to get it ‘wrong’ so you can get the data on different foods but long term knowing roughly how many carbs a meal keep you from bouncing around the place is helpful and what foods make you spike or crash.

Usual advice when starting bolus/basal is to just eat your normal foods so that they can check your ratios are suiting you though so don’t rush into a sugar binge

 

[Inka]

I was told I could eat anything (within reason) and the only thing I had to avoid was full sugar Coke and similar drinks unless I needed them to treat a hypo or pre-exercise.

Type 1 is all about insulin. All you’re doing is trying to be your own pancreas, and use your insulin injections to control your blood sugar. This involves getting the basal dose right to keep your blood sugar in range in the absence of food. It also involves counting carbs and adjusting your mealtime insulin to deal with those carbs (or taking a fixed dose of insulin and eating the appropriate amount of carbs).

I eat things with sugar in eg cake, chocolate, biscuits, desserts, but I tend to choose ones that aren’t ‘pure sugar’ because they get absorbed very fast and make blood sugar control trickier.

(And no question is silly)

 

[trophywench]

I tend to treat carbs as if they were money and decide when I wish to spend more, if you see what I mean.

So if you happen to be on holiday in Cornwall or Devon and taking more exercise than day to day, you thankfully collapse into a chair at a tearoom after a good walk around wherever and should they coincidentally just happen to have eg some delicious looking scones, clotted cream and jam on offer to have with your cuppa - yes please! Same thing goes with proper trifle at Christmas and the odd '99' ice cream cone.

 

[Ljc]

I am so pleased to hear that you now have the correct diagnosis.

On here their is no such thing as a silly question, so ask away ok.

If I were you, atm I wouldn’t make any drastic changes to my diet. You have had years of strictly controlling what you eat , been mis diagnosed for years and now having to get used to having T1 . Even though you knew you didn’t fit the usual T2 it’s probably going to take some time to get used to your re diagnosis , I know it did me.

With T1 Theoretically you can eat whatever you want providing you can match your insulin to it .
I am a bit like Jenny, Is that cake , luscious fruit or whatever, worth the extra insulin, if so then I have it if not then I don’t .

Others above have given you good sound advise.