Type 1 meals

[Bics]

Hi
I am type 2 diabetic and have been for a few years. I cut down on carbs and am managing ok. Yesterday my father in law was diagnosed with type 1. He doesn't know anything about it and I waiting for his appointment with a nurse. He doesn't know what to eat. He is fairly healthy anyway and isn't overweight at all. Can anyone help in telling me what he can or cannot have. Is it the same as type 2? Please help

 

[Bruce Stephens]

Can anyone help in telling me what he can or cannot have.

People with Type 1 can (eventually) eat whatever we want. In the meantime (before he has the ability to alter doses) probably whatever you have for Type 2 would be mostly OK though it's likely he'll need carbs closer to normal, whatever "normal" is (he's likely been put on fixed insulin doses which assume some level of carbs so eating low carb would send him hypo).

 

[Bics]

Thankyou

 

[Bics]

His symptoms were exactly the same as mine when I was first diagnosed. So I thought maybe he was type 2. But he isnt overweight. He does eat high carbs though.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

Thankyou

More briefly, probably whatever he was eating before because likely that's what they chose the fixed doses to match (roughly). The short term risk is low BG, so he needs to make sure he has suitable stuff for treating hypos (glucose tablets, jelly babies, or whatever).

If, when he measures BG, he finds himself usually high, I guess reducing the carbs a bit might make sense, but gradually. It's not likely that switching straight to your diet would work at all well. (If he wanted he could do that, eventually, but not until he can adjust doses.)

 

[Leadinglights]

I think he will need to be guided initially by what insulin regime he is started on and what is said at the appointment. I hope he will be given the technology to help him in the learning journey.

 

[Inka]

Hi
I am type 2 diabetic and have been for a few years. I cut down on carbs and am managing ok. Yesterday my father in law was diagnosed with type 1. He doesn't know anything about it and I waiting for his appointment with a nurse. He doesn't know what to eat. He is fairly healthy anyway and isn't overweight at all. Can anyone help in telling me what he can or cannot have. Is it the same as type 2? Please help

Type 1 and Type 2 are very different conditions. Type 1 is an auto-immune condition where the immune system mistakenly attacks and kills the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Before the discovery and purification of insulin it was a terminal illness. Now we have insulin, we use insulin injections (or pump) to replace the insulin our bodies can no longer make. That’s a bit harder than it sounds because we have to do calculations to choose appropriate doses but basically we learn to ‘be our own pancreas’.

The only foodstuff I was told to avoid as a Type 1 was full sugar drinks unless I was treating a hypo or topping up with glucose prior to exercising. So, Type 1s can eat pretty much a normal diet as long as they use their insulin correctly. Today I ate cereal, bread, potatoes, fruit, chocolate, and even a piece of cake (as well as veg and protein, of course).

So, he should work with his nurse to begin to devise an insulin regime that will allow him to eat his usual diet (as long as his usual diet doesn’t include two litres of full sugarCoke a day!) It will take a little while to get his insulin right, but that’s ok. It’s a balancing act and it’s best to do things slowly and carefully.

 

[DaveB]

Hi. Although many T1s can eat 'normally' some of us like myself can't. I have to control my carb intake otherwise my insulin needs sky-rocket. Once your father-in-law is taught carb-counting which he should be shortly he will find out what his tolerance to carbs is with the insulin doses he takes.