Type 2 diabetes with inflammatory bowel disease

[Treecha]

I have very recently being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, but I have suffered for 40 years with colitis which greatly restricts my diet. I cannot eat most salad s and brassicas are poison to me. I could go on. But just to say my diet is very restricte, has anyone else got this problem and if so how have they managed with suffering from br. My family are loving the low carb meals I am preparing but I have to pick and choose from the meals what I can tolerate. I am floundering as looking through cookbooks mostly have huge amounts of what I would lo to eat but cannot.
hope someo within the forum can help. At the moment I am living on porridge, hi Ken, turkey green beans and carrots.

 

[Leadinglights]

Hi Treecha, welcome to the forum.
A few people have reported that reducing carbs in their diet has helped enormously with IBS and similar conditions. All you can really do is to start with the foods you can tolerate and build up a repertoire of meals that are also low carb.
If you get a blood glucose monitor so you can home test the effect of meals then you can select meals that don't increase blood glucose beyond tolerable limits.
What sort of foods are you OK with as people may be able to make some suggestions.
You can look on the internet for low carb recipes which use ingredients you are OK with which might give you ideas.
Many people find porridge is something they cannot cope with yet others are OK with it.
What is your HbA1C which has given you your diagnosis, it will be something over 48mmol/mol but if it is not too high then some modest changes may be all that is needed.

 

[ianf0ster]

Hi @Treecha and welcome to the forum.
There's a lot more to low carb than just salads and brassicas. It helps if you can eat fish, meat, eggs and dairy. But there are plenty of low carb vegetarians , even some low carb vegans.
The biggest aid is a Blood Glucose meter to enable you to eliminate those foods which spike your blood glucose too much. Also because we are all different (different genes, different biome) there may be food which isn't thought of as low carb but which your body can eat without it raising your blood glucose too much. Testing using a Blood Glucose meter will tell you this.

 

[Treecha]

Thank you for your help my my hbA1C was 52 at my last reading but it has been 57. I am going to ask my GP if I can have a blood glucose meter. Also I do eat chicken,turketurkey, fish, and and occasionally beef but it is the variety of vegetables and carbohydrates I am struggling with. I have always eaten a large amount of white carbohydrates e.g. Bread and potatoes,these I have cut out now and I am struggling to fill up. I know it’s a matter of just keep trying different foods to substitute these.
since joining Diabetes UK I have found the forum very interesting listening to all the comments, newly diagnosed diabetics don’t feel on their own. Thank you

 

[Leadinglights]

Thank you for your help my my hbA1C was 52 at my last reading but it has been 57. I am going to ask my GP if I can have a blood glucose meter. Also I do eat chicken,turketurkey, fish, and and occasionally beef but it is the variety of vegetables and carbohydrates I am struggling with. I have always eaten a large amount of white carbohydrates e.g. Bread and potatoes,these I have cut out now and I am struggling to fill up. I know it’s a matter of just keep trying different foods to substitute these.
since joining Diabetes UK I have found the forum very interesting listening to all the comments, newly diagnosed diabetics don’t feel on their own. Thank you

Butternut squash or celeriac or cauliflower is a good substitute for potatoes.
If you can tolerate healthy fats then full fat yoghurt and cheese, mayonnaise, eggs are all good and will help stem feeling hungry.
Edamame or black bean pasta is also low carb if you can tolerate that.
You may be lucky to get a blood glucose monitor but most Type 2 have to self fund but inexpensive monitors and strips can be bought on line. Just ask if you need info on those.

 

[ianf0ster]

If your doctor won't prescribe a Blood glucose meter for you (and most won't for a Type 2 unless they need insulin) there are 2 relatively cheap BG meters used by members of both diabetes forums in the UK. These are both available on the internet and have the cheapest test strips (test strips are BG meter specific). Test strips are the major cost because we use a lot of them for food testing -to see which food we are OK with and which we need to limit/avoid. If a meal doesn't spike our Bglood Glucose by more than 2.0 mmol from just before eating to 2hrs after first bite then it is OK for us, but we need to test a few times to be certain (we can react differently at different times of day).
They are the:
SD Gluco Navii
and the Spirit Healthcare TEE2

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Welcome to the forum @Treecha

Sorry to hear about the tricky time you are having balancing the needs of your different conditions.

We have a T1 member @mikeyB who has lived with ulcerative colitis for some years who may have some tips and experiences to share?

It does sound like starting with a menu that suits your colitis, and then investigating how your body responds to different meals using a BG meter might be a very helpful approach.

Checking immediately before eating, and again 2hrs after your first bite, ideally looking for a rise of no more than 2-3mmol/L, and ultimately hoping to see your BG levels settle into a range of 4-8.5 for as much of the time as you can manage. Where you see much larger ‘meal rises’ take a look at the total carbohydrate content (not just ‘of which sugars’) and try either a reduced portion, swapping some of the carbs for another ‘filler’ or altering the proportions of different parts of the meal.

Good luck, and let us know how you get on 🙂

 

[Treecha]

Yes I will definitely keep in touch. I’m going to order a meter today.