Very high BG with Gluten Free foods

[LorraineP]

I'm just doing an unscientific survey here out of curiosity. Does anyone else get high BG after eating gluten free foods?

My tests for Celiac's disease have come back negative but I understand that tests for Celiac's are notorious for giving false negatives. I know this condition is often associated with Type 1 diabetes as it's another autoimmune disease. It's known for causing erratic blood sugars and a reduction in insulin needs. My basic understanding is that a gluten free diet will allow the body to start absorbing carbs properly again and so naturally BG and corresponding insulin needs will rise again on a gluten free diet.

I told my diabetic consultant that my BG rises after eating gluten free and his reply was that a lot of diabetics say that. When I asked why it rises so much, he shrugged his shoulders and said probably because of different sugars in gluten free foods. I didn't find that a very scientific answer.

So I'm interested to know if other Type 1 diabetics get high BG with gluten free and if so perhaps there are more of us walking around with undiagnosed Celiac's than realised? Apparently not everyone gets the obvious symptoms.

 

[trophywench]

Well a lot of things are GF that folk eat on a daily basis - fruit for one, veg for another, rice or spuds.

To my body a carb is a carb normally and my body doesn't care where it came from - it treats all of them the same almost - in that I rarely have to jab for any veg except when it's ALL root veg basically - eg a stew. I mean you'd hardly put green leafy in the pressure cooker! LOL whereas a green leafy would just be one of the veg on your plate (or I'd happily eat ALL green leafy and just forget the rest - except my husband would go bonkers and I expect I'd get bored!)

 

[LorraineP]

To clarify, I should have said gluten free products rather than gluten free foods. For example if I eat a sachet of Quaker Oats gluten free porridge my BG will rise to around 15 and stay there for 2 - 3 hours, whereas if I eat Quaker Oats "normal" porridge my BG rarely rises above 10 and is back to normal before lunch. This happens every time so I was just interested if anyone else had noticed the same pattern. Guess it's just me then.

Trophywench I include the carb count for all vegetables, even the leafy ones!

 

[mikeyB]

If you have Coeliac Disease, you don't walk around not knowing you have it. If you can eat normal porridge just to see what effect it has on your blood sugar, then your negative tests for coeliac are probably right. A true Coeliac ( I'm sure we have a few) would suffer significant abdominal discomfort and the squits after eating porridge. What you are seeing is the different GI when you remove the gluten, which would happen with anyone, it's nothing to do with any medical condition.