Diabetes Type 1 Support Group

I have learned a lot in the last two years of being a care giver for a diabetic. First thing to remember is that sugar free does mot mean carb free.

Another thing to avoid is aspartame and acesuflame potassium. These two synthetic sugars cause you to dump stored sugars out into your body and make your insulin not work. You can get crazy highs. Most fake sugars synthetic ones are bad. The top two mess your numbers up bad. Others can cause headaches and muscle pain or cancer. It is best to stick to real sugar.

My roomate is on a 45 carb with about 30 or so sugars per meal. We do long acting levemire morning and night and quick acting humalog at meals. 8 levemire morning and 6@ night. Meals depending on number we do 2 to 6 humalog.

Great food suggestions sara lee makes bread with 13, 10 or 7 carbs per slice. Also if you want tortillas there are flat out tortilla brand or la tortilla brand. They make high fiber tortillas that make the carbs to be less than 10.

Fibers are put on label as a carb. So if a product has 10 carbs and 2 fiber on the label it really had 8 carbs. Because fibers are carbs that get pooped out. So when looking at a label look at the carbs and minus the fiber to get real carbs per serving.

Other good foods are greek plain yogurt. They have 10 or less carbs. You csnd add a handful of berries to them and not get too many carbs. Strawberries, blueberries or raspberries are pretty low for 1/2 or less cup.

Also remember to get enough protien like eggs and fish and chicken. Low fat is best. Too much fat takes a long time to breal down the carbs and you can get a high several meals later when you think you ate nothing.

Cottage cheese is good too.

Chtomium is a key vitamin to have because it helps your insulin work twice as well. I know at night if my roomate has a 300 we do our regular long acting and a unit of quick humalog she has numbers under 150 by morning. But if she does one 500 mg chromium and long acting without the quick humalog her numbers drop the same. A chromium drops her about 100 plus whatever the regular insuin does.

Get a daily diabetic multi vitamin it has chromium. One with the individual 4 or 5 pill packets. Drink plenty of water since dehydration can make blood thick and give false readings.

Good luck

I miss wrot above we do 45 carbs sometime 50 and 20 not 30 sugars. Less sugar the better.

There is also a website by the usda on nutrition and ingredients in foods. Look it up in yahoo, google or bing. I thing usda nutrition database. You can enter in any food from celery to apples to soup or even fast food like mcdonalds. You get the serving sizes and all the sugars, carbs and vitamins in it.

Other things when testing whipe the test area with alcohol whips. Let it dry about 30 seconds. A dirty test site can give false readings. Also a site that has not dried from the alcohol whipe can cause false readings.

Air bubbles in your insulin pen or needle are bad too. Tap the tip until they go away or squirt several units until the bubble is gone. If not get a new pen.

Keep pen/ insulin cool but not cold. Room temp too hot it will spoil. We use prefilled pens. They last 28 day out of fridge. We have a chart that tells us when we got it out and when it expires. That is 28 days from when you insert the needle tip on the pen. If it has not been poked by a needle put it in fridge until next time.