I am not sure about this, as the idea
came from this blog by Karen McChesney on A Sweet Life. The way she
wrote the blog, I am sure that those with type 1 diabetes agree with
her feelings.
As a person with type 2 diabetes, I
admit I have many misgivings about what she describes and would never
allow myself to have the blood glucose readings she describes having
for several hours. Many of those in our support group are talking
about this and are wondering why we don't feel this way. We know
that people with type 1 diabetes are afraid of hypoglycemia and we
have to wonder several things.
First, are they not taught how to use
correction injections and if they over bolus too often. Allen, who
had a recent A1c of 5.1 percent, said he is at a loss to understand
type 1 people. He said that eating a low carb, high fat food plan
should prevent the problems she described. Ben asked why anyone
would let his or her blood glucose levels remain in the 200's for
several hours.
Ellie (a type 1 herself and an honorary
member of our support group) asked if we would listen to her. She
agreed with our food plan and said too many people with type 1
diabetes eat normally and plan on covering the extra carbohydrates
with insulin. While she said she does not agree with this, it
explains why many people yo-yo up and down and when they have lows
over correct and then need to bolus for the hyperglycemia.
Ellie is a freshman in college this
year and says that her type 1 friends ridicule her for her low carb,
high fat meal plan and don't understand why she does not have lows
and uses so little insulin. She then tells them about the support
group she belongs to at home that are all type 2 people, most follow
this food plan, and many have A1c's in the low 5%'s. When asked what
her A1c is, many are surprised that she is also between 5.0 and 5.5%.
She has only had one person ask her about her food plan, but after a
few days, rejected it saying she did not like feeling hungry all the
time.
She said she advised her to increase
her fat percentage and add a little more salt. She finally
discovered the person was following the advice of her mother to also
eat low fat and realized that it was a no win situation and her
friend normally had an A1c above 7.0% and had gained 20 pounds in her
first semester of College. After that she decided not to talk about
her A1c and her meal plan. She just thanked us for our support and
being there when she needed our help, by answering her questions
directly or through her parents. She asked us to pass on a special
thank you to Brenda's daughter for her nutritional help. Tim said we
would and we thanked her for her input.
Barry said that explains a lot, and we
need to remember that our food plans work for us and we know they do.
Other people need to experiment on their own to discover whether
they can use the low carb, high fat food plans.
Our support group does not believe
guilt should be any reason to diminish our
our diabetes management or our level of
blood glucose maintenance. We all know that other variables can make
our diabetes management more difficult, such as stress, illness, lack
of sleep, and many other variables, but we need to have our diabetes
held in check by what we eat and how we manage our blood glucose
levels.
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