Diabetes –how you live
As part of my ongoing effort to educate my friends and family about type 1 diabetes I am offering yet another installment.
How exactly do you live with this disease?
For my children life means a diet that is monitored and 4 shots of insulin a day plus 8 – 10 finger sticks for blood glucose checks.
By a monitored diet I mean that they cannot simply eat whatever they want, whenever they want. Unless that is, it’s something that won’t affect their blood sugar. For instance, Matthew loves baby carrots and he can eat them without restriction but he also loves cookies and while he can eat them it has to be within limits. Then again, that’s not so terribly different than before he got diabetes. And I’m not talking about sugar free cookies, I mean regular old cookies like anyone else eats. Yes, he can eat them and frankly, anything else you or I can eat.
A common misconception about type 1 diabetes is that you can no longer eat sweets, but that’s simply not true. It is true that limiting sweets will help people with type 1 diabetes keep their blood sugar under control, but sweets can still fit into their meal plan, just as they would for people without diabetes. And let’s admit it, limiting sweets is good for all of us.
Then again there are times when sweets are a must for diabetics: if the blood sugar level drops too low, sweets (or juice, or soda) are the surest to raise it and prevent the onset of hypoglycemia.
Ironically this disease has really changed the way I see sugar because what I thought was really not a good thing is all too often the very thing my children need when their blood sugar drops too low, as it does daily. It’s a life line.
What about sugar free foods? We don’t eat them. Most sugar free foods contain some kind of artificial sweetener and some of those, sorbitol for example, still do raise blood sugar but at different rates than regular sugar so they can be very hard to dose for. My personal opinion is that my children have enough going on in their bodies without giving them something more that could be bad for them. I’m just not convinced of the safety of artificial sweeteners and I don’t they are worth the risk. And they are unnecessary. We can easily fit the occasional treat into their diets and dose insulin for it. It’s also helps them to feel more normal and less conspicuous, especially in public situations.
Since my children were always somewhat limited in the amount of sweets they ate anyway this isn’t a huge change. The harder part has been keeping an eye on them at outside functions. Making sure they don’t just grab a cookie or pretzel like every other child or simply have a cup of punch. It’s takes vigilance and it can be very tiring. Maggie handles it quite well but at just 4 years old Matthew still doesn’t get why he can’t just have a cup of juice whenever he wants it. It’s a struggle but he’s getting there.
But what you have to understand is that it’s not about sugar, it’s about carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are what raise the blood sugar and they come in many forms. Sugar yes, but also bread, potatoes, rice, pasta, and even milk.
So we count carbs (which isn’t hard to do with modern food labeling) and their meals consist of 3-5 carbs at each meal and 1-2 carbs at snacks if needed.
How we measure it is 1 carb = 15 grams of carbohydrate. Here are some examples of 15g carbohydrate servings:
Bread, cereal, rice, pasta, beans, and starchy vegetables:
- 1 slice bread (1 oz)
- 1/4 bagel
- 3/4 cup dry cereal
- 1/2 cup cooked cereal
- 1/3 cup cooked rice or pasta
- 1/4 cup cooked dry beans, lentils, peas, or corn
- 1/4 large baked potato
Fruit:
- 1 medium apple or orange
- 1/2 banana
- 1/2 cup chopped, cooked, or canned fruit
- 1/2 cup fruit juice
- 1/4 cup dried fruit
Milk and yogurt:
- 1 cup milk
- 2/3 cup plain yogurt (added sugar will up the carb content so check the label.)
So a peanut butter sandwich with a cup of milk and a graham cracker is 4 carbs. Add in a few carrots and green peppers and you have a nice little lunch. The kind of lunch my children would have eaten before they ever even developed diabetes. The difference is that they get their blood sugar checked before eating and are given a shot of insulin based on that blood sugar number.
The great thing is that if they are bigger eaters and need more food they can have more insulin. So for example, if they want pizza (which we love here but which wreaks havoc on blood sugars) we dose more insulin. We know from experience that it makes for higher raises so it has to be accounted for.
And this is where the whole diabetes care tweaking comes in. Most moms know their children better than anyone and most doctors respect that when it comes to this disease. They fully expect you to be tuned into what going on with your child. Right from the start you are given the responsibility of changing their insulin doses based on what you think is best. It can be scary at first and it’s feels like a big responsibility but when you live with this disease you see there’s no other choice. You can’t call a dr. or nurse every time, you just need to evaluate the situation and make a decision. It does become somewhat intuitive but you can do everything right and still have things go wrong. This disease is nothing if not unpredictable —there are just too many variables and each child is different. Keeping track of blood sugars (in a log –though thankfully the meters have memory) is incredibly important to understanding things in the big picture. It helps you identify patterns and adjust as necessary. I’m not a great record keeper so this part is also challenging for me but I am getting better because I see the importance of it.
And with that I am going to end. There’s more I could explain but I think this gives you a good idea. If you got this far, thanks for reading!
Read the previous posts on this topic:
2 Responses to “Diabetes –how you live”
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Michele Q. --
Catholic wife and mother of 10.
Homeschooler, small press publisher, avid seamstress, halfway decent cook. Living the Family-Centered life.
I know I’m not your target audience for this series of posts but I wanted to thank you anyway for writing them. Type 2 diabetes runs in my family and I’m definitely at risk. I never knew about how you count carbs (that 15g equals one carb exchange for instance) and I think that info will be very helpful to me as I try to change my lifestyle to avoid getting diabetes.
Thanks again.
Susan (Taffy)´s last blog post..Organizing…
Praying for you all, Michele! You’ve been through so much with this, and I’m inspired to see how you’re dealing with it … with faith, courage, dedication, hope. Your love for your children, and for Our Lord and the Church, jumps off the page (screen??) whether you explicitly mention it or not.
Oh, and by the way: $1.92 yesterday, yeah, baby!! Cash price, otherwise $1.97. Wonder if the savings of five cents per gallon will make up for the 40% loss in the 401K. Ha. Ha.
M.E.´s last blog post..Prophetic words from Spes Salvi