Hi msorgen,

How much protein are you eating? Eating plenty of protein rather than starchy carbs usually helps to stabilise blood sugars.

And you should definitely be doing as Puma power suggests - keep a log of your blood sugars compared with what you are eating and when.

Cheers!

Rosebud

I absolutely agree with puma, you must check your sugars frequently. I sometimes cannot tell whether I am up or down and in the past I corrected my sugars the wrong way. BAD PLAN !!

If you don't have a glucose monitor, then please get one. I have the Freestyle by Therasense. It tests on arms legs and fingers. Just a little blood sample is needed and is way less painful that the finger only type. I think the One Touch is supposed to be half decent too.

It sure does help you manage better.

By the way you haven't mentioned your doctors involvement with all this. He/she should have recommended a monitor.

Hang in there you are well on the way.

Cheers, AJ

I check my BS 3 times a day. Breakfast, dinner and bedtime. Very rarely does it go above 110. When I feel the system coming on, its usually going below 78. I am taking Glucophage 500 twice a day.

Dear MSORGEN,
I think part of your problem may be that 3 times a day is not enough testing to establish really good control--at least, not if you are still making changes in diet, exercise or medication...though the fact that your BG level is 110 when you do test is a sign that you are probably doing pretty well (though you may want to aim a bit lower for fasting levels). The thing is, your BG can spike quite high an hour or two hours after a meal, and you may not even know it. Or, you could be having lows that you don't know about.
I'd suggest that you test an hour and two hours after all meals for at least a week, and add these numbers to your records. Also, if you exercise even somewhat vigorously, you should be testing BG's before and after (I've gotten low BG's from even 15 minutes of jogging!).
Since test strips are so expensive, get your doctor to write a prescription for 6 tests per day--otherwise you'll run out with all the extra testing (I doubt your doctor/nutritionist would object to your testing more :spin
Knowledge is power when it comes to BG's (as with all else!)
Best,
Puma

Have you changed the way of eating? (You used to eat a lot of starch and fruit). If so, I would do what Puma suggests... check the BS more frequently. If it is consistently low with no abnormally high spikes and still experiencing the hypoglycemic episodes, I would go back to the Dr. and discuss the possibility of lowering the medication. I hear that a lot of diabetic people who go on low carb end up lowering their medication.

Good luck,

tmo

delete. got a dup in here somehow

I can't say enough about Dr. Bernstein's low carb eating plan for diabetics and I also can't say enough about how his book explains things the doctor's don't.

My son is a very brittle Type 1 who has gotten worse lately as he is at the beginnings of puberty. His ups and downs were driving us nuts. He tests at least 8 times during the day and we test him at least twice during the night. Thanks to everyone for this site which lead me to Bernstein. We haven't been able to go totally Bernstein yet because my son is a minor under doctor's orders. If we don't cooperate with "the experts", they will report us to child protective services and have our child placed in a foster home so that they can stuff carbs down his throat.

What we've done so far:

They had him on 60-65 grams for meals, which we managed to get down to 40-45 at his last check up, and his snacks at 15-20. After reading Bernstein, we dropped his breakfast and dinner to 30-35 grams and his snacks, including the bedtime snack, to 10-15 grams. As always, he has protein and fat at every meal and with his bedtime and morning snacks. He does eat junky carbs more often than he should. We haven't changed his lunch carb count from 40-45 because he is under a doctor's lunch prescription at school.

We split his morning NPH shot into two injections. Dr. Bernstein says that the immune system goes after injected insulin in a big way when a large amount of it is injected into one site at one time. My son prefers the two smaller injections as they are less painful.

These small changes let his bedtime NPH drop from a range of 11 to 17 units (up and down on the roller coaster ride) down to 5 units. His blood sugar stays steady for the whole night where before he was getting lows that had to be treated (as low as 32 mg/dl) and highs that we gave him humalog for (greater than 400 mg/dl). His NPH and Humalog requirements have gone down, his appetite control during the day has improved greatly, and his blood sugar swings are less than they were.