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After people ask me what diabetes is, what a pump is, and if I’m going to die soon from diabetes, people ask me if I can eat sugar. In a word, yes!
This is another one of those questions that really bother me as a diabetic. If I couldn’t eat sugar, I would be a rabbit, eating only celery and lettuce all day long. Sugar is in everything we eat.
I know that people mean sugar as in refined, processed sugar, like the stuff in candy, but still, if diabetics were completely constricted from sugar, lettuce would get more boring than it already is.
Candy is bad for everyone regardless, but what many people don’t understand is that it affects diabetics differently only because our bodies do not produce insulin.
Insulin, as it says in another blog post, is that chemical that breaks down the sugars that people eat, and when diabetics don’t have that function in their body, it makes the break down of sugar into glucose a more difficult process.
The thing to remember with candy is moderation. Diabetics have to watch the ratio of insulin to carbohydrates, and candy (which is full of empty carbs) is a difficult food to gauge. People also assume that carbohydrates are bad for diabetics. Again, this would basically leave lettuce for diabetics to enjoy. Don’t get me wrong, I love salads, but carbohydrates are in everything, and a main component of any healthy diet.
So, don’t deprive yourself of that chocolate bar, but know what affect it has on your diabetes: moderation is key!
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If one counts carbohydrates and then covers their intake with a commesurate amount of insulin then they can eat any carbohydrate they want including refined sugar in candy soda or ice cream. I'm on the pump and it puts 0.65 units of novalogue insulin in my body every hour. This covers the sugar produced by my liver as part of my daily metabolism. Additionally I take the same insulin with meals. What I do is count the total carbs I'm going to eat. Then using a factor of 10:1 I take one unit of insulin for every 10 grams of carbs I eat. So if for example I eat sandwich with two slices of bread I am having 30 grams of carbs and thus I'll take 3 units of insulin. Likewise if I have a Snickers bar with 38 grams of carbs I'll take 3.8 units of insulin. Using the pump I can be that exact with my dosage. My A1Cs run between 5.7 - 6.2 so I know this method works. Try it.
June 10, 2009 - 11:36amThis Comment