Wellness

[cherry]

Here is a list of low carb foods from the website bloodsugar 101.  The website if full of information and tips for living with all types of diabetes

snip

What Can You Eat When You Are Cutting Carbs?

If you are trying to cut back on your carbohydrates to lower your blood sugar, you may be wondering what there is left to eat. Here are some ideas to get you started.

• Pancakes Whey Protein powder can be cooked up to make pancakes. Add some low carb strawberries or raspberries (frozen works great) and some sugar free Maple Syrup and you've got a delicious breakfast. You'll find the recipe on the Indispensable Low Carb Treats page.

• Potatoes A great substitute for mashed potatoes can be made by steaming or boiling cauliflower and pureeing it in a food processor and then adding some cream or half and half, butter or salt. It doesn't taste like cauliflower. ​ ​

• ​Rolls If you can eat gluten, you can make delicious rolls that are very similar to popovers using the Magic Rolls recipe. You can find it  in the Eades' Low Carb Comfort Food Cookbook. Search for "Magic Rolls
  

• Veggies Here's a list of some very healthy very low carb vegetables. Eat a few servings every day: Romaine Lettuce, Boston Lettuce, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, red Lettuce, Mesclun mix, green beans, artichokes, avocado, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, eggplant, olives, spaghetti squash, acorn or butternut squash (small amounts), small amounts of fresh red, orange, or green pepper, and zucchini.

• Wraps Use lettuce leaves to make wraps. Green romaine leaves work very well. Though there are "low carb" tortillas on the market, they are full of thyrotoxic soy and may still have more carbohydrates in them than you want to eat.

• Berries Strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries are low in carbohydrates and very high in healthful micronutrients. Frozen berries are great too, as long as you check the labels and buy the kinds that are not frozen in sugar.

• Pasta Substitute If you want to serve a meal involving a sauce, instead pouring it over pasta with its 50 gm of carbohydrate per tiny 2 ounce serving, put the sauce over a pile of lightly steamed zucchini strips you make with a vegetable peeler. Or use spaghetti squash.

• Sugar Substitute When baking, instead of using powdered forms of Splenda, which contain .5 g of carbohydrate per spoonful because the powders use maltodextrin as a bulking agent, use DaVinci sugar free syrup which can be bought at online. These Splenda-sweetened syrups contain no maltodextrin or sugar. The Caramel or Vanilla are best for cooking. The White Chocolate works well for things like Cocoa. Usually a direct substitution works--1 tsp syrup for 1 tsp sugar. Do not do this for recipes which depend on sugar to hold everything together or to provide crispness. The syrups will work in custards, puddings, and cheesecakes. Some people like Stevia as a sweetener, but it will turn bitter if you bake with it.

• Cookies You can make delicious very low carb macaroons with a recipe on the Indispensable Low Carb Treats page. You can also make cookies using almonds ground very fine or purchased almond meal, but if you are trying to lose weight, almond flour is very high calorie and may not be a good option.

• Snack Food Sunflower seeds in the shell make a good "finger food" snack that is low carb will take the place of chips while watching the game, etc. You can make crispy snacks by putting slices of pepperoni in the microwave and cooking them until they become crispy. You can make crisps out of cheese by baking or microwaving small pieces of sliced cheese on waxed paper.

• Candy Low carb cream cheese fudge makes a nice chocolate candy treat. recipe on the Indispensable Low Carb Treats page.

• Pizza When it's pizza time, get a meat/veggie combo and just eat the toppings. Some people make "meatza" using a thin lining of pepperoni as the bottom crust when they make pizza at home.

• Chinese At Chinese restaurants, Hot and Sour soup usually works well. So do barbecued spareribs, wings, and teriyaki strips, though depending on the restaurant some of these may have sugar or starchy coating. Ask that no sauce be put on the ribs. Some places do a crispy duck that will not raise blood sugar too much. Chicken with string beans often works well, too. Needless to say, you must not eat the rice, noodles, and fortune cookies if you want to avoid damaging blood sugar spikes. There are some carbs in all of these recommended items, so don't eat them every day.

• Other Restaurants Besides the obvious "chunk o' meat" entries try the steak "bistro" salads or Caesar salads with grilled chicken or shrimp (not fried!). Avoid any salad where you can't add the dressing yourself, as some chains will serve you bits of lettuce drenched in sugar when you order "salad." Stick with blue cheese, Parmesan pepper corn, or classic Italian dressing. Many flavored vinaigrettes are full of sugar. Be aware that some steakhouse chains sprinkle MSG on their steaks, which may improve flavor but leaves you ravenously hungry an hour later. If you notice that you are very hungry after eating at a steakhouse, cross it off your list. Besides making you hungry, MSG has been shown by reliable research to cause weight gain independent of caloric intake.

• Nuts Almonds, walnuts, and pecans are low carb in reasonable quantity and full of very healthy oils that lower cholesterol. You can heat them on a cookie sheet for a few minutes with a coating of DaVinci flavored syrups to make them fancy.

• Sinful Desserts For a fancy dessert try making a low carb cheese cake. Use the Classic Philly 3 Step Cheese cake recipe. Instead of graham crackers, use a crushed nut crust made by chopping walnuts or almonds and pressing them into the pan. Substitute DaVinci sugar free syrup for the sugar and bake for a few minutes longer than usual to cook off the extra fluid in the syrup.

• You'll Find Lots of Great Recipes . Garth Lamson is a wonderful cook and his recipes are delicious. Another extremely helpful source of low carb menus and recipes is . It provides many whole days' of menus all with recipes. The recipes come with beautiful photos and very clear menu directions. Between these two sites you should have enough ideas to eat for a year.

• More recipes from the Great Days of The Newsgroups You'll find many useful recipes at Cam Macdonalds low carb recipe web site. There were contributed by participants in alt.support.diet.low-carb during the years when it was the best resource online for people eating junk-food-free low carb diets.

• Breakfast Most "low carb" cereals are full of soy, which is not good for your thyroid. Ground flax meal makes a very serviceable hot cereal, similar to Wheatena. Just add boiling water. A half scoop of whey protein powder adds protein. For additional flavor, stir in nuts, flaked sugar free coconut, or DaVinci sugar free syrup. If you must eat boxed cereal, stick to high bran cereals, but read the labels carefully. Instead of using milk, which is full of fast carbs, try using a little half and half or else stir in some plain yogurt. Most people are at their most insulin resistant at breakfast, so you will get better blood sugars by eating the classic eggs and meat breakfasts without toast and potatoes. If you are craving toast, use the Rye Vita Dark Rye or Sesame Rye crackers or GG Bran crackers instead of toast.

• What to Eat When Money is Tight Starchy foods are cheaper than high quality food that will keep your blood sugar down, but it is possible to eat a budget low carb diet, too. Buy large packages of meat at warehouse stores and cook them at home to greatly reduce the price of protein. Bring home cooked lunches to work. Use eggs instead of cheese. Look into local voucher programs for farmers markets to get fresh produce. Use nut butters instead of nuts.

• Avoid Products Labeled "Low Carb" Most products labeled as "Low Carb" aren't. Using a variety of bogus tricks food manufacturers sell a lot of products, like Atkins Advantage bars that are full of sugar alcohols, glycerin, and supposedly "resistant starches" that will raise blood sugar, often dramatically. The troublesome sugar alcohols include Maltitol and Lacitol. The only sugar alcohol that is reliably low carb is Erythritol. Unfortunately, it is very expensive and though it looks like sugar, it does NOT cook like sugar, so avoid the temptation to buy it as a sugar replacement. Sadly, the delicious commercially made chocolates that used to be available with erythritol have disappeared.

• Avoid Sugar Free and So-called "Diabetic" Foods These foods may be free of sucrose, but they are full of sugar alcohols that will raise blood sugar. Many of them are also full of flour which will turn right into blood glucose as soon as it hits your digestive tract. The people who run the companies that sell "Diabetic" foods full of flour and starch deserve to have their feet amputated like the poor victims who eat their products under the delusion they are good for diabetics.

[cherry]

Is tight blood sugar control right for older adults with diabetes?Posted September 17, 2018, 10:30 am , Updated September 20, 2018, 12:31 pm

Medha Munshi, MD
Contributor

One of the best parts of being a geriatrician (a specialist caring for older adults) is to meet individuals who are aging successfully, taking care of themselves, and taking their health seriously. Well-informed individuals usually like to know if their chronic health conditions are well controlled or not.

With improved public education, it is now common knowledge that uncontrolled diabetes leads to damage to the major organs of the body, such as the heart, kidneys, eyes, nerves, blood vessels, and brain. So, it is important to ask how tightly blood glucose (also called blood sugar) should be controlled to decrease the risk of harm to these organs.

Blood sugar: too high, too low, or just right?

To answer this question, first let’s discuss how diabetes is different than other chronic health conditions. For example, a doctor can tell you that your cholesterol levels need to be below a certain number to lower the risk of heart disease. Diabetes is different. Diabetes is a unique condition in which both high and low glucose levels are harmful to the body.

Diabetes control is measured as A1c, which reflects average blood sugar levels over the past two to three months. High glucose levels (A1c levels greater than 7% or 7.5%) over a long period can cause damage to the major organs of the body. However, medications and insulin that are used to lower glucose levels can overshoot and lead to glucose levels that are too low. Low glucose levels (known as hypoglycemia) can result in symptoms such as rapid heartbeat, excessive sweating, feeling dizzy, difficulty thinking, falling, or even passing out.

So, both high and low glucose levels are harmful. Thus, diabetes management requires balancing the risk of high and low glucose levels, and requires constant assessment to see which of these glucose levels is more likely to harm an individual patient.

Different blood sugar goals over a lifetime

The next consideration in answering the question about tight glucose control is to understand why younger and older adults need different goals. In younger individuals, longer life expectancy means a higher risk of developing complications over many decades of life. Younger adults typically recover from hypoglycemic episodes without severe consequences.

On the other hand, people in their 80s or 90s may not have several decades of life expectancy, and so the concern about developing long-term complications due to high glucose levels is decreased. However, hypoglycemia in these individuals may lead to immediate consequences such as falls, fractures, loss of independence, and subsequently a decline in quality of life. In addition, tighter control of diabetes frequently requires complicated treatment regimens, such as multiple insulin injections at different times of the day or a variety of glucose lowering pills. This further increases the risk of hypoglycemia, as well as stress, to both older patients and their caregivers at home.

Identifying the “why” of blood sugar control

Thus, when considering goals for blood glucose in older adults, it is important to ask why we are managing diabetes. As the reason to tightly control diabetes is to prevent complications in the future, tighter control of diabetes could be a goal in an older adults who are in good health and have few risk factors for hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemia risk factors include previous history of severe hypoglycemia that required hospital or emergency department visits, memory problems, physical frailty, vision problems, and severe medical conditions such as heart, lung, or kidney diseases.

In older individuals with multiple risk factors for hypoglycemia, the goal should not be tight control. Instead, the goal should be the best control that can be achieved without putting the individual at risk for hypoglycemia.

Lastly, it is important to remember that health status is not always stable as we get older, and the need or the ability to keep tight glucose control may change over time in older adults. Goals for all chronic disease, not just blood sugar control, need to be individualized to adapt to the changing circumstances associated with aging.

[cherry]

Our last thread got poofed, and I have no idea on this earth why...I can't see how anyone could object to what is posted here. It isn't copyrighted, nor are we trying to sell anything

[Trinity11]

Hi @cherry. Last Saturday my husband wanted to have lunch in California Pizza Kitchen in a mall near us. It is a small restaurant and I figured all I could eat would be a salad. Much to my surprise they made Cauliflower crust pizza which was very low carbohydrate. It was delicious and I could not tell the difference. I added a salad of roasted vegetables on top of romaine lettuce and my husband and I split everything between the two of us. It was a real treat and 2 hours later my blood sugar was 110.

It is always nice to have an off limits food made so diabetics can indulge..

[cherry]

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – After years of rising insulin prices, a growing number of diabetics and their families are now facing some tough choices when it comes to paying for the drug.

Some are turning to the black market to buy illegal insulin.

“So many people are dying because they just can’t afford their insulin,” parent Doreen Rudolph said.

Rudolph says she’s doing everything she can to make sure that doesn’t happen to her 27-year-old daughter, Nicole, a Type-1 diabetic.

When her daughter was first diagnosed, Rudolph says a vial of insulin cost about $21.

“Then it went up to 31, 45, 200, and then $400 a vial,” the desperate parent explained.

Even with insurance, Nicole now pays $1,300 every three months out of pocket.

“You pay or you die,” Rudolph conceded.

A recent study from Yale found one in four patients are now putting themselves at risk by rationing their insulin to help off-set the cost.

CBS2 found others are turning to a growing black market where they buy the drug at a fraction of the price.

“$200 for two boxes,” CBS2’s John Dias said, while speaking with a black market insulin seller.

(Credit: CBS2)

Dias easily found insulin for sale online. They were posted by people like one woman from New Jersey, who told him as a diabetic herself, she has extra to sell.

“On one level, it’s understandable that people would look for other ways to find less expensive insulin,” Dr. Robert Gabbay with the Joslin Diabetes Center said.

He added that the practice is not only illegal, it could have fatal consequences.

“Who knows if it’s insulin but even if you know it’s insulin the safety margin and dosage of insulin is pretty narrow.”

“It’s ridiculous that it’s becoming a black market item,” Rudolph added. “In other countries, you can get insulin for $11 and it’s the same companies that are selling it.”

In an interview with CBS News last year, a spokesperson for the trade group that represents U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers said the problem is not with the rising cost of the drug so much as with patients’ increasing insurance deductibles.

“It’s very upsetting that our government is allowing this… Somebody should care about us, the citizens,” a tearful Rudolph said.

The Justice Department is now investigating these price hikes. The ADA testified at a hearing before the U.S. Senate’s Special Committee on Aging, on May 8, 2018.

[cherry]

[Trinity11]

Interesting @cherry about the very high cost of insulin. I can remember when I would take Levemir and not worry if a few units were still left in the vial when I tossed it. Now I do double injections if for instance 8 units are left I use each one and follow through with a new pen to make up my 38 units daily. Same with my Novolog. The cost is off the charts. Then of course the cost of needles has also risen. It cost me about $85.00 the other day for 4mm needles for the pens.

[cherry]

@Trinity11  I have been reading about people dying because they are trying to ration their insulin because of the cost

A lady at our local diner was telling me her husband get his insulin free from his DR but has to drive an hr one way to get it

I do feel sorry for him but he needs to take responsibility for how he eats. His wife told me he eats 1/2 a tub of ice cream every day

I nearly fainted when I heard that. He also drinks about 15 bottles of diet pop..He figures because he is on insulin it doesn't matter what he eats...

[tansy]

@Trinity11, I am trying out the FreeStyle Libre.  Every ten days I insert a sensor into my upper arm and do not need to do finger tests.  It’s pricey but right now it’s providing me with lots of info.

Boy, do I agree about the price of Novolog🙁

[Trinity11]

---

@tansy wrote:

@Trinity11, I am trying out the FreeStyle Libre.  Every ten days I insert a sensor into my upper arm and do not need to do finger tests.  It’s pricey but right now it’s providing me with lots of info.

Boy, do I agree about the price of Novolog🙁

---

@tansy...let me know how you like it. I need to purchase it. My endo just left to practice in Conn. I have a new one I haven't met yet. Seeing her in November so will ask about it.

Yes, Novolog is very expensive. Sigh..