Following up on my previous post, I thought it would be good to talk about diabetes and food.
My girl who is turning four this December, currently weighs around 15kg (7.5lbs approx.), and this is actually one of the biggest issues that parents face with small diabetic children.
The problem with such a low body weight is that the amount insulin the body requires for each carb (1 carbohydrate ~ 15g) is very small. In her instance, it is around 1unit for 1carb.
1 Unit refers in her case using Humalog 100, means that there is 100 units per ml (100U/ml), so therefore 1 Unit = 1/100ml = 0.01ml Humalog.
Now, imagine trying to measure off 0.01ml using a syringe, or even worse, try measuring of half or quarter of that when they have not had a full carb to eat???
This is one of the reasons why we have opted to move to pump therapy using the Medtronic 640G system which can accurately dose down to 0.1 unit (0.001ml). On top of this, it has helped us tremendously by assisting to prevent life threatening low blood glucose levels and helped us manage her overall blood glucose levels.
When it comes to food, it has been a long learning process to enable us to estimate the amount of carbs contained in food so we can administer the correct amount of insulin to prevent her blood glucose levels from skyrocketing. Myself and my wife are still in the process of changing our own eating habits and choice of food to lower overall carbohydrate intake.
Especially hard, is to lower and/or remove the intake of potatoes, pasta and rice which are used in most meals we have come accustomed to.
So, tonight I tried to substitute rice with some fried slices of baby marrow and added some green beans to a beef stir-fry which she "helped" daddy to make and enjoyed the meal a lot.
I would like to know if anyone else has more suggestions for replacing potatoes, French fries, pasta, breads etc.?
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