For me, I periodically do eat higher-carb meals and they do often require a lot of insulin (like 10-20+ units). But for the most part, I definitely haven’t noticed an increase in insulin resistance. On a low-carb diet I’m taking about 50% of the insulin as I was on a higher-carb diet.
I did used to eat a more moderate carb diet (around 90 grams of carbs a day) before developing Graves’ disease. Then Graves’ disease caused everything to go absolutely crazy for about a year and I just could not regain control. My A1c was up around 7% (after being around 6% for the year prior to diagnosis, and 7-8% for decades before that) and I just couldn’t get it back down nor get stable blood sugars.
When I did a bit of a career enhancement that made it essential that I keep my BG stable at all times, I went to a very low-carb diet, and that worked really well. And it’s still working well, I have the best control I’ve ever had…just not as good control as many others eating a similar diet are able to achieve.
I’m going to keep up my current diet until the summer and see what happens. Sometimes I feel like my A1c is delayed compared to my efforts. But if I still don’t have a lower A1c then, I may look at trying something else.
Ok, just mentioned it because other people mentioned things like being low carb and then eating a cracker or something and their BG blows up. If you are not seeing issues like that, what they are seeing might not apply to you. Several interesting threads about it on TuD.
I think the threads on TuD are people who are just bolusing normally for those higher-carb foods. I did used to have the same issue (eat carbs and BG would skyrocket) until I realized that I had to give a huge dose of insulin to cover those carbs. My theory is that because my body is running on ketones, when I eat carbs it tends to ignore them and leave the glucose floating around in my blood unless there’s a lot of insulin in my bloodstream to force my cells to suck the glucose up.
My A1C’s in the 5’s during pregnancy were probably artificially low due to the number of low’s I was having. Outside of pregnancy I’ve only ever been in the 6’s during my best, super intensive control. I’m currently in the 7’s which appears to be due to absorption issues that I’ve likely had for months on end due to adhesive allergy. I’ll spare the pictures, but my sites looked like I was doing hand-to-hand combat with a wolverine after 30 hours at its worst.
I hope to get back to the 6’s…even with the insane amount of work and accommodating I have to do for this disease.
All of that is to say I think you’re doing awesome and I hope to catch up!
Seems like the A1c is a complicated measurement, and I feel like we still don’t know that much about it. I find the difference between the predicted A1c (average blood sugar) and actual A1c to be exceptionally confusing.
If groups of people have an A1c that differs from what is predicted by the average glucose, then shouldn’t we be treating whatever mechanism that is causing the higher A1c? I recognize that some people are just high glycolators or low glycolators, but why? It seems worthwhile to address that! Most especially for the group of people whose A1c is higher than predicted because they can only do so much to keep the blood sugar levels in range!
Anyway @Jen, I think an A1c of 6.2% is awesome. You had lots of ups and downs when you tried out Tresiba, and it sounds like the allergies you’re dealing with can really get in the way (never mind the monthly hormones!). I always read your posts very attentively because I think it’s admirable that you’re managing so many things so well.
Good job on the 6.2! I was briefly in the 5’s when I was pregnant. It was crazy hard and I felt I was always on the brink of low and correcting for a blood sugar starting at 130. Mid to low 6 is always my goal now.