CGM challenge

I think it’s amazing that we’ve gotten as close to mimicking a natural body process as we have… imagine if a body lost a different automatic ability like breathing the right amount or heart beating the right speed and we had to manage that manually…

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I be interested in seeing a Chinese Buffet experiment. Sweet and sour chicken, egg rolls, crab rangoon, kung poa chicken…now I’m hungry…lol

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Also sushi.

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Well, dang it, @Sam! I wanted to see spikes to 180 or 200 to legitimize my dietary life choices!!! :wink:

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I’ve actually compared managing BG to managing your heartbeat or blood pressure 24/7 even through activities where it changes such as strees, sleeping, exercise to people who don’t know much about T1D… It seems like it would be incredibly difficult to manage, but I don’t think that comparison is an exaggeration, it’s exactly what we’re trying to do with our blood sugar.

I mean, heck, even not eating I can’t do as good a job managing my BG as someone without diabetes can do while eating 100 grams of mixed carbs and protein/fat. lol.

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Added to to-do list.

Sushi for me is manageable with afrezza without it being a disaster but with liquid it’s essentially impossible…

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I have good luck with sushi but I over bolus a bit for it so that’s prolly why? Sometimes I go low after it even because of that so I have to be careful BUT GOD I love Japanese food, it’s the only food I guesstimate insulin on and so far I’ve done alright with it unless somehow stuff truly slips past the 2 and 4 hour tests? I’m vegetarian so I don’t get the fish sushi, but there’s always quite a few vegetarian rolls at everywhere I’ve ever went . One near me has a ton of veggie rolls in different forms and I get like a roll of one of those an an avocado roll and sometimes the miso soup (as their’s is fish free) and it’s a good meal and I take 12 units for it and thus far It’s been fine? I’ll test vigilantly after trying new foods and the sushi places I’ve tried haven’t wronged me yet (other than sometimes my acid reflux doesn’t like salad dressing on the one’s salads).

If I wasn’t a poor person on medicaid trying to get a CGM or Libre for myself , I’d love to try this with people in my family, but I can’t. I’ve frequently tested my fiance’s blood sugar though he’s not diabetic or even prediabetic, he is obese (it feels insulting as he doesn’t look…obese…he just looks a bit overweight, he caries it pretty well ) and working on it and has high cholesterol, but I’ve been intrigued on what his blood sugar would be like at all times. I have tested him after a full can of regular/full sugar arizona fruit punch before though and it was at most 114 mg/dL. I envy it so bad lol. I have tested my grandma before , but she’s an alcoholic so I feel like that occasionally leads to her having weird numbers , but nothing in the diabetic or pre-diabetic even territory. My mom won’t let me test her so lord knows, I think she’s scared because she hasn’t seen a doctor for general health stuff since I was born :confused: (please keep in mind that’s 28 years) . She’d prolly be the one I wanna slap the cgm or libre sensor on because lord knows about hers out of anyone else in my house…because I just think it’s not healthy to go that long without getting an a1c or a blood sugar test. I’m thinking most older adults get tested for that stuff because type 2 is so prevalent so there’s that. Mom says she’ll see a doctor after the new year …we’ll see about that.

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We have done that a few times. The outcome was surprisingly good for my T1.

(Hit send too soon)

A likely difference from others hitting the buffet is the Celiac aspect. In a buffet that tends to dampen down the carb choices. Anything that has an unknown component which would include pretty much anything with a sauce or obviously breading is off limits. The majority of the selection are seafoods, meats and veggies. However the sushi (without extra sauces) is on the menu and I think we usually call a single slice about 6 carbs?

What is actually more surprising is we have never had gluten reactions from the buffet.

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Yeah honestly that’s what I was expecting to see too and what I’d thought would make for a good topic… kinda feels like there just isn’t much to see here…

Like I mentioned though the unexpected and somewhat interesting emerging story is the psychological burden of constantly monitoring blood sugar… even NORMAL blood sugar… still trying to figure out how to explore that topic though…

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That is really lucky! I can’t say the same for allergies. I dread buffets.

On the plus side, yes, blood sugar management is quite a bit easier without the option of eating 200 grams of carbs in one sitting. :slight_smile:

I’ve often thought of how interesting it would be to have a “Type 1 diabetes simulator” gizmo that would be a fake pump (or shots) filled with saline and a fake CGM transmitter (but real sensor and infusion sets) and a fake meter that accepted real blood. Everything would be synced up so that the meter would generate results (with of course some level of randomness) and it would be able to tell what carbs/“insulin” was taken based on what was input to the pump, and users would also have to log food/exercise/stress/etc. into the meter/app device. Maybe throw in a Fitbit as well so the system could tell activity level or exercise sessions.

I really wonder how many people would last even a week doing that all day and all night.

And that still wouldn’t include physically feeling crappy from highs and lows. But it would at least include all the decision making, the feeling of making all the right decisions and still not getting an in-range result, and having to get up in the middle of the night or stop during exercise to eat. :slight_smile:

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Dang. If I eat 200 carbs, I would probably throw up.

Ha ha. Some restaurant meals I’ve looked up have been close to 200 carbs, and that’s not counting dessert or a drink…

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I think it’s pretty shockingly easy to eat 200 carbs in a sitting… go out for pizza and bread sticks or to a Mexican restaurant… add in a soda or a margarita, a stack of pancakes with syrup, hash browns and orange juice… 200 would be a thing of the past… and many people wash down meals like that with a desert

Not that I CAN’T. lol. But I would likely be sick afterwards.

Honestly I don’t eat out very often.
:stuck_out_tongue:

You don’t even have to eat out…I was talking to my husband about this the other day, as we were eating pasta and (gf) focaccia, and his portions (he had seconds) easily totaled 200g carbs. Right now I’m regretting not checking his BG after that, just to be further awed at what a functioning pancreas can do…

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I’m surprised that no one brought up the fact that those healthy pancreases (like our damaged ones) have direct access to the bloodstream for their insulin, so they will always be able to move the glucose levels back to normal much more quickly. If we want to emulate them we need the same access, but that, of course, is too risky for us without that healthy physiology to monitor and maintain the right titers of insulin, glucose and glucagon when needed. Even the artificial pancreas won’t be able to get us to normal glycemia without a direct line to the bloodstream.

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We have discussed this point in the past, but there are very serious and real issues with having a long term connection to the blood stream, especially when introducing drugs which have an effect on the blood vessels themselves. Take a look at PIC and Central line complications for example.

The reality in my opinion is that a high quality sub-Q solution will be optimized long before we figure out how to do this through a blood vessel. Not that the topic isn’t worth discussing, just that it is a very difficult problem.

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I realize that this is an old thread, but I just wanted to add my input. I am a non diabetic 19 year old, but I have spent the last month or so obsessively checking my blood sugar frequently due to unwarranted health anxiety. I have been a bit obsessive and have since quit checking them. I’m not diabetic and my A1c and fasting levels are normal so my doctor thinks I’m somewhat insane! Here are some typical responses I had using finger pricks:

(MY TYPICAL READINGS)

Breakfast(omelet, fruit, tea)
1 hr: 109
2 hr: 86

Lunch(soft chicken tacos and fruit)
1 hr: 125
2 hr: 102

Dinner (barbecue chicken tenders, salad, apple crisp)
1 hr: 164
2 hr: 103

Dinner (1 slice of pizza, fruit)
1 hr: 174
2 hr: 108

Lunch (large mac n cheese, cooked vegetables, fruit/pudding)
before: 73
1 hr: 150
2 hr: 109

(SOME OF MY HIGHER NON-DIABETIC SPIKES)

lunch (sushi/ cookie):
1 hr: 189
2 hr: 160
3 hr: 120

Late night snack(4 slices pizza)
1 hr: 168
1.5 hr:188
2 hr: 136

Dinner (3 slices pizza/ 2 breadsticks)
before: 86
1 hr: 201
2 hr: 188
3 hr: 154
4 hr: 100

Sorry for the long post, but I thought some of you may find these non diabetic readings of mine interesting. I don’t have diabetes, but it is possible that my family history of it means that my spikes may be a little higher than average. I am only 19 and have an A1c of 4.8% and a healthy weight though.

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Your blood sugar deviations seem to fit pretty well in the normal healthy blood sugar excursions that a few studies have published. Sorry about the obsessive checking, but happy you chose to share with us. Data is good!

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  Yeah I figured it might be helpful to see that occasional spikes all the way up to around 200 can be normal. It seems that blood sugar can certainly fluctuate fairly significantly even in people without diabetes. There are multiple studies to this effect, and the amount of variability often varies considerably between studies and even between subjects in the studies!

 And I am working on the anxiety thing. My dad had diabetes and died from coronary heart disease when he was only 41 so I think that's what triggers my excessive worrying it's like whatever number I see on a health test I convince myself it's bad. I have also obsessively checked blood pressure and been to the ER for chest pain (panic/anxiety induced) way too many times.
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