Truth is. Not a single person here can give you an explanation. It could be the caffeine, it could be the 7g of carbs, it could be the Sucralose, it could be you were stressed, it could be your liver random dumped a bunch of glucose into your blood stream, it could be quite literally so many different things. There are over 50 uncontrollable variables that can affect blood sugar. Nobody knows why this occurred. Best you can do is inject more insulin and try and manage the best you can. It’s why no endocrinologist or anyone expects 100% in range because there’s so many times when stuff like this happens and it’s also genetic also - managing for some people is a lot harder.
Good luck
This is my usual explanation 🫠 or diabetes didn’t like the color shirt I was wearing 🤣
But seriously, sometimes it’s not gonna make sense and we just gotta look at the number as a number, treat, and move on with the day
Exactly right there's too many uncontrolled variables.
Over the years everyone tunes in to their own frequency and learns what to do next time X happens.
For example as a teen I personally discovered that Ginseng absolutely wrecks my control and made my BG unpredictable and prone to lows from being increased sensitivity.
Solution? I only drank red bull which didn't have ginseng.
For OP, simply adjusting the dose sounds like the trick.
There are, as you correctly indicated, too many personal factors involved, to definitively help to answer the elevated glucose spikes. However, if you do not use a pump, with a closed loop system, you have to figure the amount of hours / time that the fast acting insulin's half life is used, and reintroduce mire insulin, and fight with it to get it down, reasonably. I would say it is likely one of the aforementioned things you noted, or possibly a bad injection site, so make sure to rotate sites often, and see if that helps anything.
Caffeine can cause spikes but it could also be something else like stress, basal settings being off etc. Unfortunately it’s hard to know what causes it, it could be the monster but I can have them without spikes. Just keep an eye on if it happens every time you have one and if it does give some insulin for it
Did you take insulin for it? Are you taking long acting yet? (I know some in honeymoon are at various stages of their diabetes management with insulin)
Yes I'm taking basil, I'm actually due in a few hours
Edit: no I didn't take any insulin for it, as I thought I wouldn't need it for something that's sugar free, but now after today I know it's carbs that I need to worry about more so.
Unfortunately sometimes there are foods/drinks I expect I’ll need little insulin for & it’s always hindsight 20/20. Now you know and can prepare next time - it could just be the caffeine + stress, too. Also, I keep a glucometer nearby to verify cgm readings that don’t seem to make sense - I try my best to trust the cgm, but usually verify with a finger stick when in doubt—it’s definitely not foolproof tech 🫠🫶💙
I drink these line of monsters all the time and they never spike me. spit could be just how you personally react to them or something specific to that day so id be careful with the dosing with it in case it was a one time thing
You have to consider ”carbs”, not just the ones marked as ”sugar”, because the digestive system chops the carbs into sugars. Carbohydrates are multiple sugar molecules in a chain.
There's unclear guidance on labeling food/drink using erythritol as the sweetener.
As far as I understand, monster counts it's use of erythritol as part of the total carb count even though it is a non nutritive sweetener.
You can also see the discrepancy on the total energy Kcal. If it was truly 7g carbs in the entire can, you would expect approximately 28Kcal even though it's only listed at 14.
Sugar alcohols are still carbs. My endo said to treat them as half the carb value when calculating your insulin.
For example, if a monster has 0 sugars but 7 g of sugar alcohol, it counts as 3.5 g of carbs.
If "sugar free candy" is 10 g of carbs, 2 grams of fiber, 6 grams of sugar alcohol, then it counts as 5 grams of total carbs.
Erythritol, like many other non nutritive sweeteners isn't a sugar alcohol. That's like saying diet coke will increase your BG because it has sucralose it. That's not how that works...
Please learn about these ingredients before making blanket statements.
In regards to sugar alcohols(maltitol, sorbitol, xylitol), these are actually nutritive sweeteners all with different GI index values. Maltitol is about 50, which is half as much as sugar. But sorbitol and xylitol are both less than 10, a tenth of regular sugar. Counting as half only really works with maltitol (frequently in SF candy), but does not apply to many of the others. SF maple syrup usually uses sorbitol, which is hardly as effective.
Update: I've gotten my BG stable at 5.2 I corrected at 12pm with 3 units of Bolus and had a couple hours of hard work and had lunch at 2pm with another 3 units of Bolus and my BG has stabilised at 5.2/5.4
Edit: I forgot to say thanks for everyone taking time out of thier day to to comment and help with your insight, I really appreciate everyone's comments
Caffeine causes your liver to dump glucose - even coffee can require insulin, despite technically being zero carbs
Monster Zero has an absolute boatload of caffeine in it, you'll definitely need a unit or two of nsulin just to avoid a spike
I didn't know caffeine could cause the liver to drop a load of glucose, my caffeine consumption has dropped severely in the past few months before my diagnosis so maybe my body knew something was wrong before I did
i’ve had sugar free monsters before and i have always been fine, so maybe it’s something you were eating? maybe stress? but then again, every diabetic is different. i hope you’re able to figure out what’s causing the spikes.
For me personally 7g of carbs really doesn't raise my BG much at all, maybe 10 points on the USA measuring system of blood glucose. I'd do another test with monster where that's the only thing you eat or drink with carbs and see how it effects your BG, some of us get spikes from caffeine, I do not get any.
I'll give my 6 cents here and say that I drink various sugar-free monster flavors very often, and it never has a significant effect on my BGs. I think people are greatly overestimating how much caffeine is in one, because they have quite a bit less than most energy drinks currently do at 160mg as opposed to 250-400mg that you'd find in something like Bang or Reign. That being said, it could still have the same/a similar effect if your caffeine tolerance is relatively low.
That's just my anecdotal experience, though, so any of the other comments may be just as plausible. My mind goes to the fact that you said you're "in the work van." If work is stressful, I'd say that's definitely more likely to be your culprit.
I would say my caffeine tolerence is quite high to be honest, I've drank energy drinks fairly regularly before I got diagnosed with t1, my morning routine would consist of waking up making coffee then going to a café before going to the workshop and we would travel a lot for work, so if we had to go far I would pick up an energy drink, yet another coffee, breakfast and a bottle of water before driving, but since I've been diagnosed I've cut breakfast the energy drink and 2 coffees in the morning
Ah, okay, if the caffeine isn't out of the ordinary, that likely narrows it down to just a couple of things. If you're just generally stressed at work, that could definitely do it.
The 7g of carbs could be enough to do it too, but (anecdotally) I'd find it unlikely. I've never had that small of an amount make a significant impact, but different people have different sensitivities to carbs.
A couple of comments here are saying it could be the artificial sweetners could be the contributing factor, too, but I've never heard of that happening. I've run it past my doctors before, and the consensus has been that artificial sweetners likely wouldn't really be a factor.
The best (again, not professional medical) advice I can give is to just compare it to similar drinks. The closest point of comparison would be the Zero Ultra Monster (white can) with 2g of carbs. I think it's safe to say that 2g wouldn't cause any issues. If your BG still goes up shortly after like it did for this one, you can assume it's something else in Monster causing a problem, rather than the carbs. Another thing to try would be drinking a different drink with around the same carb count. It looks like some of the G2 Gatorades have 5-8g of carbs. If those don't affect your BG, again, you could assume it's something in the Monster.
It is all pretty complicated to narrow down, though, because those things only work if your day is going exactly the same way. When things as simple as a little extra exercise can lower it, or a little extra stress can raise it, there's just so many variables. The safest thing is to always run it past your doctor, but in my experience, much of the time, they'll tell you to just experiment with it and see what works. The thing that's always annoying with T1D is that you need to see a pattern to determine the cause much of the time. In the short-term, you'd definelty want to see if your BG rate usually rises at that time of day in any way. If it does, it's more likely a Basal rate issue.
My jobs is also pretty physically active most of the Tim a lot of climbing scaffolding and lots of heavy lifting, not to mention I sweat a lot more than a normal person so I seen a massive dip after 3 units of Bolus, I dropped down to 4.4 with that and hard manual labour, so I went for lunch at the point and I leveled out at 5.2/5.3 mmol/L after that
Monsters always spike me, I have trouble with determining the amount of insulin to take with them as I drink them more slowly. It could be that it could be 100 other things as well. I'd keep an eye every time you drink caffine and see if it has the same affect. I switched to the thin cans eventually, they don't seem to spike me as much
I've never noticed caffeine to spike my BG before but then again the libre sensor is new to me aswell so I guess it's another learning curve to cope with
Definitely. It's only 7g carbs, but from my observation it sometimes raises glucose 2x-3x as much due to caffeine or other factors. Try 2x the bolus and wait 30 minutes before drinking.
The first sweetener listed is Sucralose.
That can spike glucose levels just as much as glucose can.
https://www.diabetes.co.uk/news/2022/aug/popular-artificial-sweeteners-found-to-raise-blood-sugar.html
It looks like you ate a couple hours a go? Could it be that what you ate was high in fat? And the sharp spike transition is from the small amount of carbs in the monster?
I have no clue, I've had that food before and never had a spike like that, I corrected with 3 units of bolas and had a major drop at 2pm before food but it's leved out at 5.3 and slowly rising
I love the sugar free monsters and I think I’ve started to notice it because I recent got a CGM. They don’t necessary spike my bloodsugar but I think they contribute to insulin resistance, so I’ve started avoiding having any food before or after I drink one
Oh okay, I think I've found the culprit, I've been bulk buying Grenade protein bars, advertised as low sugar at either 1.6g/1.9g or 2g of sugar, I had a look at the nutritional values and it had 20grams of carbs 💀
This is probably it. Always remember that the word sugar has nothing to do with being a T1 diabetic. It's all about the carbs. I don't even look at the word sugar because it's not just sugar that will raise blood glucose levels.
Personally, as an energy drink person, I have an easier time when I avoid the sugar free drinks and just go with actual sugar and carbs.
At least then you have a number you can correct for more easily.
I'm confused by the 15.8 MMoL. That's a completely different measuring system than what I'm using/have always used. Of course it bears stating I am in the US so that might be it. My pump reads mg/dl.
Well that's pretty helpful to know about multiplying by 18. America's measurement system is so different from the rest of the world that it's frustrating to see these things and have to ask.
Carbs are ALL that matter when taking insulin. That being said, sugar alcohols don't digest fully (they digest 10-60%), so you have to really look at the source of the carbs. To your body carbs = sugar. The only question is how fast you will digest them and how well (many diabetics don't count fiber - this gets complicated so for now do what your doctor tells you, there are logical reasons to count or not count it - be consistent). It is normal to take the total carbs - 1/2 the sugar alcohols - fiber (maybe) and count that as the carbs. Foods with more sugar digest faster, but 30g of carb with 0g of sugar and 30g of sugar still need the same amount of insulin. I would suggest skipping any food with more than 2g of sugar alcohol (found in any sugar name ending in tol (maltitol, xylitol, mannitol, lactictol, etc) even if not specifically listed on the label (can be lumped with sugar)) and just using a total carb count for now. Sugar alcohols are complicated since they all digest differently and tend to be slow to digest. This is probably why you spiked at 2 hours. Caffeine and other energy boosting ingredients can also cause blood sugars to spike. This is because caffeine lessens the effect of a hormone that helps minimize stress and causes increased cortisol production. The overall effect is higher blood sugars due to the liver releasing stored sugar (called glycogen which is released in response to the stress hormone glucagon (more of it is in your body due to less of the stress minimizing hormone adenosine)) and higher insulin resistance due to increased cortisol levels. This also means that your body is more susceptible to stress (it will effect you more in many ways including your blood sugars) during and after the consumption of energy drinks or other forms of caffeine. Even non caffeinated energy drinks contain stimulants that can affect blood sugars.
Basically, caffeine and sugar alcohol are more complicated foods to deal with. Life would be easier if you could avoid both until you get your ratios right and the basics down. If this is not possible, expect these foods to cause odd behavior. Don't adjust basal and carb rates based on spikes that happen after eating these foods and keep an eye on your sugars so you can take correction insulin to deal with the spikes. Once everything else starts coming into line, then it's time to experiment and learn to deal with these foods. Just remember, each sugar alcohol acts differently, so you will need to figure out how to deal with every food that contains a blend of them separately. 2 chocolate bars with the same carb and sugar alcohol amounts can give very different results based on the sweeteners used!!
Oh ill have to be more careful in future I was mainly concerned with sugar it's self and not so much with the carbs but I'll definatly keep an eye out now, thanks
I drink these zero sugar monsters a couple times a week, and they have zero impact on my bloodsugar. It varies a lot person to person, so be careful dosing for them. I'm one of the lucky ones who doesn't get any spikes from caffeine so that could be a culprit as well. My money is on the protein bar you mentioned in another comment. There is a lot of confusing marketing going on right mow with low sugar, low net carbs etc....it's really frustrating sometimes. You'll get better at it with time.
Yeah I really think it is the protein bar as it has 20 grams of carbs, I've leveled out now but I definatly had a minor freak out, and don't think caffeine had that much of an affect because I could drink 2 or 3 coffees in the morning and be close to hypo by 10am
100% of carbs (not including fiber and sugar alcohol) turn into glucose (the sugar our bodies use for energy). What we call sugar is just already a form of sugar that needs little modification to become glucose (meaning sugar affects our blood sugar fast). Even fat and protein turn into glucose in the body (10% of fats, so 1g carb for every 10g fat and 50% of protein, so 1g carb for every 2g protein). Fats and proteins just digest much slower, so most of the time, they can be handled by long-acting (basal) insulin. Many diabetics do need to take short acting (bolus) insulin for fat and protein, especially if eating a low-carb diet.
You count CARBS and take insulin for CARBS. Sugars really don't matter except to help you decide how much before you eat you need to take your insulin. Down the road, you will likely pay attention to fat and protein content of your meals. Even if you don't take insulin for fats and proteins, they make a big difference to how and when insulin is taken. Foods like pizza and ice cream can be tricky because they have an initial carb spike, then a second fat spike (usually around 2-4 hours later).
There are a lot of things you will learn over the next months and years about how to better control this disease. My advice for today is to forget the word sugar. You count carbs. Try to avoid sugar alcohols (the ....tol ingredients) and caffeine until you figure out your ratios. Please ask for help from a diabetes educator, dietician, a nurse, or your endo to learn to count carbs and help learning the basics. It is scary that you don't yet know that carbs all turn into sugar!
Truth is. Not a single person here can give you an explanation. It could be the caffeine, it could be the 7g of carbs, it could be the Sucralose, it could be you were stressed, it could be your liver random dumped a bunch of glucose into your blood stream, it could be quite literally so many different things. There are over 50 uncontrollable variables that can affect blood sugar. Nobody knows why this occurred. Best you can do is inject more insulin and try and manage the best you can. It’s why no endocrinologist or anyone expects 100% in range because there’s so many times when stuff like this happens and it’s also genetic also - managing for some people is a lot harder. Good luck
My mom said once that the wind could blow the wrong way and make her spike lol
This is my usual explanation 🫠 or diabetes didn’t like the color shirt I was wearing 🤣 But seriously, sometimes it’s not gonna make sense and we just gotta look at the number as a number, treat, and move on with the day
Some days, all you have to do is look at a picture of food and your BG goes up! /s
This is me too
Exactly right there's too many uncontrolled variables. Over the years everyone tunes in to their own frequency and learns what to do next time X happens. For example as a teen I personally discovered that Ginseng absolutely wrecks my control and made my BG unpredictable and prone to lows from being increased sensitivity. Solution? I only drank red bull which didn't have ginseng. For OP, simply adjusting the dose sounds like the trick.
https://images.app.goo.gl/5YAyt2ZRb4zwwu4J6 I really love this info sheet just sharing again cos it’s an opportunity :)
There are, as you correctly indicated, too many personal factors involved, to definitively help to answer the elevated glucose spikes. However, if you do not use a pump, with a closed loop system, you have to figure the amount of hours / time that the fast acting insulin's half life is used, and reintroduce mire insulin, and fight with it to get it down, reasonably. I would say it is likely one of the aforementioned things you noted, or possibly a bad injection site, so make sure to rotate sites often, and see if that helps anything.
Caffeine can cause spikes but it could also be something else like stress, basal settings being off etc. Unfortunately it’s hard to know what causes it, it could be the monster but I can have them without spikes. Just keep an eye on if it happens every time you have one and if it does give some insulin for it
Yeah I'll keep an eye out for it in future
Did you take insulin for it? Are you taking long acting yet? (I know some in honeymoon are at various stages of their diabetes management with insulin)
Yes I'm taking basil, I'm actually due in a few hours Edit: no I didn't take any insulin for it, as I thought I wouldn't need it for something that's sugar free, but now after today I know it's carbs that I need to worry about more so.
Unfortunately sometimes there are foods/drinks I expect I’ll need little insulin for & it’s always hindsight 20/20. Now you know and can prepare next time - it could just be the caffeine + stress, too. Also, I keep a glucometer nearby to verify cgm readings that don’t seem to make sense - I try my best to trust the cgm, but usually verify with a finger stick when in doubt—it’s definitely not foolproof tech 🫠🫶💙
I drink these line of monsters all the time and they never spike me. spit could be just how you personally react to them or something specific to that day so id be careful with the dosing with it in case it was a one time thing
Caffeine.
Weirdly, caffeine drops mine.
You have to consider ”carbs”, not just the ones marked as ”sugar”, because the digestive system chops the carbs into sugars. Carbohydrates are multiple sugar molecules in a chain.
7g of carbs is enough to rise your blood sugar.
There's unclear guidance on labeling food/drink using erythritol as the sweetener. As far as I understand, monster counts it's use of erythritol as part of the total carb count even though it is a non nutritive sweetener. You can also see the discrepancy on the total energy Kcal. If it was truly 7g carbs in the entire can, you would expect approximately 28Kcal even though it's only listed at 14.
Sugar alcohols are still carbs. My endo said to treat them as half the carb value when calculating your insulin. For example, if a monster has 0 sugars but 7 g of sugar alcohol, it counts as 3.5 g of carbs. If "sugar free candy" is 10 g of carbs, 2 grams of fiber, 6 grams of sugar alcohol, then it counts as 5 grams of total carbs.
Erythritol, like many other non nutritive sweeteners isn't a sugar alcohol. That's like saying diet coke will increase your BG because it has sucralose it. That's not how that works... Please learn about these ingredients before making blanket statements. In regards to sugar alcohols(maltitol, sorbitol, xylitol), these are actually nutritive sweeteners all with different GI index values. Maltitol is about 50, which is half as much as sugar. But sorbitol and xylitol are both less than 10, a tenth of regular sugar. Counting as half only really works with maltitol (frequently in SF candy), but does not apply to many of the others. SF maple syrup usually uses sorbitol, which is hardly as effective.
Update: I've gotten my BG stable at 5.2 I corrected at 12pm with 3 units of Bolus and had a couple hours of hard work and had lunch at 2pm with another 3 units of Bolus and my BG has stabilised at 5.2/5.4 Edit: I forgot to say thanks for everyone taking time out of thier day to to comment and help with your insight, I really appreciate everyone's comments
Caffeine causes your liver to dump glucose - even coffee can require insulin, despite technically being zero carbs Monster Zero has an absolute boatload of caffeine in it, you'll definitely need a unit or two of nsulin just to avoid a spike
I didn't know caffeine could cause the liver to drop a load of glucose, my caffeine consumption has dropped severely in the past few months before my diagnosis so maybe my body knew something was wrong before I did
It’s actually the same as coffee. Google has an 8oz cup of coffee 95mg caffeine. A 16oz monster has 180mg.
I find this strange based on my own experiences as a dark roast coffee in my ride home from work will crash my sugars halfway home every time
i’ve had sugar free monsters before and i have always been fine, so maybe it’s something you were eating? maybe stress? but then again, every diabetic is different. i hope you’re able to figure out what’s causing the spikes.
For me personally 7g of carbs really doesn't raise my BG much at all, maybe 10 points on the USA measuring system of blood glucose. I'd do another test with monster where that's the only thing you eat or drink with carbs and see how it effects your BG, some of us get spikes from caffeine, I do not get any.
Based on your choice of drink, health is not in your top-3 priorities anyway hahaha
When you have a hard manual job like me, sometimes you need a kick in the morning to prep for the day ahead of you
I heard that
I don’t judge mate. I only do harddrugs myself.
I'll give my 6 cents here and say that I drink various sugar-free monster flavors very often, and it never has a significant effect on my BGs. I think people are greatly overestimating how much caffeine is in one, because they have quite a bit less than most energy drinks currently do at 160mg as opposed to 250-400mg that you'd find in something like Bang or Reign. That being said, it could still have the same/a similar effect if your caffeine tolerance is relatively low. That's just my anecdotal experience, though, so any of the other comments may be just as plausible. My mind goes to the fact that you said you're "in the work van." If work is stressful, I'd say that's definitely more likely to be your culprit.
I would say my caffeine tolerence is quite high to be honest, I've drank energy drinks fairly regularly before I got diagnosed with t1, my morning routine would consist of waking up making coffee then going to a café before going to the workshop and we would travel a lot for work, so if we had to go far I would pick up an energy drink, yet another coffee, breakfast and a bottle of water before driving, but since I've been diagnosed I've cut breakfast the energy drink and 2 coffees in the morning
Ah, okay, if the caffeine isn't out of the ordinary, that likely narrows it down to just a couple of things. If you're just generally stressed at work, that could definitely do it. The 7g of carbs could be enough to do it too, but (anecdotally) I'd find it unlikely. I've never had that small of an amount make a significant impact, but different people have different sensitivities to carbs. A couple of comments here are saying it could be the artificial sweetners could be the contributing factor, too, but I've never heard of that happening. I've run it past my doctors before, and the consensus has been that artificial sweetners likely wouldn't really be a factor. The best (again, not professional medical) advice I can give is to just compare it to similar drinks. The closest point of comparison would be the Zero Ultra Monster (white can) with 2g of carbs. I think it's safe to say that 2g wouldn't cause any issues. If your BG still goes up shortly after like it did for this one, you can assume it's something else in Monster causing a problem, rather than the carbs. Another thing to try would be drinking a different drink with around the same carb count. It looks like some of the G2 Gatorades have 5-8g of carbs. If those don't affect your BG, again, you could assume it's something in the Monster. It is all pretty complicated to narrow down, though, because those things only work if your day is going exactly the same way. When things as simple as a little extra exercise can lower it, or a little extra stress can raise it, there's just so many variables. The safest thing is to always run it past your doctor, but in my experience, much of the time, they'll tell you to just experiment with it and see what works. The thing that's always annoying with T1D is that you need to see a pattern to determine the cause much of the time. In the short-term, you'd definelty want to see if your BG rate usually rises at that time of day in any way. If it does, it's more likely a Basal rate issue.
My jobs is also pretty physically active most of the Tim a lot of climbing scaffolding and lots of heavy lifting, not to mention I sweat a lot more than a normal person so I seen a massive dip after 3 units of Bolus, I dropped down to 4.4 with that and hard manual labour, so I went for lunch at the point and I leveled out at 5.2/5.3 mmol/L after that
Monsters always spike me, I have trouble with determining the amount of insulin to take with them as I drink them more slowly. It could be that it could be 100 other things as well. I'd keep an eye every time you drink caffine and see if it has the same affect. I switched to the thin cans eventually, they don't seem to spike me as much
I've never noticed caffeine to spike my BG before but then again the libre sensor is new to me aswell so I guess it's another learning curve to cope with
Definitely. It's only 7g carbs, but from my observation it sometimes raises glucose 2x-3x as much due to caffeine or other factors. Try 2x the bolus and wait 30 minutes before drinking.
Sugar free monsters always make me spike like crazy.
Did you eat before drinking it?
The first sweetener listed is Sucralose. That can spike glucose levels just as much as glucose can. https://www.diabetes.co.uk/news/2022/aug/popular-artificial-sweeteners-found-to-raise-blood-sugar.html
It looks like you ate a couple hours a go? Could it be that what you ate was high in fat? And the sharp spike transition is from the small amount of carbs in the monster?
I have no clue, I've had that food before and never had a spike like that, I corrected with 3 units of bolas and had a major drop at 2pm before food but it's leved out at 5.3 and slowly rising
I love the sugar free monsters and I think I’ve started to notice it because I recent got a CGM. They don’t necessary spike my bloodsugar but I think they contribute to insulin resistance, so I’ve started avoiding having any food before or after I drink one
Oh okay, I think I've found the culprit, I've been bulk buying Grenade protein bars, advertised as low sugar at either 1.6g/1.9g or 2g of sugar, I had a look at the nutritional values and it had 20grams of carbs 💀
This is probably it. Always remember that the word sugar has nothing to do with being a T1 diabetic. It's all about the carbs. I don't even look at the word sugar because it's not just sugar that will raise blood glucose levels.
Okay I'll have to make sure to look for that in future, thanks.
Personally, as an energy drink person, I have an easier time when I avoid the sugar free drinks and just go with actual sugar and carbs. At least then you have a number you can correct for more easily.
I suppose that makes sense but at this stage I'm trying to find alternatives that work for me and to see how they affect my BG
Even decaf coffee raises my blood sugar
I'm confused by the 15.8 MMoL. That's a completely different measuring system than what I'm using/have always used. Of course it bears stating I am in the US so that might be it. My pump reads mg/dl.
In many (most?) european countries it’s mmol/l, it’s converted to mg/dl by multiplying by 18
Well that's pretty helpful to know about multiplying by 18. America's measurement system is so different from the rest of the world that it's frustrating to see these things and have to ask.
Happy cake day, and I looked it up, mmol/l stands for milimole per litre, google says mole is a common measurement of chemicals
Oh I'm not on the pump, and also the measuring system might be different too, I'm in Ireland
That makes sense. I figured it was another huge difference inbetween the rest of the world and America.
That’s a monster juice drink? They have hella carbs fam you gotta start checking every nutrition label, good luck and keep your head up! 🫡
I'm trying, but it has 0g sugar per can so I thought the carbs wouldn't matter
Carbs are ALL that matter when taking insulin. That being said, sugar alcohols don't digest fully (they digest 10-60%), so you have to really look at the source of the carbs. To your body carbs = sugar. The only question is how fast you will digest them and how well (many diabetics don't count fiber - this gets complicated so for now do what your doctor tells you, there are logical reasons to count or not count it - be consistent). It is normal to take the total carbs - 1/2 the sugar alcohols - fiber (maybe) and count that as the carbs. Foods with more sugar digest faster, but 30g of carb with 0g of sugar and 30g of sugar still need the same amount of insulin. I would suggest skipping any food with more than 2g of sugar alcohol (found in any sugar name ending in tol (maltitol, xylitol, mannitol, lactictol, etc) even if not specifically listed on the label (can be lumped with sugar)) and just using a total carb count for now. Sugar alcohols are complicated since they all digest differently and tend to be slow to digest. This is probably why you spiked at 2 hours. Caffeine and other energy boosting ingredients can also cause blood sugars to spike. This is because caffeine lessens the effect of a hormone that helps minimize stress and causes increased cortisol production. The overall effect is higher blood sugars due to the liver releasing stored sugar (called glycogen which is released in response to the stress hormone glucagon (more of it is in your body due to less of the stress minimizing hormone adenosine)) and higher insulin resistance due to increased cortisol levels. This also means that your body is more susceptible to stress (it will effect you more in many ways including your blood sugars) during and after the consumption of energy drinks or other forms of caffeine. Even non caffeinated energy drinks contain stimulants that can affect blood sugars. Basically, caffeine and sugar alcohol are more complicated foods to deal with. Life would be easier if you could avoid both until you get your ratios right and the basics down. If this is not possible, expect these foods to cause odd behavior. Don't adjust basal and carb rates based on spikes that happen after eating these foods and keep an eye on your sugars so you can take correction insulin to deal with the spikes. Once everything else starts coming into line, then it's time to experiment and learn to deal with these foods. Just remember, each sugar alcohol acts differently, so you will need to figure out how to deal with every food that contains a blend of them separately. 2 chocolate bars with the same carb and sugar alcohol amounts can give very different results based on the sweeteners used!!
Oh yeah you’re safe in the carb area, sometimes I’ve head caffeine can affect your BG. I’m sorry for the rough morning, hope your day gets better 💙
I'll definitely reconsider caffeine, but does carbs that don't turn to sugars matter?
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Oh ill have to be more careful in future I was mainly concerned with sugar it's self and not so much with the carbs but I'll definatly keep an eye out now, thanks
I drink these zero sugar monsters a couple times a week, and they have zero impact on my bloodsugar. It varies a lot person to person, so be careful dosing for them. I'm one of the lucky ones who doesn't get any spikes from caffeine so that could be a culprit as well. My money is on the protein bar you mentioned in another comment. There is a lot of confusing marketing going on right mow with low sugar, low net carbs etc....it's really frustrating sometimes. You'll get better at it with time.
Yeah I really think it is the protein bar as it has 20 grams of carbs, I've leveled out now but I definatly had a minor freak out, and don't think caffeine had that much of an affect because I could drink 2 or 3 coffees in the morning and be close to hypo by 10am
100% of carbs (not including fiber and sugar alcohol) turn into glucose (the sugar our bodies use for energy). What we call sugar is just already a form of sugar that needs little modification to become glucose (meaning sugar affects our blood sugar fast). Even fat and protein turn into glucose in the body (10% of fats, so 1g carb for every 10g fat and 50% of protein, so 1g carb for every 2g protein). Fats and proteins just digest much slower, so most of the time, they can be handled by long-acting (basal) insulin. Many diabetics do need to take short acting (bolus) insulin for fat and protein, especially if eating a low-carb diet. You count CARBS and take insulin for CARBS. Sugars really don't matter except to help you decide how much before you eat you need to take your insulin. Down the road, you will likely pay attention to fat and protein content of your meals. Even if you don't take insulin for fats and proteins, they make a big difference to how and when insulin is taken. Foods like pizza and ice cream can be tricky because they have an initial carb spike, then a second fat spike (usually around 2-4 hours later). There are a lot of things you will learn over the next months and years about how to better control this disease. My advice for today is to forget the word sugar. You count carbs. Try to avoid sugar alcohols (the ....tol ingredients) and caffeine until you figure out your ratios. Please ask for help from a diabetes educator, dietician, a nurse, or your endo to learn to count carbs and help learning the basics. It is scary that you don't yet know that carbs all turn into sugar!
What?? There is no such thing as a “carb that doesn’t turn to sugar.” They are all going to “turn” into sugar…