Although people with Type 1 Diabetes can eat anything they want by covering food with insulin, some foods are not as friendly as we’d like them to be.
Chocolate covered donuts are a rare treat in this house. I don’t buy them too often so when they go on sale I surprise my family and buy a box. Everyone eats them, especially my 6 year old son with Type 1 diabetes.
We made a choice early on in his diagnosis that he would live like every other child, he is a kid first and diabetes comes second. We constantly figure out how to fit diabetes into our healthy, fun, everyday lifestyle. Whether it’s for playing sports, swimming or eating donuts, we figure out a way to make diabetes work with us, not against us.
In this house we count carbs two ways, we count the carbs directly off the packaging or we use something called carb factors. That is when you weigh the food in grams and then multiply that by the carb factor or the amount of carb in each gram of food. You can find out carb factor by using a list created by nutritionists or by dividing the carbs in grams by the weight in grams off the packaging. That tells you the amount of carbs in 1 gram of that particular food.
Anyway, I carb factored the chocolate donuts for my son last night and all was working perfectly. He went to bed his number was a perfect 140. However, through the night, the donuts’ goodness continued to give back to my son. As they are so high in fat, my son’s number continued to rise even though he had eaten donuts almost 5 hours earlier.
At 2:00am I checked my son, as I do most every early morning, and his number was well over 200. I initially thought it might be his site for his insulin pump, but then I remembered the donuts. They are the treat that just keep treating (or mistreating for that matter). I corrected with insulin.
At 6:00am I checked my son again, as I do most every morning, and his number was still well over 200. Now I really believed it must have been the new site. Not wanting to change the site while he was still sleeping, I attempted one more correction with insulin.
At 9:00am I checked my son as he woke up from his long chocolate-dream sleep and he was a perfect 120. Now I know it was not the site, just the donuts. They continued to rise my son’s blood sugar for a full 10 hours after eating them.
We love donuts in this house. We don’t love what they do to my son’s blood sugar. I won’t deny my son the donuts. I try not to deny anything because of diabetes. I will however, work my tail off the next time he eats donuts, by making temporary adjustments to his pump, to keep his blood sugar in range in the hours after eating them, when the donuts should be just a memory.