INCREASE IN INSULIN

My blood sugar has been a tad better. It's not good enough, but it has been a tad better. Two times, it has been under 100, but that was 2 hours after I'd taken my insulin. That is to be expected. Only once has it been above 200. That was not expected. That was related to "breading" a chicken breast in Special K and baking it in the oven in a pan sprayed with Pam. Except for the 100 calorie whole wheat Sandwich Thin that I've been having every morning, I've had no other bread, cereal, pasta, potatoe, rice, grain products for a week.

So, after a week, my food diary tells me that I have been able to keep my caloric intake to between 1,000 & 1,400 each day and equally as important it pinpoints relatively accurately the culprit in blood sugar spikes. Clearly, it was the cereal. The green beans and tomato don't cause blood sugar spikes and 4 ounces of baked chicken doesn't cause a blood sugar spike. Either it was the 1/2 cup buttermilk the chicken was marinated in or it was the 1/2 cup cereal that I used to coat the chicken before baking. I'm betting it was the cereal.

So, I faxed all the numbers and the food diary to Dr. Saltman. He told me to keep doing what I'm doing and to increase my insulin by 3 units (from 5 to 8 units before bed). If I weren't so miserable, it would be like hunting down the clues and solving a mystery. But, the misery outweighs the mystery right now. Maybe someday.

For non diabetics (people who don't know), blood sugar should be 115 or under. If it drops below 75 you probably need to eat something relativey rapidly. Over 200 will fry your kidneys and cause kidney failure eventually. Every single time blood sugar goes over 200, it does some kidney damage.