Post Surgery: I'm Doing Great!

I had my surgery last Tuesday and I'm doing very well, but I'm supposed to rest and not use my arms much, so I'll keep this brief.

I asked my surgeon what blood sugar they prefer in someone with diabetes and she said "Under 200" which is pretty appalling. I explained my outlook and she was very supportive of my low carb diet and blood sugar targets. I asked her if I needed to eat more carbs during the healing phase, and she said, "No. The low carb diet is an excellent diet for healing."

I'd been eating very low carb with lots of colorful veggies and greens for the three weeks before surgery and have continued with that diet for the past week.

At the hospital I tested at 88 mg/dl on their meter at 7 AM which the nurse thought was dangerously low. I explained it wasn't and that I had not used any basal insulin that morning. They promptly hooked me up to a lactate drip so they could raise my blood sugar.

I made a huge point to the anesthesiologist about my insulin sensitivity and made it clear that if they had to lower my blood sugar, using a typical Type 2 insulin dose could literally kill me. (Which it could.) I'm still alive, so she must have listened.

The surgery lasted three hours. They told me after the surgery that my blood sugar had gone up to 139. It dropped back into the 90s by the time I went home.

I'm currently using my usual basal insulin but almost no meal time insulin as I am eating only meat, cheese, greens, LC veggies and lots of berries, and that keeps my blood sugar between 95 and 115 most of the time. I'm trying to get about 100 g of protein a day, which is about right for my weight. I don't want to screw around with insulin shots at meals if I don't have to because the pain drug slows digestion and it is hard to know when the food will digest.

But I'm on the mend, everything is going really well, and I'm really enjoying taking time off from doing all the stuff I usually do.

I'll leave you with this fascinating piece of diabetes research published in this past months edition of the journal, Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice:

Dietary Breads: Myth or Reality

Someone finally decided to see if the so called glycemic index works for people with diabetes. Here's what they did:

"One hundred twenty one type 2 diabetic patients were randomized into three groups as whole wheat, wheat bran and rye bread groups. Each group ate 100 g of bread with water with in 10 min. Blood glucose measurements were made at every 30 min in 2 h. Insulin was measured at fasting and at the second hour in the patients who do not use insulin. The same processes were repeated on the following day, with white wheat bread for each group."

Here's what they found:

"No significant difference was found in either glycemic or insulinemic effects between four types of breads when compared to each other. (p = 0.093 for glycemic effect and p = 0.297 for insulinemic effect)."

In short, "healthy" whole grains raised blood sugar as much as white bread.

Show this article to your doctor!