The moment you are diagnosed with diabetes, you are taught that carbohydrates have the greatest effect on your blood sugar levels. This is true, but dietary fats and protein also affect blood sugar.
We need fat in our diet for flavor and health, but as people with diabetes, we need to be aware of when and why it affects our blood sugar levels.
In this article, we will explain how dietary fat affects blood sugar levels and insulin needs.
What is dietary fat?
Fats, like carbohydrates and proteins, are “macronutrients.” Macronutrients are the only source of calories fuel For the human body!
Dietary fat contains 9 calories per gram. It’s more than twice as much protein and carbohydrates, and weighs 4 calories per gram. But that doesn’t mean fat is bad. In fact, dietary fat is essential for your long-term survival!
But dietary fat is do not have It breaks down into glucose, like carbohydrates (and sometimes proteins). Instead, it breaks down into fatty acids. Without those fatty acids from your diet, your body will ultimately not function.
You need fat in your diet:
- Absorbs vitamins A, D, E and K
- Protects organs
- Maintains healthy growth of skin, hair and nails
The dietary fat is also very satisfying. Eating apples naturally makes you hungry, for example, but eating apples with a substantial amount of fat from peanut butter and cheese will take longer to digest the fat than carbohydrates, which will make your body longer to last longer.
How dietary fat affects your blood sugar levels
A diet containing 8 grams of fat does not significantly affect your blood sugar levels, but eating more than 15 grams of fat in one or a short period of time can cause problems if you are not ready.
Let’s take a look…
Dietary fats can slow digestion for several hours
Eating large amounts of dietary fat at once also slows down carbohydrate digestion during your meals.
For whom Please don’t Take insulin, which can actually help prevent post-meal spikes in your blood sugar levels.
For people taking insulin, this is difficult to manage. Because it changes the timing when your body needs insulin for its diet. As you are told to do normally, when you take insulin when you start eating, the carbohydrates become active in your bloodstream before they are digested and broken down into glucose.
Instead, it would be ideal to increase the dose of insulin a little. If you are eating a high-fat diet that contains carbohydrates, Gary Please, MS, CDE The authors of Think Like a Pancreas suggest:
- Divide the calculated insulin dose in half.
- Take the first half of your dose when you start eating.
- Take the second half of your dose 1-2 hours after your dosing Finished eat.
- For those using an insulin pump, you can do this with an “expanding bolus”.
- For those receiving multiple daily injections, you just need to get two separate injections.
Spreading the diet over several hours coincides with the digestibility of its high-fat diet.
Dietary fats can also trigger the liver by releasing glucose!
Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as dividing the insulin dose in half. Really High-fat foods such as pizza, Chinese food, and rich ice cream.
If you eat a meal that contains more than 30 grams of fat (it can be easily done with several slices of pizza), its high fat content can affect your blood sugar levels for up to 12 hours thanks to the liver.
The liver usually produces very small amounts of glucose 24 hours a day. This helps provide the body and brain with the fuel they need while sleeping and between meals.
The sugar produced by the liver comes from “glycogen storage,” which essentially stores glucose. The liver is designed to release this “backup” glucose as a fuel source for other situations, like adrenaline-inducing roller coaster rides, soccer games, stressful discussions, dawning phenomena, and horrifying moments of “fighting or flying.”
When you eat very large amounts of fat, the liver produces more glucose due to insulin resistance. The liver feels that it has a higher level of insulin resistance due to its high fat mass and tries to balance this by producing more glucose.
This is usually suppressed by the presence of insulin. This is automatically managed by non-diabetic patients by producing more insulin. In people with diabetes, after a large, highly fatty meal, this means that you need to take more insulin from time to time up to 12 hours.
Gary Scheiner recommends several ways to manage this.
- For pumps: Set a temporary basal rate increase by 50% 8 hours after meals.
- For injections: Inject insulin after eating NPH (lasting 8-10 hours) or normally (lasting 4-6 hours).
- In addition to splitting the dosage of your meal, you can add another small infusion of insulin, which acts rapidly four hours after eating.
Work with your healthcare team to establish the best approach for you!
Why Ketogenic Diets Can Increase Your Insulin Need
This glucose production from the liver is also the reason why some people see their insulin needs rise When they start following the ketogenic diet. This can be very confusing and frustrating given that low carbohydrate and ketogenic diets are promoted as reducing insulin needs and lowering blood sugar levels.
For many people, that’s true! But for some, it’s not that simple.
Very high fat intake in a high-fat diet approach means low insulin as there are very few carbohydrates at first, but it can increase your insulin needs through insulin resistance caused by the presence of dietary fat.
For some people, this is more difficult to manage than simply eating a meal that contains more carbohydrates. Specifically, it means you can benefit from a low-carbohydrate medium-fat protein diet expensive– Fat diet.
For others, a high-fat, low-carb diet means smoother blood sugar levels and lower overall insulin dosages.
Anyway, you need to know what’s best for your body and work closely with an experienced endocrinologist or CDE to fine-tune your insulin administration approach!
