Goes together like peanut butter and…chocolate frosting…
I love a good “diabetes hack” when I hear one - anything that makes this ridiculous disease a teeny tiny bit easier I’m game for. I found myself low on Monday night before bed, standing in front of an open fridge, and I was tempted to shovel 2 to 3 times the appropriate amount of chocolate frosting into my mouth to get out of said low and into my bed quicker. This is a decision driven by being tired and cranky (interestingly those are symptoms of both bed time and being low) , but it’s not a good one. This is the kind of behavior that very quickly gets my BGs going up, making me feel “safe” temporarily, but then lands me over 300mg/dL hours later because I have over-done it. This of course then leads to more problems the next day (see Monday’s post for all that jazz!). But then I remembered something that a diabetes educator who is also Type 1 told me: she uses something with a high fat content to slow down the glucose release of high sugar foods. It was in that minute that I realized the genius that was before me:
Yes. Oh yes. Chocolate and peanut butter. AT THE SAME TIME. Using this brilliant (and might I add, DELICIOUS) combination of foods allowed me to quickly treat the low and bring things up to a happy-and-safe sleeping level, but also provided sustained control for several hours resulting in a glorious flat-line of euglycemia on the trend line of my CGM the next morning. It was gastronomicaly and diabetically (that’s not a word…yet) the best of both worlds.
I don’t know that this would be the best course of action for all lows because some just need a lot of carb and they need it very quickly to be treated. Other times, you’re simply trending low and you might only need the peanut butter, or something like milk that breaks down slowly. But for this low which was not too acute and still involved some active insulin, this was the perfect fix. And oh so good going down!
The only downside? It’s hard to stop with just one tablespoon of each!
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Brilliant!