I Know My Body, So I Did These...

Last week I did some experiment about my type 1 diabetes. I measure the effect of food, exercise, and insulin shot in my body. As you know, I'm living in a remote area where it's hard to find the good doctor to take care of my diabetes. The results of my experiment were being cross check with some journals. And here are what I got from the experiment.

My methods:
1. I conducted this experiment at eight days.
2. I have my insulin shot twice a day, at 08:00 and 19:00.
3. I controlled my food, avoid high glycemic index food, except those I wanted to measure.
4. Day 1 until day 4, I took a rest after eat, and after that, I went to work.
5. At day 5 until 8, I went to walk after eat. I walk about 10-20 minutes.
6. I checked my blood sugar every 09:00 (two hours after breakfast), 11:30 (before lunch), 14:00 (two hours after lunch), 16:30, and 19:00 (after dinner).
7. Every time I found facts from this experiment, I was looking for journals to learn and do cross checks about the fact so I could decide whether it true or false?

I found these results:
1. Sweet soy sauce, noodle, and white rice have a very high glycemic index. This should be avoided.
2. When you eat cakes that contain a lot of eggs, butter, and sugar such as birthday cake, your blood sugar will high at the next day, not at the same day as food at point 1.
3. Baked or steamed potato have higher index glycemic than fried potato. It is surprising me because people commonly said that steamed potato is better than fried. Of course, they said that from a different point of view, maybe from the amount of cholesterol.
4. This table shows how my insulin work. I use Novomix 10-12 unit. You can see from this graphic, 2-3 hours after the shot, Novomix doing its rapid work. And after that, Novomix slowly lost the effectiveness.

5. When I go for the walk after eat (see method #5), my blood sugar reduce about 10-20 mg/dL! Amazing! I only walk, not run! I consider it good for avoiding spike blood sugar. FYI, spike blood sugar is dangerous, because the blood sugar up and down extremely, that’s not good for our body.

These results are enough to answer my questions about why my blood sugar is hard to control lately, about 220-340 mg/dL with 9 unit per insulin shot (I do twice a day). And since that day, I promise myself to do some follow up to manage my diabetes better.

My follow-up:
1. I only eat noodle in very small amounts.
2. I avoid white rice, sweet soy sauce, and white sugar. Palm sugar is better, but still have to limit the intake.
3. I do walk for 10-20 minutes after eat. And I’m getting more support to do this from friends at Faithful Finish Lines, the group are full of encouragements for me to keep on walking, and the program always remembering me to eat only healthy food for energy.

After doing this experiment, and do the follow-up, my diabetes getting normal, about 100-220 mg/dL.

My friends said that I’m a brave woman who bravely took the experiment to my own body. I said to them: everyone has a different metabolism, not all experiment result that people did in the past can be applied to my body, and sometimes my body showed strange reactions that different from anyone else. That is why I should learn about my own body before it’s too late!