| 1. There are big differences between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes and management of them are (for the most part) very different. Distinguishing between the two is important. 2. Please be mindful of making declarative statements about the risks associated with diabetics and foods. A small red potato is ~27g of carbs, a couple of potatoes to non-diabetics may seem harmless but for a T1 diabetic, 54g of carbs from couple of potatoes not being accounted for with insulin can easily result in going into DKA (Diabetic Ketoacidosis) and not so nice stay in the hospital. Expanding a bit on the reasons why potato is recommended to be avoided: For type 1 diabetics, we are essentially replacing the functionality our immune system is suppressing by "manually" providing the needed insulin to process the glucose. Since T2 diabetics do produce insulin (it's way more complex than this but it's correct enough for this post), the focus for their treatments are mostly around fixing this resistance through medications and reducing the need for insulin by limiting carb intake. While the carb density of starches is a big reason for avoiding them, the specific reason T1 diabetics are advised to avoid them is because of how slowly your body breaks down carbohydrates from these foods after consuming. Eating 20g of carbs from potatoes will result in those carbs getting processed over the span of hours as opposed to foods like Orange Juice which feel like they skip the stomach and dump glucose straight into the blood stream. It's that long gap of time between eating and all the carbohydrates being processed that is trying to be avoided. For T1's, removing those foods from our diet makes predicting a given meal's impact on your BG levels and for how long they're affected much simpler. Kinda Related Small PSA: We know you mean well but asking a diabetic the question "Should you be eating that?" can be very irritating and, at least for me, comes off as demeaning. While you may only be asking it once, we hear it frequently and already spend 16 hours a day thinking about the disease so let us have those 20 minutes between injections and finger pricks to forget about it and feel normal, if only for a little bit <3 Sorry for the wall of text, this topic is just so dense and nuanced that it's way too easy to end up writing a book for what seems like something so small lol. |
Eating carbohydrates cannot cause Diabetic Ketoacidosis.
Ketoacidosis is caused by not having enough insulin which means glucose can't exit your bloodstream and enter your cells, Your body starts breaking down fat into ketones to provide an energy pathway for your cells that doesn't require insulin. Ketones are acidic and at high enough levels will cause DKA. This can be fatal.
Eating potatoes without corresponding insulin will raise the level of glucose in your bloodstream to high levels. This is not immediately fatal. Having a high average blood glucose level over a long time span (years) will lead to lots of complications including nerve damage, kidney damage, blindness, etc. Obviously this assumes you have the appropriate basal rate of insulin which is separate from eating.
A more accurate way of making your point is that it is difficult to match insulin response times (even with modern fast acting insulin) to certain foods that are absorbed quickly, so eating potatoes may cause a time period may cause a higher post prandial glucose level. The goal of type 1 diabetic therapy is to keep your average glucose levels as close to a normal person's level as possible. So avoiding certain foods (or eating along with protein/fat/fiber) can help achieve lower average blood glucose levels.