Diabetes Thoughts Blog

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I’ve updated my Holiday Page with some Valentine Candy carbohydrate/nutritional information. Please let me know if you would like anything added.

BTW, the picture is of the Valentine Snowman at my Designed by Lisa Cafepress Store.

Looking for information on how to make your own sick day plan? Talk to your health care team. Also, here are some good links:

• Type 1 Diabetes: Sick Day Management from University of Michigan – I particularly like the list of good sick day liquids with carbohydrate information.
• JDRF’s sick day suggestions - Good suggestions for parents of type 1 kids.
• ADA’s sick day suggestions- A great list complete with sick day foods with carb info (even in diabetic exchange information) and how to put together a sick day kit. It is written for kids with diabetes.
• Sick Day Checklist - a print-out checklist that you can bring  to your doctor to help create your sick day plan. One issue with this print-out is that there is an ad on the bottom of the checklist. Pretty good otherwise.

The various different weathermen are saying it is going to snow in this area, again….  They were talking about getting kits ready for weather emergencies. Of course I started to think about kits needed for diabetes. We with diabetes need a bit more in our kit than the general public. Here are a few things that I would put in my diabetes weather emergency kit:

1. Batteries (for pump and meter)
2. Syringes (in case the pump breaks)
3. extra vials of insulin
4. Frio or similar items that can keep the insulin cool
5. can of coke (for low blood sugar)
6. glucose tabs
7. glucagon kit
8. extra pump supplies
9. extra meter supplies
10. extra meter
11. Bottles of water

What would you put in your kit?

Helpful links:
Diabetes Emergency Kit
ADA’s Tips for Emergency Preparedness

Fruit and Vegetables in crates and boxes. (from freeclipartnow.com)

One way I tried to improve my diet/lifestyle (that actually worked) was to join a CSA.

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. A person gives a a farm a certain amount of money which allows them to buy a share of the farm. Everyone who has a share gets a certain amount of vegetables during the growing season. Usually buying a share also means pledging to do a certain amount of farm work.

My share last year helped in a couple of ways. The variety of vegetables added more lower carb options to my diet.  I got some vegetables I would never have thought to buy when I was at the store. Since I already had them, I looked into interesting recipes. But, the CSA even had more. My CSA (like a lot of others) had a weekly newsletter that had interesting recipes. And, I had to work at the farm for a certain number of hours. So, a certain amount of outside exercise was something that I had to do.

If you are interested in signing up for a CSA near you, start looking into it very soon. My CSA sent me an email about sign-ups already. Quite a few CSAs sell all their shares by early February.

Looking for more information?

Here is a list of some Massachusetts CSAs: http://www.foodonthefood.com/food_on_the_food/2009/01/putting-the-loca-in-locavore.html

Here is a list of local farms and CSAs near Marlborough MA:  http://marlboroughlocalfood.wetpaint.com/page/Small+Farm 

Massachusetts list of CSAs: http://www.mass.gov/agr/massgrown/csa.htm

Looking for a CSA in another state in the USA: http://www.localharvest.org/

Soon as the weather gets nice and cold I bring out the slow cooker. There is something great about coming in the house after a cold winter walk to the smell of stew cooking. One site I found especially useful for slow cooker recipes is “The Year of Crockpotting”.  This blog came about last year when a woman had a New Years resolution to use her crockpot every day. She posted each recipe on her blog. And yes, she finished the whole year.

Most people would stop at a year, but not “The Crockpot Lady”. She said that she will continue to post this year with tips and other crockpot information.

Her current posting is especially relevant for me. She posted suggestions on how to use her crockpot recipes and have a healthy diet. http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2009/01/crockpot-diet.html

Are you interested in reading even more on slow cooking? Diabetes Self Management decided to post about slow cookers recently too. Here is a link to their latest blog: http://www.diabetesselfmanagement.com/blog/Amy_Campbell/Slow_Cookers_A_Must_Have_for_Healthy_Eating

Those two links should give you lots of links for recipes, but it you would prefer to own a book, here are a couple:

• Fix-It and Forget-It Diabetic Cookbook: Slow-Cooker Favorites to Include Everyone!
• Best Diabetes Slow Cooker Recipes

Do you use a crockpot/slow cooker? What are your favorite recipes?

Lifescan announced a voluntary recall of two lots of OneTouch SureStep test strips. Some of these strips produce inaccurately low or no blood glucose results. Here are the lot numbers:

2802961 (100 count strips)
2802962 (50 count strips)

For more information, check Lifescan’s website here: http://www.lifescan.com/company/about/press/surestep122008/

I want to wish everyone a happy and healthy holiday. Everyone enjoy themselves!

And…just for the holidays, an updated holiday page: See it here: http://www.diabetesthoughts.com/Holiday.html

I have been working on updating my Holiday page and I’m looking for ideas on various foods people eat during the winter holidays. So far I am planning on listing Candy Canes… I can’t really think of any other traditional sweet.

Thanks for any ideas…

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving. I have updated my Holiday page to have newer diabetes Thanksgiving links and information.

 Here is my Holiday page

Kelloggs just introduced a new label to the side of the box: Diabetes Friendly.

What does that mean?

 Cereals

• Provides 30 grams or less of total carbohydrate per serving
• Is low in fat (which is generally 3 grams or less per serving)
• Provides 1 gram or less saturated fat and 0 grams trans fat per serving
• 9 grams or less sugar for cereals

These labels should be showing up on cereal boxes November 2008. (So, could be in stores now.) They might be adding this label to items like snacks soon too.

If you want to know more about this label, please see the Kelloggs page: http://www.kelloggsnutrition.com/live-healthy/diabetes-friendly.html