Tailor the low-carb diet to YOUR body using a skin patch

NOW THAT you’re firmly on the low-carb route, you can start finessing it according to your metabolism. For we don’t all react the same way to carbohydrates — some people might get away with a mouthful of sugary fruit like pineapple, while others would see blood sugar levels rise.

I was shocked to find a single ripe banana doubled my blood sugar an hour after eating it, whereas my wife Jen is rather more ‘banana tolerant’. I talked about ‘feedback’ in Wednesday’s pullout — ways of checking how you are getting on.

Today, I look at the ultimate in feedback, using a new form of blood sugar monitor that can work out more precisely what works best for you when it comes to low-carb. It is the FreeStyle Libre (freestylelibre.ie), which consists of a patch-like sensor (a disc about the size of a €2 coin) you wear on your arm.

This is left for 14 days before it needs replacing. The monitor also comes with a reader (some of the newer mobile phones have an app to do this bit), which you pass over the sensor on your skin.

The device downloads not just your current blood sugar level, but how it’s been for the past few hours, in graph form, providing almost continuous glucose monitoring — very different from the old method of pricking your finger each time.

In particular, this means it’s also easy to see what foods are putting your blood sugar up.

Jen and I bought a device online and used it for a few weeks to fine-tune our lowcarb diets. We read the sensor about an hour after test meals and then every 30 minutes until the reading levelled off.

It was easy to use and fascinating to see that I could eat a huge steak with a Stilton and cream sauce, green beans, broccoli and mushrooms with barely any increase in my blood sugar, whereas a small bowl of rice or mashed potato would double my blood sugar rather like a banana or a Mars bar.

In clinical practice, we find this device helps people with type 1 diabetes to get a better understanding of where their dietary sugar is coming from — Patients with type 2 diabetes could use this and learn so much in just a few weeks; knowledge that could help them avoid expensive medication.

This was brought home to me a few months ago with a patient at my practice who needed powerful drugs to try to control his type 2 diabetes. But these same drugs caused lethargy and memory problems.

Within a few days of getting feedback from the FreeStyle Libre he bought, he realised it was large bowls of cornflakes that were mainly his problem. He has given them up, has got his diabetes into remission, and has come off all medication — as well as losing a lot of weight. Result!