{"id":50745,"date":"2019-07-15T13:16:19","date_gmt":"2019-07-15T17:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=50745"},"modified":"2019-07-15T14:19:43","modified_gmt":"2019-07-15T18:19:43","slug":"how-to-raise-a-child-with-diabetes-on-a-low-carb-diet-an-interview-with-lester-hightower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=50745","title":{"rendered":"How to Raise a Child with Diabetes on a Low Carb Diet: An Interview with Lester Hightower"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friends for Life, the annual Children with Diabetes conference<\/a> in Orlando, begins tomorrow. We’re very excited that this year’s sessions include discussions about managing diabetes on a low carb diet<\/a>. \u00a0RD Dikeman, one of the founders of TypeOneGrit<\/a>, reached out to interview d-dad Lester Hightower, who will be giving a talk about his son’s low carb diet at the conference. Here’s an exclusive peek at what’s coming very soon!<\/p>\n

Hi Lester! We’re excited to see a low carb talk at FFL 2019. Can you please tell us about yourself?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Hi, RD, and thanks for asking for this interview. I am likewise excited that there are low-carb talks at this year’s FFL Conference. Three in total, I believe.<\/p>\n

Professionally, I am an information technology leader and software engineer. I hold a bachelor\u2019s degree in Economics from Florida State University and my career has mainly focused on technology related to the ground, freight transportation industry, in both railroading and trucking.<\/p>\n

Personally, I have been married for 22 years and am the father of two children. I am a student and proponent of low carb eating and Dr. Richard K. Bernstein\u2019s diabetes management regimen<\/a>. I am also a founding board member of the nonprofit Rivere Foundation, D.B.A. Let Me Be 83<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Walk us through diagnosis and how you discovered the low carb approach for your son. The information on this approach is scant now, but back then it must have been a real trick to find out how to do what you are doing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

My son, Andrew, was officially diagnosed with T1D in June of 2010, a few weeks after his 5th birthday, and our story has a frightening and all too common theme of missed diagnosis by medical professionals.\u00a0In mid-April of 2010 I resigned my job, almost exactly one year after selling the company that I helped found. I intended to spend the summer with my wife and kids, trying to make up for some of my absenteeism that resulted from selling the company and the tough professional year that followed. Andrew had been ill almost constantly, for months — at least since October of 2009 — and had been on repeated rounds of antibiotics, steroids, etc. He even suffered a collapsed lung in March of 2010.<\/p>\n

When Andrew finished school in late May, I was determined to get him out of the house and to spend a lot of time with him. In doing so, I almost immediately noticed his unquenchable thirst and frequent need to urinate. For example, we started attending afternoon games of our local minor league baseball team and I could not drive from home to the baseball grounds without having to stop at least once and sometimes twice for him to use the restroom. He also asked me for something to drink repeatedly and nearly constantly. His mom and pre-kindergarten teacher had missed those symptoms, as I am sure they came on slowly and became \u201cnormal\u201d to them, but with my transition from a little to a lot of time spent with him, I noticed. One only has to Google \u201cunquenchable thirst and frequent urination\u201d to find reams of results pointing to diabetes.<\/p>\n

Frightened, but not yet wanting to admit what was happening, I started recording the volume of fluid that our roughly 40-pound, 5-year-old son was consuming. I began doing that on June 12th and looking back on those numbers is sad for me. For example, on June 12th and 13th he consumed 118 oz of fluid and on June 16th 150 oz (1.2 gallons)! On June 13th, we purchased Bayer Keto-Diastix from Walgreens and urinalysis with those repeatedly showed 0.5-1% glucose, which translates to 500-1000 mg\/dL.<\/p>\n

Even to my untrained eye, these observations indicated a fairly clear diabetes diagnosis. I have a string of emails to myself that were sent on the afternoon of Monday, June 14th, with links to copious information about type 1 diabetes, and we scheduled a pediatrician visit for the morning of Tuesday, June 15th. Feeling sure that a T1D diagnosis would occur, and with that, blood labs, we fasted Andrew on the morning of the pediatrician appointment. As a result, his blood glucose level was only 157 mg\/dL when tested in the office and we were told that he was likely just fighting a virus. My wife and I were well past such glib answers, insisted on a pediatric endocrinology referral, and that appointment was set for 12:45 pm on Thursday, June 17th. Andrew did not fast that morning and in the endo\u2019s office his blood glucose was 444 mg\/dL, his A1c was 10.6%, and he was immediately hospitalized for three days. He was not yet in diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), but a three-day hospitalization was protocol, primarily so that my wife and I could be trained in diabetes management.<\/p>\n

Recall that I was unemployed, and so I poured myself headlong into diabetes research.\u00a0The life-altering event was an Amazon.com order that arrived on June 30th.\u00a0The big win from that order was Dr. Bernstein\u2019s Diabetes Solution<\/em><\/a>, but Jenny Ruhl\u2019s Blood Sugar 101\u00a0 <\/em><\/a>was smaller and more approachable, and I believe that I read it first. The Eades\u2019 book, Protein Power<\/em>,<\/a> was reassuring about the safety and benefits of moving my son, and our entire family, to a very low-carb, high-protein (LCHP) diet. Looking back at our food diaries, there is a marked reduction in carbohydrate intake on June 27th, but with some occasional high-carb experimentation with items like Glucerna Cereal with Hood low-carb milk until July 12th, at which time it appears that we stopped trying to cling to our high-carb past. The food diary and blood sugar meter readings guided us through that time of wanting to cling to the past and into our healthy, low-carb, high-protein and excellent blood sugar management future.<\/p>\n

\"HbA1c<\/p>\n

We know that low carb means to remove grains and sugars, but what else? What is then the focus of your son\u2019s diet? Can you give an example of a day of meals?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Most of our meals are simple. They are anchored in an animal protein – meat, eggs and\/or dairy – and complimented with green\/leafy or other low-glycemic\u00a0vegetables, with a small amount of tree nuts, and sometimes include a minuscule\u00a0amount of berries. Example vegetables include asparagus, broccoli, green beans, turnip-, mustard-, or collard-greens, spinach, zucchini, summer squash, okra, cauliflower, etc. We also often eat salads with animal proteins added. Our goal is to provide excellent nutrition while avoiding rapid increases in blood sugar, and so we completely avoid things like breads, pasta, milk, corn, beans and rice.<\/p>\n

As for an example day:<\/p>\n