Caffeine Helps Type 1's Sense Lows?

[Mich]

I thought this was interesting from Web MD:

Sensing Falls in Blood Sugar with Coffee (http://www.webmd.com/news/20000412/coffee-blood-sugar-diabetes)


Mich

[johgn]

Caffeine is so strange, one study says it's good another says it's bad. I know too much lowers my insulin sensitivity but I can deal with that.

[Eddy]

I find caffeine's effects difficult to predict. It seems to exacerbate highs and lows, and make it more difficult to detect highs. YMMV.

[shiftzor]

Its funny caffeine in itself causes fluctuations in BG and if we believe this study it also heightens the body’s ability to detect these fluctuations. It’s a bit of a double edged sword. Unless I was hypo unaware I wouldn't go out of my way to take caffeine.

[johgn]

I'm never ever going to not drink coffee so I'll just continue to try and predict what it does. :)

[nono87]

i only feel low if i have a cappucino otherwise any other caffeine drinks i'm okay with so i guess it depends on the person themselves.

[owlyn]

I'm with Joghn. I'm not giving up coffee, so I jut deal with whatever caffeine feels like doing at the moment. I can't find any predictable pattern.

[sprzepiora]

Out of everything I have had to change in my life since being diagnosed I will not be giving up or cutting back on my coffee. I would do whatever it takes to be able to drink the same amount of coffee as I used to period :D

[Subby]

I find caffeine's effects difficult to predict. It seems to exacerbate highs and lows, and make it more difficult to detect highs. YMMV.

ditto. The rush of caffeine can also "emulate" the coming on of a low for me, even when mildly high. It makes me suspicious that maybe the people in the study THOUGHT they were going low but weren't at all, or that it wasn't really related to them going low. Dunno: not enough info to tell how well the study was actually done.

I really like coffee but it's probably a mildly negative factor in my control.

[notme]

I have given up a lot in my food life. I am not giving up the two cups of highly charged coffee I drink in the morning. I will also just deal with what comes my way.

[DarthDiabetes]

I am with most here, I have given up TONs in the last 3 months, and coffee is not on the list, nor is it ever going to be on a list.

I did give up milk loaded coffee drinks, so just give me my brewed goodness and nobody will get hurt.

[Evermont]

Caffeine is so strange, one study says it's good another says it's bad...

Here's why: Caffeine is metabolized by the polymorphic cytochrome P450 1A2 (CYP1A2) enzyme. Individuals who are homozygous for the CYP1A2*1A allele are "rapid" caffeine metabolizers, whereas carriers of the variant CYP1A2*1F are "slow" caffeine metabolizers. This genetic trait was discovered a couple years ago. Turns out that roughly half of all people have it one way, and half the other. This is the main reason for all the conflicting studies in the past regarding the effects of caffeine and coffee's goodness or badness. Some newer caffeine studies now take this into account, sadly others still don't.

The variable is not in the coffee or the caffeine - it's in the coffee drinkers genes!

As it turns out coffee has many hundreds of other potentially relevant compounds most of which have not yet been studied at all.

This kind of discovery will lead to the rise of nutrigenomics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrigenomics), a promising new scientific field that will provide individualized answers to tricky nutrition related questions.

[mooredge]

Here's why: Caffeine is metabolized by the polymorphic cytochrome P450 1A2 (CYP1A2) enzyme. Individuals who are homozygous for the CYP1A2*1A allele are "rapid" caffeine metabolizers, whereas carriers of the variant CYP1A2*1F are "slow" caffeine metabolizers. This genetic trait was discovered a couple years ago. Turns out that roughly half of all people have it one way, and half the other. This is the main reason for all the conflicting studies in the past regarding the effects of caffeine and coffee's goodness or badness. Some newer caffeine studies now take this into account, sadly others still don't.

The variable is not in the coffee or the caffeine - it's in the coffee drinkers genes!

As it turns out coffee has many hundreds of other potentially relevant compounds most of which have not yet been studied at all.

This kind of discovery will lead to the rise of nutrigenomics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrigenomics), a promising new scientific field that will provide individualized answers to tricky nutrition related questions.


This is interesting to know. Recently over the last several months i started drinking coffee on a regular basis in the morning during my commute. I kept getting high blood sugars after i arrived at work and my bolus insulin didn't really seem to have any effect. I finally realized it was the caffeine in the coffee i was drinking. So, i decided to stop drinking coffee since i'm not yet a serious coffee drinker i figured i should nip it in the bud before its too hard to give up. I must be homozygous for CYP1A2*1A.