? Lower carb food vs. Low carb food? And how long do carbs from 1 meal affect BG results?

[Jasper Blue and Jay]

I read this board all day, and it gets hard to remember where I read what...

I read that some cats do better on lower carb food vs. low carb food but I can't remember what the reasoning was.

Also, I'm more curious about something I've been trying to find the answer to for weeks but cannot..


How long do the carbs from 1 meal...affect the BG results? For one cycle? Two cycles? more?


If some people are still using dry food, and some people are doing zero carbs, and other stops in between, how long do those varying amounts of carbs from a meal stick around?

I *think* I read that carbs from dry kibble stick around longer?

(I don't do dry food but I'm just curious about how all of it works, since our guy is still underweight and I tried a bit of MC wet food with his insulin this am because he recently had a dose increase and his AMPS was lower than usual and I wanted to take advantage of an opportunity to help his weight gain a little bit.)

 

[Peacock]

I am answering just to share my limited experience, please note this is my first post here, even though I have been reading a lot too.

I am fostering a diabetic shelter cat, with the intention to adopt, so she had an established diet and diagnosis before I started to care for her.

The shelter gave her a mix of prescription canned DM and dry DM. Based on what I read here, I cut out the dry food after I had her at home a couple of days, supplemented with some low carb Fancy Feast pate instead, and her BG numbers improved significantly. I tried reintroducing the dry DM to confirm the effect, and her numbers went high, but fell back down as soon as I stopped it again. Three weeks after making the shift to only canned food, the shelter gave me some zero carb wet food (Tiki brand) to try, and I thought her numbers might improve more, but instead they shot back up into the too-high range. Her numbers stayed high for 2 cycles after the trial of no-carb wet food, but after that, we were regularly back to the low-carb rather than no-carb canned food, and the BG levels are back in the target range the vet gave us.

So my conclusion: this particular cat needs a little carb in the wet food, and a micro dose of ProZinc, and that seems to keep her from bouncing. Perhaps that will change over time. We will see. I do remember reading a post, something along the lines of them also needing to feed enough carbs in order to be able to give the insulin. I think that is kind of what is going on here with this cat. I am pretty new to this, so hopefully other more experienced posters will have some feedback for you.