Reduce High Blood Glucose Levels?

[Soxtiger]

Newbie here - I introduced Sox earlier in the week, he's newly diagnosed with Diabetes. The vet prescribed Lantus which we started injecting Tuesday evening. So far Sox numbers are irregular and I started home testing today. We're between 481 and 371, today's afternoon reading was 422. I seem to find lots of advice how to get a cat out of hypo by given carbs and caro syrup, but how do you get the levels to come down (more food, less food..)? confused_cat . We give 2 units of Lantus twice daily. Thanks.

 

[Ronnie & Luna]

hi there!

Welcome to the Lantus forum!

how do you get the levels to come down?

Patience.

Lantus needs patience. Please have a look thru the starred stickies up top full of info about Lantus.
You'll want to especially read the dosing protocol as well that we follow here.

Congrats on starting to home test!
Just a suggestion, would you consider creating a spreadsheet for Sox? As you can see we use spreadsheets, very easy to set up and to view - some of us may not be able to view an excel sheet.
Spreadsheet Set Up

Hope to see you posting regularly!

 

[Soxtiger]

Thanks Ronnie & Luna for sharing the link to the spreadsheet I've seen here. I started my own Excel based tracking sheet with food diary and glucose level reading cause I couldn't find the instructions to the other spreadsheets I've seen posted here. I'm still reading and learning and will share more info on Sox status as we go along the hometesting road.

 

[kryskat]

In addition to patience, you should also try to feed low carb canned foods. Here's a link to some charts with foods and their carb content:

Janet & Binky's Cat Food Nutritional Information Page

Low carb is usually considered under 10%, though I think most of us aim for 5% or under... A lot of us feed several small meals per day (or leave enough food out so that the kitties can graze throughout the day). If possible, try not to give any food the 2 hours prior to the shots...

 

[Ronnie & Luna]

Not a problem!

Post when ever you can - lots of helpers and good advice here!

A little note on posting in this forum, each kitty gets one thread per day - as you can see lots of active kitties in here, this helps keep all the kitties in one place so noone gets missed.

Have a look around other threads (also known as condo's) and spreadsheets, it helps a lot to see how others are doing. It gets easier too!

 

[Sienne and Gabby (GA)]

Can I really encourage you to use the spreadsheet that we all use? Not everyone here has Excel. The Google SS that we use can be opened by everyone and frankly, most of us are very used to the color coding and the format.

It looks like you are feeding dry food. If you are feeding K/D dry, it's 35% carb and K/D canned is 29% carb. Given that we consider anything about about 16% high carb (low carb is below 10% and most of us feed in the vicinity of 5% carb), I think it's pretty safe to say that one reason that Sox numbers are still high is likely due to food. In addition to Janet & Binky's food charts that Krys linked, you may also want to take a look at the webpage authored by Lisa Pierson, DVM on feline nutrition.

 

[Soxtiger]

We switched Sox to Royal Canin Renal diet / wet food as of earlier in the week. As far as I read the carb content chart it's at 8% so much better for him. I'll have to advise the vet of the carb content on the K/D wet I was shocked to see how high it is. I guess for a borderline kidney kitty it's ok, but for a diabetic kidney kitty not so much. It's good to keep on hand tho as "carb" food same as the other dry foods we have. I really appreciate getting those links they help understand a lot of which foods can be fed. I'm going to check Sox glucose once more tonight to see if there's any chance. I'm in the process of switching the data to the other spreadsheet that was recommended. I used Excel initially cause I couldn't find the link anymore.

 

[Sienne and Gabby (GA)]

You might want to check the Royal Canin, as well. The renal pouches (the canned or pouch food) is 11% carb and the dry is 35% carb. I don't know if this is the same as what you're feeding. There are only a handful of people here who feed dry food and it's not a major part of their cat's diet. Gabby grew up on dry food and free fed dry until I found this site. After reading Dr. Lisa's site, I transitioned her to canned food and returned the cases of Hill's M/D to my vet. There's a wide variety of canned foods that are lower in carbs and better quality than the prescription foods and cost a whole lot less -- even the human grade foods (e.g., Wellness) costs less than the prescription foods. We've had a number of cats who, once off of dry food, have been able to go into remission.

Let us know if you have other questions. We're here to lend a hand. Please take a look at the starred, sticky notes at the top of the Board. There's a huge amount of information there. You may want to take some time to read the New to the Forum and the Tight Regulation notes.