# Argument about bananas



## Mark Parrott (Feb 10, 2016)

Just been speaking to my brother on the phone.  He was told by his DN that bananas are great for diabetics as they release their sugars slowly.  Now, I've heard the complete opposite.  Even my DN said avoid bananas.  The problem with my brother is he listens to his DN and believes every word she says & nothing that I say.  She knows what she's talking about, she's a professional, and all that.  Ho hum.


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## grovesy (Feb 10, 2016)

Thing with bananas are they come in various sizes and sweetness.
As with everything can only try and see.


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## Amigo (Feb 10, 2016)

I don't eat bananas very often Mark because they do have the highest carb content of all the fruits due to their low water content. But there's worse things to eat and apparently they're brilliant for athletes. This is one reason I do continue to eat a small, under-ripe banana occasionally;

'While it’s true that bananas pack more carbs per bite than other fruits (because they’re lower in water), there’s no need to shun them, even if you’re trying to lose weight. Bananas are a rich source of potassium, which in addition to reducing blood pressure, supports muscle maintenance and acts as a natural diuretic that alleviates water retention and bloating. Their vitamin B6 also helps maintain healthy blood sugar levels and their fiber content boosts satiety and improves digestive health.'

Some people can't tolerate them and they spike them massively but they're better than some snacks in terms of nutritional content. So in a sense neither DN is wrong.


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## Matt Cycle (Feb 10, 2016)

I eat plenty of bananas.  I think the GI is considered low but carbs are fairly high for a normal size one around 20g.  Great when exercising as well.


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## Pumper_Sue (Feb 10, 2016)

Under ripe bananas are fine it's when they become ripe or over ripe then they become very high sugar.


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## AlisonM (Feb 10, 2016)

Bananas are my favourite 'extreme hypo' food. a toasted nana sarnie will often bring my BGs back up when nothing else has worked. Other than that, I avoid them.


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## Austin Mini (Feb 10, 2016)

Apparently (according to Jeremy Vine) eating six bananas in one go can kill you!   Pottasium levels will be dangerously high.


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## Matt Cycle (Feb 10, 2016)

Pumper_Sue said:


> Under ripe bananas are fine it's when they become ripe or over ripe then they become very high sugar.



Yes, I always choose under ripe ones.  Taste a bit rank when on the turn anyway.


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## Ralph-YK (Feb 10, 2016)

Pumper_Sue said:


> Under ripe bananas are fine it's when they become ripe or over ripe then they become very high sugar.


I mentioned to the Diabetes Dietition about someone eating half an unripe banana.  She said ripeness makes no difference.  The amount of carbs is the same.  She also said there's no need to cut it in half, unless it's a Big one.



Austin Mini said:


> Apparently (according to Jeremy Vine) eating six bananas in one go can kill you!   Pottasium levels will be dangerously high.


The BBC Raido 4 programme More Or Less did a piece about this.  They said it was rubbish.  I thing, to get enough pottasium from bananas, you'd have have ridiculus amount of them.


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## Mark Parrott (Feb 10, 2016)

Thanks guys. Looks like it's a sick it & see process. I prefer slightly unripe bananas.


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## Northerner (Feb 10, 2016)

Ralph-YK said:


> I mentioned to the Diabetes Dietition about someone eating half an unripe banana.  She said ripeness makes no difference.  The amount of carbs is the same.  She also said there's no need to cut it in half, unless it's a Big one.


Ripeness does make a difference to the speed at which the carbs hit your bloodstream - as they ripen, more of the flesh turns to sugar, so while the carb content may not change, the effect can be quite different


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## Stitch147 (Feb 10, 2016)

I was told avoid bananas or have just 1 under ripe one a week. I don't like under ripe bananas, I prefer them when they are just going spotty on the skin and are sweet. That's why I haven't had one since August last year!


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## Lynn Davies (Feb 10, 2016)

I like my nanas under custard *sigh*


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## Riri (Feb 10, 2016)

It's a case of we're all different again. I buy the baby bananas and, whether they're the lesser greener or lesser spotted variety, I can manage one of these without a problem.


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## trophywench (Feb 10, 2016)

Haven't bought one for at least 15 years.  Loathe them under-ripe, leave a nasty metallic taste in my mouth.


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## Lorraine hunt (Feb 10, 2016)

Only eat then before excercise, but the browner the better


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## Lindarose (Feb 10, 2016)

I've given up bananas after I went into double figures after eating one. Hadn't been diagnosed long and it was a real shock. I do like them even chocolate doesn't do that much damage!


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## T1Cathy (Feb 11, 2016)

I use ripe bananas as a hypo treatment / prevention during exercise because they're high in fairly fast acting sugar - I wouldn't eat them if I wasn't low or exercising because the carb is too much and too fast acting


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## DeusXM (Feb 11, 2016)

You can simply solve this argument by getting your brother to test his blood sugar before eating a banana, and then testing it an hour later.

Don't listen to other people, just listen (or more precisely, read) to your body.

Better yet, do it in front of a dietician or the DN. There's few things funnier than proving to them right in front of them that they don't always know what they're talking about.


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## Mark Parrott (Feb 11, 2016)

Well, if he decides to do a banana split for dinner tonight, I'll make sure he tests.  He hasn't tested for months because he was told by his DN not to bother.  I know his last HbA1c was 74, which isn't great after 15 years, he is on the highest dose of tablets possible & will eventually have to go on Insulin.  He also doesn't bother going to his Retinopathy check ups, even though his eyesight is gradually getting worse, which he denies but it's obvious.


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## Northerner (Feb 11, 2016)

Mark Parrott said:


> Well, if he decides to do a banana split for dinner tonight, I'll make sure he tests.  He hasn't tested for months because he was told by his DN not to bother.  I know his last HbA1c was 74, which isn't great after 15 years, he is on the highest dose of tablets possible & will eventually have to go on Insulin.  He also doesn't bother going to his Retinopathy check ups, even though his eyesight is gradually getting worse, which he denies but it's obvious.


The big danger with retinopathy is that you may not notice anything until BOOM! one day you have serious problems  How old is he? My eyesight used to be pretty good, but I started needing reading glasses from my late-40s (before diabetes). Eyesight has got gradually worse as the years have gone by - this is perfectly natural as you get older. However, I also attend my retinopathy appointments and they have found problems that could have serious implications if untreated. These problems have had no impact whatsoever on my sight, but there are treatments I can have to prevent things getting worse. If I hadn't attended my appointments I would be oblivious and potentially heading for a life-changing problem  This is the problem with most of the potential complications of diabetes - they are very gradual and without regular checks can reach a point where treatments become either very drastic or impossible. Your brother is playing Russian Roulette on a daily basis, I'm afraid, but it can be hard to convince someone that it's better to spend these few short hours on prevention without it sounding like nagging, and when they think they feel fine. His nurse should be stressing all this to him if that is who he listens to.

Sorry for the doom and gloom post, but it can be far too easy to become complacent with this condition, I'm afraid, so we need to stay on the ball!


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## Mark Parrott (Feb 11, 2016)

Northerner said:


> The big danger with retinopathy is that you may not notice anything until BOOM! one day you have serious problems  How old is he? My eyesight used to be pretty good, but I started needing reading glasses from my late-40s (before diabetes). Eyesight has got gradually worse as the years have gone by - this is perfectly natural as you get older. However, I also attend my retinopathy appointments and they have found problems that could have serious implications if untreated. These problems have had no impact whatsoever on my sight, but there are treatments I can have to prevent things getting worse. If I hadn't attended my appointments I would be oblivious and potentially heading for a life-changing problem  This is the problem with most of the potential complications of diabetes - they are very gradual and without regular checks can reach a point where treatments become either very drastic or impossible. Your brother is playing Russian Roulette on a daily basis, I'm afraid, but it can be hard to convince someone that it's better to spend these few short hours on prevention without it sounding like nagging, and when they think they feel fine. His nurse should be stressing all this to him if that is who he listens to.
> 
> Sorry for the doom and gloom post, but it can be far too easy to become complacent with this condition, I'm afraid, so we need to stay on the ball!


He is 59 this month.  He drives for a living which is very worrying.  I always knew he wasn't controlling his diabetes right, but after discovering this forum, I realise how badly he is not controlling his diabetes.  Convincing him is impossible.  He had a call from his diabetic team yesterday wanting him to come in & review his medication.  So despite that he says 'my DN thinks i'm doing great', obviously he isn't.  I go over his for dinner every Thursday & I tell him what I can't eat, and he just says 'you can eat what you like'.


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## Amigo (Feb 11, 2016)

What DN thinks you're doing ok and shouldn't test with a Hba1c of 74?


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## Mark Parrott (Feb 11, 2016)

Amigo said:


> What DN thinks you're doing ok and shouldn't test with a Hba1c of 74?


A useless one. My DN is pretty good as she agrees with testing & the low carb diet.


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## Amigo (Feb 11, 2016)

Mark Parrott said:


> A useless one. My DN is pretty good as she agrees with testing & the low carb diet.



I can understand your concern about him Mark. I've had friends like that and one lost his sight. At the time I wasn't diabetic and tbh didn't know as much about it but I couldn't believe that he could just eat and drink what he liked. Stubborn though and couldn't/wouldn't see the link between late night pizza and severe illness


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## Pumper_Sue (Feb 11, 2016)

Amigo said:


> What DN thinks you're doing ok and shouldn't test with a Hba1c of 74?


Ah but does the DSN think he's doing OK or has the brother decided he is and wont listen to anyone.


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## Mark Parrott (Feb 11, 2016)

He doesnt listen. It's just like he never opens letters in Brown envelopes.


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## Mark Parrott (Feb 11, 2016)

We didn't have a banana split. Had berries & cream instead.


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## Northerner (Feb 11, 2016)

Mark Parrott said:


> We didn't have a banana split. Had berries & cream instead.


Interesting!


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## Mark Parrott (Feb 12, 2016)

Well, 1 hour after dinner, 10.3! 2 hours after, 6.1. Dinner was filled steak, mushrooms, salad & two small new potatoes. Also had my first beer since diagnosis. So the spike could've been the beer or the fruit. Potatoes don't spike me as much as that. Oh, before meal was 5.9.


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## AndBreathe (Feb 12, 2016)

Mark Parrott said:


> Well, 1 hour after dinner, 10.3! 2 hours after, 6.1. Dinner was filled steak, mushrooms, salad & two small new potatoes. Also had my first beer since diagnosis. So the spike could've been the beer or the fruit. Potatoes don't spike me as much as that. Oh, before meal was 5.9.


It's not always as simple as all that.  It could be that testing modest portions of all your foods return decent results, but together, cumulatively they just tip the balance.

As a one-off, I wouldn't go too mad for the 10.3 at an hour, as you did come back to pretty much your pre-meal by two hours, which is a good sign.

I don't know how amenable your wife is to parallel testing, but I would love to undertake a couple of weeks of parallel monitoring myself and MrB, eating parallel diets.  It would be so easy where we are currently, because our food choices are a bit less limited anyway, so our meals rarely differ from each other, aside from proportions, sometimes, but he simply won't do any self testing.  His Crumbly Health Checks always return decent fasting and HbA1c scores and he's fit and healthy.  He just hates the idea of testing.

Anyway, the point of that ramble is that sort of parallel approach could give you an idea how (your particular ) non-diabetic participant reacts to the same carbs etc as yourself.  I know of others who have done this and found it fascinating, seeing some rapid peaks, then fall backs.

I quite like not seeing the spikes.  And my Libre informs bpme, I rarely experience them, but then I'm fairly careful with my eating by tweaking components and portions sizes.


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## Mark Parrott (Feb 12, 2016)

We did test once together. Her BS was 4.1 before & 4.8 2 hours after. Would be interesting to do a 1 hour after dinner test when it's usually at its peak.


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