Diabetes and Alzheimer's

Rrogerts

I have been a care taker for my mom for over a year now, she is a diabetic and was diagnosed with Alzheimer's around 5-8 years ago and recently she has been getting very "sassy" about wanting sweets all the time. I want to be able to give her whatever she wants to eat but her numbers jump so high that I have to limit the sugary items to keep them down. I know she is an adult and should be able to make any choices she wants but when she doesn't understand how dangerous eating certain things can be because of the Alzheimer's I feel that it falls on me to take control and make sure that she doesn't have too much. I feel that the demands and attitude for getting these items will only get worse and I am not sure how to handle it. Right now I make up portions of her sweets in the morning so that they are available to her when she wants them, Which was working out but I feel that it isn't going to last too much longer because she accused someone of eating her candy when I had watched her eat each piece. If anyone has gone through this or has any suggestions I would appreciate them. 

Thank you 

Robin

RobOT

Robin, I've been dealing with this too.  My dad always announces that "I'll cooperate!"  then the minute he thinks nobody's watching he starts looking for sweets.  I leave an assortment of sugarless candy and cookies on the kitchen counter where he frequently passes, and that works most of the time.  There are pretty good sugarless versions of all kinds of candy, and he accepts most of them.  The only thing is to watch out for isomalt, one of the better tasting sweeteners--too much causes diarrhea and really horrible gas.  Good luck with this, Alz and diabetes is a really rotten combination.

M1

Diabetics with mental illness of any sort have a poor prognosis for control of the diabetes.  First question to me would be whether they are insulin dependent or not.  For older adults, low blood sugar is usually far more dangerous than high, and how tightly to control diet and blood sugar is more flexible than for younger folks who have longer to live with it.  Type 2 diabetics rarely get ketoacidosis like type 1 diabetics do. Definitely worth a discussion with their docs about what's reasonable under the circumstances. I've seen older individuals who were completely asymptomatic with blood sugars of 400 or more, and the practical thing to do was to leave them alone....Sounds like you are both doing the best you can and I would certainly think you have to pick your battles....

Deanna_M

We struggled with this with my mother, who has type II diabetes. I think that the biggest challenges are the well-documented sweet tooth that folks with Alz develop plus the cognitive challenge (not remembering they have diabetes, not remembering they already ate a sugary food, or not understanding their diagnosis).

While I am all about picking my battles with this disease, we really did need to get my mom's diet and diabetes under control for her overall well-being. We limited her portion size (half a dessert instead of full-size), offered sugar free candies, and provided healthy alternatives to the usual suite of junk food offered in her facility. (She sometimes does ask for the powdered donuts that everyone else is having; and they then only give her a half). Once that was implemented, she lost weight, became much more mobile, and her cognition and mood improved dramatically. Blood sugar, mobility, brain function all seemed to be related for my mother.

I have no specific advice, but I do think that getting your LOs diabetes under control will really help with your mom's (and your) quality of life. Maybe having a lot of sugar-free candy on hand could help?

Ginsamae

My MIL who is 82 and a Type II diabetic lives with us...she has dementia but has not been officially diagnosed with any certain type yet.  When she came to live with us she was in really bad shape - high blood sugar and her A1C was over 15.  She does not take insulin but does take Metformin, which of course, she cannot remember to take. 

We solved the problem by not bringing the stuff into the house. In addition, DH and myself have switched to a Mediterranean/diabetic diet (the two are remarkably similar) so that I could make meals that all of us could eat...the happy result is that both DH and I have lost over 15 lbs each by just making this switch!!

One big thing DH and I had to learn is that just because something is labeled "sugar free" doesn't mean that it is ok for diabetics to eat. Often they replace the sugar with something that still cause the carbs to be too high. You will need to learn to read labels!  We learned that MIL's favorite "diet bread" (so called because it says "no sugar added" was actually higher in carbs than our standard whole wheat bread. Now that MIL doesn't go grocery shopping (we're blaming COVID for not allowing her to go) we simply tell her the store is out of her "diet bread" and she's been happily eating ours.

We do not allow MIL to do her own grocery shopping because she will fill her cart with pastas, breads, etc that she shouldn't have. She does remember that she's diabetic but will get snippy with us if we point out to her that she's eating stuff she shouldn't (she tells us that she's "allowed to have a cheat day") but, of course, she can't remember eating the bad stuff earlier.  MIL will occasionally buy low glycemic cookies off of Amazon and manages to polish off all 3 boxes in a few days.  She went for bloodwork and urinalysis yesterday for her upcoming appointment for her diabetes check on Friday so we'll see how bad she cheated when she was visiting DH's sibling for the holidays.

sray

There are sugar free candies from Russell Stover's that are made with Stevia. So far they haven't had the same effects as some of the other sweetners. My Dad and I are both diabetic. We try to limit his sweets as much as we can. Unfortunately, they aren't cheap.

windyshores

I have a daughter with type 1 (26 years now). Sugar free candies or other food don't really help. It is all about carbs and a carb is a carb is a carb. White rice, bananas, and bagels will raise blood sugars as much as sugar. I would skip the sugar free candies. Any carb should always be accompanied by protein and/or fat to slow the blood sugar rise down. Ice cream can be slower than rice!

 With dementia your mom cannot make informed decisions.

Does she have low blood sugars during which she needs sugar? Does she need glucose tablets or juice at times? Are you there to give them to her?

High blood sugars can make you hungrier because the nutrition is not making it into cells. That could cause craving which then raises blood sugars, makes her hungrier and so on.

Mental functioning while high is often fuzzy even if the person doesn't feel high.  Getting blood sugars under control will help the person feel a lot better. 

This might sound funny but we had a parallel with my mother about gin. Her facility actually sent her to detox due to one fall (her dementia caused her to forget how many drinks she had) and it fell on me to either control or stop her. Honestly after many efforts to help her control (diluting, leaving nips, etc.) I just stopped providing any gin. She would ask me for it and I would say I would bring it, and she would forget. I even took her shopping at a store and pretended that I forgot they didn't carry it.   Now, every few weeks, she asks for it. This was easier as she got worse!  I did the same thing with gum.

Unless she needs sugar for low blood sugars and has noone to give it to her when low, I think it may be easier to not have any sweets in the house. Of course carbs of any kind are going to raise her blood sugars, but sweets are low hanging fruit so to speak.

People will say "Oh, she's in her nineties, let her have whatever pleasure she can get." It is NOT pleasant to have high blood sugars. But everyone has a different view on this.

sophirolr

How about sugar-free candy?

lizz.olya

These are the ones I buy for my diabetic friend. Every time I visit him, I buy ozempic online https://www.canadapharmacy.com/products/ozempic and sugar-free sweets, which he adores. It's wonderful in my opinion that he takes medicine and eats only those sweets that he can. But sometimes he doesn't want to follow a diet and harms himself. After long conversations with him, he no longer did such a thing