Nutrition in Diabetes and Diabetes Management

Diabetes is not a condition that stops at the numbers on your meter. It is a dynamic process that can be brought fully under control with the right strategies, the right analysis and an approach tailored to you.

As a certified diabetes counsellor (Diabetesberaterin DDG), trained through the German Diabetes Association (DDG, Deutsche Diabetes Gesellschaft), I guide you through it with the clinical experience I gained in the department of internal medicine at St. Hedwig Krankenhaus.

Working from the official training programmes whose validity and success are established in Germany (MEDIAS 2, PRIMAS, FLASH and others), I offer a holistic approach: from blood glucose monitoring to insulin dose adjustment, from the analysis of your CGM device to a nutrition protocol built around you.

Medical Nutrition Therapy and Lifestyle Change in Type 2 Diabetes

In type 2 diabetes, nutrition therapy is the most powerful medical intervention there is: it changes the course of the condition directly. The aim here is not to hand you a restrictive diet sheet, but to give you back your metabolic health and your insulin sensitivity.

1. Breaking Insulin Resistance and Steadying Blood Sugar

• Carbohydrate quality and glycaemic load: Instead of cutting carbohydrates out of your life altogether, we bring complex carbohydrates that do not send your blood sugar shooting up into your meals, in the right amount and the right combination.
• Building the plate properly: By balancing protein, healthy fat and fibre, we prevent the blood sugar swings that follow a meal (postprandial hyperglycaemia).

2. Lasting Lifestyle Change and the Goal of Remission

• Habits you can keep: Instead of rigid rules that are impossible to follow, we build an eating pattern that fits your daily rush and your kitchen culture completely.
• Weight management and visceral fat: As the fat around your waist decreases, we support the preservation of beta cell function, and work to reduce the medication burden in type 2 diabetes and to strengthen the goal of remission (blood sugar returning to normal).

Advanced Management and Hypoglycaemia Protection in Type 1 Diabetes

In type 1 diabetes, nutrition is precise mathematics that has to run in step with insulin therapy. A type 1 diabetes that is not managed properly can lower quality of life considerably, through frequent hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar) and hyperglycaemia episodes.

1. Carbohydrate Counting and Insulin Dose Adjustment

• Dosing with full precision: We work out the carbohydrate content of your meal accurately (calculated in carbohydrate units, KE/BE) and calculate the ideal insulin dose together, according to your insulin-to-carbohydrate ratio (ICR).
• Dose adjustments: We make the medical adjustments your insulin doses need, based on your activity level during the day, your stress and your basal insulin requirement.

2. Keeping the Risk of Hypoglycaemia to a Minimum

• Stable blood sugar levels: By flattening erratic blood sugar curves, we prevent unexpected hypoglycaemic episodes by day and by night.
• Exercise and insulin management: For sport and for active days, we plan the nutrition and insulin reduction strategies that keep your sugar from dropping.

Diabetes Management with Advanced Technology: CGM Analysis (Continuous Glucose Monitoring)

The most powerful tool in diabetes care today is continuous glucose monitoring (CGM), with devices such as Freestyle Libre and Dexcom. Seeing not only the current blood sugar value but the direction it is heading and its trends multiplies the success of treatment.

What Do We Do with the CGM Analysis?

• Assessing time in range (TIR): We analyse what percentage of the day your blood sugar stays within the target range (above 70 %, for example), and work to increase that time.
• Glucose variability: Why your sugar rises or falls suddenly – which food, which insulin at which hour, or which stress factor is behind it – we pin down to the millimetre from your CGM data.
• Finding hidden hypoglycaemia: Night-time lows that go unnoticed and rapid drops after meals we read off your curves, and revise your nutrition and insulin doses straight away.

Why Counselling to German DDG Standards?

Thanks to the evidence-based training modules of the German Diabetes Association (DDG) and my hands-on experience in the department of internal medicine at St. Hedwig Krankenhaus, we treat diabetes not as a process of restriction, but as a way of living in which technology, nutrition and correct insulin management set you free.

I am here so that you become the expert in your own diabetes and live a confident, healthy life.