Just as our newly-diagnosed type 1 diabetes sufferer was getting the hang of managing carbs and insulin, we had an episode that shook our faith and courage. After carefully counting carbs and adjusting precise insulin ratios for weeks, we decided to try to feel normal and enjoy pizza.

We knew that pizza was high in carbs, but we’d just been given clearance to ramp-up carb intake and insulin dosages. We did…and the results surprised us! Minutes after injecting, then eating, everything looked good. Blood glucose levels staying in healthy range…success!

Only some time after eating did my son’s blood sugar start to rise…and rise…uncomfortably close to the numbers that drove him to the hospital in the first place!

Only after a bit of Googling did we find out about the Pizza Effect. The for-profit(?) education site Type1University has an excellent free video here.

It’s a shame that none of our physicians were familiar-enough with this effect to warn us. Our local Dietitian and Nutritionist insisted they’d never heard of it. Well, now YOU have.

Our experience is as the video and other online resources suggest. Carbs cloaked in grease simply take longer to be digested. Then, all at once, those carbs seem to hit a point in the digestive tract that they are digested in short order, maybe 9o-120 minutes after the meal itself and long after the insulin dose has peaked in effectiveness.

Now that my son is on an insulin pump he can take steps to address this effect. We’ll talk more about that in pumps, but the short version is that the pump can be programmed to release the insulin over time, rather than all at the beginning of the meal. I’ll update this page as we develop any helpful rules of thumb!