Wednesday 8 October 2008

Carbohydrate measurement in USA

In the USA diabetics will log their carbohydrates in gram or another weight unit. It is not common unlike in Germany to log the carbohydrates in bread units or carbohydrate units. Therefore we decided to adapt Glucosurfer.org to support this approach.

Now you can choose to log your carbohydrates in gram or other weight units. Simply enter your amount of carbs in your weight unit. This number is multiplied with the carbohydrate factor which is calculated according to one weight unit. This means that the carbohydrate factor will be very small like 1/18 = 0.0555 but most diabetics in USA are used to this scheme.

Another difference of measuring in weight units is that you have to redefine the carbohydrate effect. In Germany one carbohydrate unit (10g=1CU) will normally increase the blood glucose by 30 mg/dL. This value has to be divided by 10 to get the increase of blood glucose per gram. For other weight units this has to be calculated accordingly.

With weight units the Glucosurfer will just ask for 'Carbs' as an abbrevation for carbohydrates that are measured in weight units.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"I" in "SA" have been using CUs, thinking that 1 of them equals 15g of carbohydrate.My indecisive mind finds the new measurement option extremely confusing; it offers grams/other WUs' but the mobile text box asks for calories.Could you not add a definite CU2 to the ensemble, where CU2=15g ?