Thanks for your replies guys. I’ve never tested my blood before so this was a first. So I have no before eating result. Although I will do one tomorrow morning.
I’ve always loved my carbs so I know that’s the problem for me. And Diet Coke. So since then I’ve switched to wholemeal bread and restrict how much I have. Only perhaps once a day. Or twice max. I’ve cut Diet Coke out completely and am eating more fruit (apples oranges blackberries and raspberries. Strawberries too) and cut all chocolate out and have low fat Greek style yogurt or a
Muller light instead. I was told to avoid white bread potatoes grapes cut out fizzy drinks and sweet things like sugar cakes crisps etc and to exercise a bit more. Lose some weight too which will
Help massively. So that’s what I’m trying to do
I will continue to test every day and build up a good background of my results and see how it goes.
Thanks for your help. I’m really new to this and don’t really know what these readings really mean.
Hi Connie79. The problem with a lot of "healthy" eating advice these days is that it is inappropriate for people with or at risk of developing T2 diabetes. The recent NHS advice tells us all to eat lots of starchy carbs, fruit etc, and to cut down on fats, dairy and meat. Following this advice (which I did) led me to diabetes, and getting into remission meant going back to the earlier advice for T2 people to eat plenty of fats and meat and avoid starches and sugars. Fortunately there are increasing numbers of people in the NHS who do understand this but they are thin on the ground.
The problem is that there are just as many carbs in wholemeal bread as there are in any other type. Fruit is generally full of sugar in the form of fructose, and my experience is that I needed to stop eating bread and almost all fruit. Exceptions: there are some very low carb bread substitutes, and berries (strawberries, raspberries, black- and blueberries) are generally OK for me.
"Low fat" options often have sugar added. I go for a zero sugar, full fat option instead. Be very careful of anything processed and packaged - there are often carbs and sugars included sometimes under names that are misleading.
Diet Coke (and things like Coke Zero etc) has zero carb but does have artificial sweetner which some people don't get on with. In addition some people prefer to avoid any "sweetness". Personally, I drink Coke Zero sometimes which doesn't seem to have any problematic effects for me.
On testing - the idea is to test before eating something, and then to test again two hours later. The idea is that the test shows where yiour blood sugar was, and how high it rose because of what you ate. If you get a rise which takes you up by more than 2 mmol/l or over 7.8 (using the non-diabetic figure) there were too many carbs in the meal for your system to cope with. One test in isolation won't tell you all that much.
The link below takes you to some useful info about blood glucose levels that should help you understand more about why we test.
Normal blood sugar ranges and blood sugar ranges for adults and children with type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes and blood sugar ranges to determine diabetes.
www.diabetes.co.uk
