Monitoring

Messages
14
Type of diabetes
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
Hi. I'm quite newly diagnosed and getting my head round monitoring. If I want to see how high my bg has got after a meal what is the best time to test? Immediately after eating it or an hr or two afterwards ?
 

Liam1955

Master
Messages
10,964
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Insulin
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Anti-Gay People, Self Centre People, Two Faced People and Bad Language.
@forestgirl1970 - Hello :). Start timing after you eat the first mouthful of food, and test 2 hours later.
Don forget to record what your blood sugar was before your meal and also what you ate. - keep a food diary as it does help for future use.
 

jharding

Well-Known Member
Messages
47
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
Assuming type 1... (because that's what I know and can talk about )

Some sort of cgm will tell you. Look at freestyle libre, it takes blood readings every minute and will show you when you are peaking. But it may not matter...

I test before food and two and an half hours afterwards. Both value should be within the four to seven. The novorapid insulin only lasts for this time so if I am higher after thr 2.5hrs I may need a correction.

However in between these tests my bloods go up to eleven. If I test after 45m or 60m I'll see this, and sometimes I do because I am driving.

And then Different foods have different gi indexes, 50g of carbs in brown rice is very different from 50g of haribo jelly babies or takeaway pizza etc. Pearl barley releases energy so slowly it can send you hypo iirc.

But test before meal and 2 to 2.5hr after meal. If both are in the four to seven range then you've got it right.
 

chalup

Well-Known Member
Messages
1,745
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Other
If you really want to see the spike and how well your body deals with it test before eating, at one hour after first bite (for the spike), and at 2 hours. You should be aiming for close to where you started after two hours.
 

Oil Drum

Active Member
Messages
39
Type of diabetes
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
In normal everyday life for post meal testing it is best really to stick to just over 2 hours after the last bite.
You can get useful information on the impact of a particular food checking at 1 and 3 hours but for day-in day-out monitoring it really is major overkill.
You can't micro manage your blood glucose what you should aim to do is find out what foods work for you and develop a meal style that works for YOU
 

chalup

Well-Known Member
Messages
1,745
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Other
In normal everyday life for post meal testing it is best really to stick to just over 2 hours after the last bite.
You can get useful information on the impact of a particular food checking at 1 and 3 hours but for day-in day-out monitoring it really is major overkill.
You can't micro manage your blood glucose what you should aim to do is find out what foods work for you and develop a meal style that works for YOU

The last time I went seriously off plan I ate chinese takeout without the rice or noodles. My pre-meal level was 5.8, at 1 hour I hit 11 mmol/l which is way too high and a rise of over 5 mmol/l. At 2 hours I was back at 5.8. If I had not checked at 1 hour I would have never known that I went that high and might have assumed that that meal was safe for me. 11 is clearly not safe.