New to testing blood at home

[Diamond28]

Hi, During routine blood work with a new GP in a new area I was told I was pre diabetic and had been for over a year, even though my previous health centre had not let me know. My HBA1c was 42 which was only just in the range, despite battling blood sugar swings for many years. I immediately started on Michael Mosley's programme. I cut out all sugar and vastly reduced my carbs, swapping all white foods for brown, eating more fats and losing 8lbs. A re-test 3 months later showed my reading had gone UP a point to 43! So I bought a monitor for home and am confused by the results... My fasting results have been 6.7 and 6.6 which shows pre diabetes, but two hours after eating read 5.6 and 5.3. I believe they should go UP after eating?! Any one else finding the same?
(Incidentally, I didn't wash my hands first thing ( I was still in bed) and the reading was 7.1. After washing hands and using cotton wool to wipe away the first spot of blood as the booklet told me to do, the true result was 6.6.. How easy it is to get the wrong result. )

 

[Deleted Account]

Fasting blood tests are tricky - when we have not eaten for some time, our liver reacts by dumping a load of glucose to get us going. If we didn't have diabetes, this would be brilliant because our pancreas would release insulin which would convert that glucose into energy and we would be raring to go for the day.
With diabetes, either we have no insulin or the insulin takes a bit longer to wake up than our livers. So many of us experience the "Dawn Phenomenon" (there is a lot of discussion about this on the forum).
This probably explains your morning BG being higher.

Regarding your post meal readings, this depends on what you have eaten. Some foods spike our BG quickly and some spike is slower. I believe 2 hours is the usual recommended time to take the post-meal readings because it is a sort of average.
But you may have eaten something which spiked earlier or later than 2 hours.
The only ways of telling for certain are to repeat the same meal and take more BG readings ... or try out something like a Libre which automatically takes readings every 15 minutes (and has a price take which shows this).

Unfortunately, our bodies are fickle when they come to BG levels. Through testing you will probably start to see things apart from time of day and food which affect them. Such as weather, drugs, exercise, alcohol, stress, ...
Don't let this put you off testing - over time you will start to understand your body. I have reached the point of knowing I have a cold coming because my BG starts to rise before I get the tell tale sore throat.