Sugar reading of 5.1

Resurgam

Expert
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9,873
Type of diabetes
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Diet only
Hard to say - usually to check a meal and the response to it, we test just before starting to eat, then two hours later.
A single random test doesn't give much insight, though it is normal looking that is all that can be said.
 
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gillgetwell

Newbie
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2
Type of diabetes
Type 2
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Insulin
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people judging others
i have very fluctuating readings get hypos but no one speaks to me about it
 

KennyA

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Type of diabetes
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My sugar reading is 5.1 after having breakfast and waiting 5 hours….. is this ok?
Do you mean 5.1 mmol/litre? If so that's a reasonable reading in itself, but if you want to see how well your system handled your breakfast you'd need to test immediately before eating and two hours later. Lots of things affect our BG, not just food, and it would probably be hard to detect the food impact after five hours.

By the +2hr mark your insulin should have cleared any glucose resulting from the meal, and you should be back at the starting level, or close to it. The usual recommendation isfor the second reading to be a) not above 8.0 and b) not more than 2mmol/l above the initial reading.

What happens is that your body starts to digest the carbs and sugar in your meal very quickly, and your blood glucose will rise. It will probably be at its highest inside the first hour or half-hour after eating. But you're not testing to see "how high you go". You're testing to see how well your system deals with what you ate.

As an example, a mug of milky coffee, no added sugar, only the milk sugars, will take me from a start point of 5.2 mmol/l to 9.6 inside 30 minutes. By 60 minutes I'm back to 5.2.
 
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