Fasting blood sugar is not the most reliable measure, as everyone says. If you want to know more about blood sugar, I highly recommend the bloodsugar101.com website - and the book of the same name. This author specialises in collecting all the latest research in a well-written form. The research suggests that the blood sugar measure that is most strongly linked to diabetic complications - the bad effects we want to avoid - is how high your sugar spikes after eating. The most sensitive measure is one hour after eating for most people. But when you are learning things like ‘can I have a wholemeal cheese scone’ I used to test at half hour intervals until it started to go down again. Just to understand what is going on. Aim not to go over 7, and once achieving that, try to get spikes down to 6-7. This will bring your HbA1c down to normal. An occasional higher spike just is a learning process.
The good news is that diabetes is actually not necessarily bad for your health. If you learn which foods trigger a big rise in blood sugars and avoid them, you should be able to keep your blood sugars below 6-7 after eating, and thus avoid complications. It’s a new way of eating that you have to stick to, that’s all. Forget about ‘fat is bad for you’ (the lateet research suggests it isn’t) and think ‘I need to take control of my carbohydrate intake, because my body can’t handle them very well’.
Good luck with your learning journey, get the HbA1c test, get a blood metre to understand your body’s response to carbohydrates. Don’t get fixated on pricking yourself all the time - I did it after every meal while I was learning, but now only prick only 3 times a day and expect to move to one day a week or after eating at a restaurant - because I pretty much know exactly what to expect from eating a home cooked meal - so my bloods rarely go over 6.5 even 1 hour after a meal!
Do let us know how you get on!
