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It is not a question of getting a single "true" reading. BG is constantly changing over time, and the important thing is the patterns of that change. After a meal, BG will rise rapidly and then fall back to where you started. To some extent it matters how far it rises, but it is much more...

Looks like you are getting on top of this - keep an eye on it, but hopefully the BG will carry on coming down. Then your boyfriends symptoms should abate, and you can concentrate on fine-tuning the diet and developing a sustainable healthy lifestyle. Absolutely, it is all about spotting...

Lots of conditions other than diabetes can cause peripheral neuropathy, and if your BG control is really good then you should investigate other possibilities. One thought is that since you are a vegetarian, are you sure you are getting enough vitamin B12? A vitamin B12 deficiency can cause the...

Well, you can make an educated guess but there isn't any way to tell for certain. If you have no symptoms at all then you are unlikely to have been severely hyperglycaemic for very long (that would cause symptoms quite quickly). However, if the hyperglycaemia was mild it might have gone...

Hmm... what an odd site. It has a lot of information, some of which is quite interesting. In particular it has lots of references to the research literature, which is a very good thing, and his dietary advice looks to be quite good. However, there are some peculiar points of view and some...

Your link seems to be broken - please could you check the URL.

Absolutely - you need to have a strategy for testing. A fasting test first thing in the morning will give you a very rough idea of how good overall control was the day before. Right now, that is probably the most important thing. Keep a record of these numbers, and hopefully you will quickly...

These figures are very high, and you really need to get them down as soon as possible. Fasting BG (i.e. before eating in the morning) for a non-diabetic should be in the 4-6 range, and for a well controlled diabetic they shouldn't be far off that. The good news is that it should be easy to...

That sounds bizarre, why not? They can't stop her going to the toilet - what is it to them if she takes a strip with her?!

You would be amazed what is possible with a bit of imagination. Bacon is very low carb - though putting it in bread is problematic. How about a bacon salad, or a bacon lettuce leaf wrap? Ice cream often has a added sugar, but in principle it doesn't have to be high carb. Try looking at the...

I would say confusing rather than conflicting - there is a lot of complex stuff going on, and it can be very confusing when you are new to it. Here you are confusing two very different things - treatment for hypoglycaemia (i.e. low blood sugar) with diabetes control. In non-diabetic people...

I am afraid I don't have much advice, other than to tell your mother to keep hounding her GP and if that doesn't seem to be achieving much then she should ask and, if necessary, demand to be referred to a specialist. It is quite likely that there are other problems than diabetes here - there is...

I might be wrong, but I don't think it would be very easy to make a single strip that does both - the chemistry is different. If such a thing were made it would be a complex, high-tech device (and strip) and thus, no doubt, expensive. Ketones are usually checked in urine rather than blood...

:evil: Not allowed...!! And I thought I had problems merely being strongly discouraged from testing :cry: If you really want to help this person and spread some serious sedition at the same time then persuade her to buy a meter and teach her how to use it. If she starts to learn what is...

There are several issues here. First of all, your boyfriend's eyes. Although one of the more serious complications of uncontrolled diabetes can be blindness - a minor condition that effects many newly diagnosed diabetics is a blurring of vision. These are completely different things, and the...

Hello, and welcome to the board. I presume when you say that "she has only been given metformin" - you mean in addition to advice about diet and exercise. Drugs are wonderful things, but they should only ever be a part of a diabetes management strategy. As I am sure you know, she needs to get...

I am attempting to calculate my personal GI of various food combinations - i.e. plotting BG changes after eating and calculating the area under the curve (AUC). Does anyone know of an Excel spreadsheet that will do this calculation? If not then I will write one, but before I go to that effort...

The point of a Glucose Tolerance Test is not to see how high BG goes, it is to see how quickly it comes down. If you eat enough anyones BG will be raised to quite high levels - because it takes a while for the insulin response to kick in. The difference is that in non-diabetics the BG comes...

That, and also my trusty Holt & Hanley Endocrinology and Diabetes. A great book if you want to read what your doctor has probably read!

Great if you have unlimited strips on prescription. Otherwise urine dipsticks are a lot cheaper, and if you reuse them then the cost will be pretty negligible.