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17.4 mmol/l after sweets in non-diabetic - normal?

19Bex88

Newbie
Messages
3
Type of diabetes
Don't have diabetes
Treatment type
I do not have diabetes
Hi, I hope questions like this are allowed. While I appreciate no one here can diagnose me, I'd appreciate advice on whether this reading warrants seeing a GP.

Some background - I'm not diabetic but I have access to a glucose testing kit because as part of my dissertation at university this year I was testing people's glucose response to sugar vs artificial sweeteners. I know very little about diabetes but I know vaguely what the normal range should be and 17.4 seems high.

So on to the point - I was eating some Haribo sweets before and about 10 minutes after I stopped eating them, I started to feel uncomfortably hot (like prickly heat) all of a sudden and a weird internal-shaky feeling, as well as getting a bit of a headache. I've had these symptoms before and somewhat regularly for the last several years. I mentioned this to my GP once about 7 years ago (I'm 27 if it matters) and she was quick to dismiss it and tell me it was normal and that it was probably low blood sugar and that I needed to eat every 3-4 hours, so I never had any tests done and I just assumed that when I felt this way, I had low blood sugar due to having not eaten for a few hours.

But, because I had the glucose testing kit that I'd used for my diss available, and because this happened after I'd eaten sweets instead of happening when I was hungry like normal, I got curious and decided to test myself. As mentioned in the title, I got the 17.4 mmol/l reading. I decided to wait an hour and test again, and got 8.3 mmol/l. I still feel shaky and hot, but less so than before.

Are these numbers something to be concerned about? Should I see my GP about it? I don't want to bother her if it's completely normal, but it seems high to me. But then again, I'd just eaten sweets so I'm a bit confused. If I had no symptoms within minutes of eating then I'd have had no reason to test, so the fact that I felt bad enough to take a measurement makes me feel like this warrants investigation.

Advice?
 
In my opinion they are high but I am a newbie, what I wanted to say is go see your GP, that is why she is there. Self diagnosis is a terrible thing, we all do it but if you have health concerns speak to your GP.
 
welcome to the forum.

A reading of 17 is not normal, but does not mean there is anything necessarily broken. Really you should never go above 11.5 according to the literature.

Just a question or two (sorry I am nosey)
1. Did you wash your hands before the test with normal soap or an alcohol based soap or not at all.
2. A 10 minute reaction seems a pretty fast; could you have been heading there before the sweets?
3. Meters can give rouge readings and their 95 percentile is a tolerance of +-15% did you retest this reading? If not can I suggest you retest your experiment (I know it made you feel rubbish but just do it for science). Additional can I suggest you test every 10 minutes to get your blood glucose profile.

Finally, yes it is something you should discuss with your Doctor

Edit: Just wanted to add don't stop at 2 hours keep it going for longer (not 10 minute intervals of course) and see how fast/far you go down
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks for your responses guys.

To answer your questions, Andrew

1) No I didn't wash my hands. I may consider retesting but making sure I wash my hands this time. Is it possible that I had sugar on my hands from the sweets and that caused the high reading? I'm not sure if that would affect it or not.

2) I'm really not sure if I was already heading towards a high glucose level before or not. In theory I'd imagine no because I'd not long woken up (about 30 minutes prior. So basically I had Haribo for breakfast. Not good, I know). I'd eaten a whole meal batch with just salad cream on it a couple of minutes prior to the sweets if that would make a difference?

3) I didn't retest it, no. But in regard to the 10 minute testing, I've actually done an every-ten-minute trial on myself already due to my research (I was my own guinea pig for my pilot study). I fasted for 4 hours, washed my hands with antibacterial soap and then wiped my testing finger with an alcohol swab and tested my blood. Fasting level came out at 5.3. I then drank roughly 7oz of black tea with one teaspoon of sugar in it and then tested my blood every 10 minutes for an hour. My readings were: 6.0, 7.0, 6.6, 5.3, 4.3. 4.7 respectively.

We also did a glucose tolerance test (or something similar) in class the other week where we drank 500ml of Rock Star then tested our blood 10 minutes, 30 minutes and 90 minutes after (washed hands first with antibacterial soap). My results were 8.0 (before drink) then 9.1, 8.2 and 7.2, but I hadn't fasted as I didn't know we'd be doing that experiment so it may be difficult to determine anything from those numbers given my intial reading was 8.0 and I'd literally just eaten a nutrigrain bar and had coffee with 3 sugars in about 20 minutes before.

So it's confusing and I'm not really sure what to make of all these different numbers. Some seem healthy while others don't. Still think it's worth seeing a GP about? I just feel awkward I suppose bringing it up because I know it's looked down on by some GPs if you go to them with information you've gathered yourself.
 
Yes it can have a huge affect
they look great numbers. Dont use the alcohol wipe just soap

I would say every thing looks ok and was probably due to sugar on fiingers. Try it again
 
Thanks Andrew! Such a relief. Diabetes runs on my mother's side of the family so I may have panicked a bit when I saw it was that high.
 
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