blood glucose readings!?

Hi Milehouse

I know just how you feel. I was diagnosed in December 2012 and I have been testing regularly and have cut out as many carbs as I can from my diet. My HBA1C result was 7.2 (previously it was 10.9 on diagnosis) so that is an improvement but my bg results seem to go up and down a lot even tho I eat much the same things throughout a week. I have also had a lot of sore throats and colds since being diagnosed so don't know if this is partly to blame but it is very frustrating when you feel you are trying so hard but can't seem to achieve stability. I'm not sure what the answer is but hope it helps to know you're not the only one who is experiencing this. I am on 1 x 30mg gliclazide tablet a day. Sorry I don't have any answers but maybe someone out there will be able to enlighten us both!

Cinderella

Hi Milehouse,

Very good advice from Nomistheman. If I can just add one thing - although we are often advised to test 2 hours after eating, I find this can be very misleading. Some foods are low GI, so take much longer for carb to convert to blood glucose (often more than 2 hours), some are high GI so will convert within minutes. The amount of fat you have eaten also has an impact because this slows down the rate at which carbs are absorbed. This is why chocolate is not recommended to treat a hypo - yes it contains sugar, but the fat content slows down its effectiveness. When you test after 2 hours you can never be really sure whether your BG levels are on the way down, have just peaked, or are still rising. Personally I find a test after 3 hours gives a truer picture.

Dennis

It takes a bit of time to get used to using a meter and interpreting the results. If you have an HBA1c of 6.5%, you are doing many of the right things. Don't let the meter persuade you otherwise. People make mistakes with meters, the quality of the blood samples are variable, meters have inaccuracies and so on and so on. When I first got mine, my readings were all over the place. After a couple of weeks they settled down but were high. For example 8.8 before I went for a proper blood test and 8.0 when I got back. The result of the proper blood test was 7.6. Even now that my readings are much lower, I can get a 5.7 from one finger and a 7.3 from another finger. On the odd occasion I decide to waste yet another strip, I will get maybe a 6.5. The meter manual tells me not to worry about the occasional 11 and my DN tells me not to worry about an occasional 15. I'd have a heart attack if I saw either of those figures thesedays.

With time and practice, you sort of get to know what is going on but a precise measurement which is representative of your entire bloodstream it is not. That's better handled by an HBA1c. Finger prick meters are just a quick snapshot.