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Blood sugar levels and monitors

C

Connie79

Member
Messages
17
Type of diabetes
Prediabetes
Treatment type
Other
Hi. At the beginning of the year I had two blood tests and was diagnosed as prediabetic. With a number of 44. I don’t know what that means really other than it was bang in the middle of the prediabetic range. I am over weight and my diet has been bad.

I decided to follow a healthier eating plan. Almost Slimmingworld type. And yesterday I bought a glucose monitor. I tested my blood sugar this morning 2 hours after breakfast and it read 6.0mmol. Looking on the internet this says post eating the range is normal.

Does this mean my blood sugar levels are better?? If I continue with this diet???? Very confused as I was expecting a much higher reading ?!?
 
Your blood sugars go up and down all day you'll need quite a lot more readings before you can see what certain foods do to them but 6.0 isn't bad what were your levels before the food?
 
Hi Connie79 and welcome to the forums. The "normal" range for HbA1c for someone without diabetes is 38-42. You are only just outside that, which means with a few changes it should be possible to be back in normal range very quickly.

The HbA1c calculates a sort of average blood glucose over the last three months. The fingerprick test is a snapshot of your blood glucose at that minute. So it's very possible for them not to match. Both tests have a margin of error, so you shouldn't fret about minor differences. If you test often enough over a period of weeks it should be possible to build up a picture and predict a bit more accurately what your next A1c test might show. While you're right that the one fingerprick result is in the normal range, on its own it doesn't tell you much.

When you say you're following a "healthier" eating plan, what exactly do you eat? This question is important because much of what the NHS and the media think of as "healthy" eating - bread, pasta, rice, that sort of thing - is positively damaging to those of us with T2 diabetes. Many of us here have had a lot of success with a low-carb lifestyle. carbs are the problem for us, so reducing them can have huge benefits very quickly. Have a look at the "Success Stories" threads on this forum.

Best of luck , ask as many questions as you want. You'll find a lot of very helpful and knowledgable people here.
 
Thanks for your replies guys. I’ve never tested my blood before so this was a first. So I have no before eating result. Although I will do one tomorrow morning.

I’ve always loved my carbs so I know that’s the problem for me. And Diet Coke. So since then I’ve switched to wholemeal bread and restrict how much I have. Only perhaps once a day. Or twice max. I’ve cut Diet Coke out completely and am eating more fruit (apples oranges blackberries and raspberries. Strawberries too) and cut all chocolate out and have low fat Greek style yogurt or a
Muller light instead. I was told to avoid white bread potatoes grapes cut out fizzy drinks and sweet things like sugar cakes crisps etc and to exercise a bit more. Lose some weight too which will
Help massively. So that’s what I’m trying to do

I will continue to test every day and build up a good background of my results and see how it goes.

Thanks for your help. I’m really new to this and don’t really know what these readings really mean.
 
Apples, orange will spike your sugars. Rasp berries, straw berries, blue berries are good in moderation.
Good you cut out coke, fizzy drinks
 
And full fat Greek yoghurt is much more suitable for us diabetics, as the low fat usually has additives in to thicken and sweeten it.
 
Hi Connie79. The problem with a lot of "healthy" eating advice these days is that it is inappropriate for people with or at risk of developing T2 diabetes. The recent NHS advice tells us all to eat lots of starchy carbs, fruit etc, and to cut down on fats, dairy and meat. Following this advice (which I did) led me to diabetes, and getting into remission meant going back to the earlier advice for T2 people to eat plenty of fats and meat and avoid starches and sugars. Fortunately there are increasing numbers of people in the NHS who do understand this but they are thin on the ground.

The problem is that there are just as many carbs in wholemeal bread as there are in any other type. Fruit is generally full of sugar in the form of fructose, and my experience is that I needed to stop eating bread and almost all fruit. Exceptions: there are some very low carb bread substitutes, and berries (strawberries, raspberries, black- and blueberries) are generally OK for me.

"Low fat" options often have sugar added. I go for a zero sugar, full fat option instead. Be very careful of anything processed and packaged - there are often carbs and sugars included sometimes under names that are misleading.

Diet Coke (and things like Coke Zero etc) has zero carb but does have artificial sweetner which some people don't get on with. In addition some people prefer to avoid any "sweetness". Personally, I drink Coke Zero sometimes which doesn't seem to have any problematic effects for me.

On testing - the idea is to test before eating something, and then to test again two hours later. The idea is that the test shows where yiour blood sugar was, and how high it rose because of what you ate. If you get a rise which takes you up by more than 2 mmol/l or over 7.8 (using the non-diabetic figure) there were too many carbs in the meal for your system to cope with. One test in isolation won't tell you all that much.

The link below takes you to some useful info about blood glucose levels that should help you understand more about why we test.

Normal and Diabetic Blood Sugar Level Ranges

Normal blood sugar ranges and blood sugar ranges for adults and children with type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes and blood sugar ranges to determine diabetes.
www.diabetes.co.uk
 
This is where orthodox “healthy” (like slimming world) clashes badly with metabolic healthy particularly T2 diabetes . They focus on low fat (which doesn’t raise blood glucose) and almost encourage high carb (which does). They pretty this up with whole grains but carbs are carbs and will all become glucose as they digest whatever type or colour they are.

If you‘re prediabetic or full blown type 2 it means you cannot process carbs “normally” or effectively so why eat them “normally”? You wouldn’t with a food item you were allergic to and in this respect we do need to consider ourselves intolerant to carbs and be much more wary with them as a result. When we can’t process them properly we store them as body fat. So if we eat fewer of them we lose weight too. We replace carbs with more natural fats and proteins so we aren’t hungry and can still get energy from these foods as humans are dual fuel and don’t actually need to eat any carbs to survive unlike fats and proteins.

Fruit has good nutrients but also a lot of sugar. Even the fructose in excess causes harm in a roundabout way but won’t show on a meter. Stick with the berries rather than others. Maybe a little melon now and again. Low fat anything usually has sugar and nasty stuff added to replace the fat. And naturally occurring fats (not processed seed and vegetable oils which are harmful) are essential to life.

Theres lot’s of useful links in my signature below in red.
 
Can I ask - all food and drink will raise blood sugar - so what’s the aim of this prediabetic game?? To keep blood sugar pretty much level?? With no high spikes?
 
I have recently gone low carb to tackle both my blood sugars [and already had a good effect] and to hopefully reduce my triglycerides [which are very high at 8.9]. The Doctor has now told me I need to go low fat rather than low carb but to keep my carbs below 125g a day and fats below 50g a day. It's impossible unless I eat about 1000 calories a day. Totally confused to say the least, stressed out with all the carb and fat counting and feel totally lost in all the advice and counter advice the medical professionals are peddling.
 

I can’t see the links. Sorry. Lol
 
Connie79 said:
Can I ask - all food and drink will raise blood sugar - so what’s the aim of this prediabetic game?? To keep blood sugar pretty much level?? With no high spikes?
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Not all food and drink will raise my blood sugar. Fats have no impact on blood sugar, and proteins very little. Bacon and eggs (for example) doesn't affect my blood glucose in any discernable way at all. Given that glucose meters can be up to 15% inaccurate you can't draw meaningful conclusions from readings close together.

My aim is to keep my blood glucose at a low-normal level. Why do I do this? Because I get several painful and troubling diabetic symptoms if my blood glucose goes into the mid 40s (on a HbA1c test). So keeping it roughly in the same place is fine, as long as that place is where it is at the moment (see below for the actual HbA1c results).

People sometimes talk about any rise in BG as a "spike". I tend to think of a spike as a quick and very high rise - it's what happens if I eat pastry: 4.5 to 11.5, if I recall correctly. Not doing that again. Having a meal that takes me (eg) from 5.5 to 6.5mmol/l is OK by me and isn't a spike in my book. All figures tested before eating and at +2hrs.

I wouldn't be happy with my levels if I was continually starting at (say) 7.5 and going up to 9. While the sugars are relatively level they are consistently too high (for me anyway) even if there are no sudden large rises. So I don't want generally elevated levels and nor do I want rapid big rises in BG.
 
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Do you feel ill if you have a high spike in BG?
 
KennyA said:
What do you mean by "a high spike"?
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Like a jump in the levels you test. Just wondered if people high blood sugar made them ill so kept it stable. I’m new so these will be weird questions lol
 
Connie79 said:
Like a jump in the levels you test. Just wondered if people high blood sugar made them ill so kept it stable. I’m new so these will be weird questions lol
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Depends how big a jump and from what to what. Most people, even non diabetic and the best controlled, will vary by a few mol before/after meals exertion etc. if you go a lot higher than you are used to being you’ll likely feel it in some way but it’s hugely variable, tired, headache, sick needing to pee. If you’re high but there all the time you might not even notice

weird questions are fine. We all have to learn
 
Connie79 said:
Like a jump in the levels you test. Just wondered if people high blood sugar made them ill so kept it stable. I’m new so these will be weird questions lol
Click to expand...
Personally, no. But then I've never had, or at least been aware of having, a very high BG reading for any length of time. I didn't start testing until I'd been about six weeks into keto.

I think the highest level I recorded was a fingerprick of around 13mmol/l or so. That was some way above what I would have expected at the time. Elevated blood glucose, even if it's not all that high, over a period of time does long-term damage. That's why I think it's important to test when you're working out what you should and shouldn't eat.
 
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