Blood sugar readings

I'm interested in this as well. I'm quite newly diagnosed and sometimes I get abit obsessed with the testing and test 30 and 60 mins post meals and see higher readings but then they do come down within the two hours. So not sure if that's ok or not. When I was pregnant I had GD and I had to monitor at an hour and it had to be under 8. So sometimes I check at an hour as well as two for certain foods.

Especially considering you aren't on any meds I would say these are very good readings. They fall in the normal range for fasting and 2 hour post meal.

It's perfectly normal to see rises depending on how many carbs you've consumed.



Once you're back where you started at 2 hours you're perfectly fine.
A true diabetic would continue to go up past the one hour mark & would officially be over 11.1 mmol/L at the 2 hour (based on the 75g OGTT).
I take it that you've either reduced your carbs or have lost weight & started exercising.

The position of the rise in blood sugars varies. There are fast acting carbs (those of us with type 1 use them to overcome a hypo with 15 minutes), there are slow acting carbs and there are ones in between. Fat can reduce the speed at which our bodies digest the carbs so, something like a curry can raise waaaaaaay later than 2 hours. I find pizza can affect my blood sugars 5 hours after eating.

The advice to test two hours after eating is a compromise as it will show the rise for most foods as testing every 5, 10 minutes or every hour can lead to obsession and is costly.

Jodie12345 said:

Yes I’ve reduced my carbs a lot but did have ready salted crisps with my omelette at lunch time. Also had two weetabix for breakfast with semi skimmed milk and a spoonful of Demerara sugar.

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Then you're fine as that's about the worst option for a Type 2.
Breakfast cerals are pure carb there's 29gs of carbs in 2 biscuits, plus carbs in milk & of course the sugar.
Full fat milk would also probably be lower carb plus it has fat which blunts the bodies uptake of carbs.

Jodie12345 said:

Tempted to really test it with things like bread and pizza but too scared to at the moment. Part of me still thinks I’m ok and it’s all a mistake, burying my head in the sand and all that.

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I feel the same as you, perhaps I'm in denial but there is a tiny bit of hope that it's a mistake. I have tested after bad meals and I've had mixed readings, chip shop was fine but a Chinese was high. Though that was in the earlier days. I don't have high readings really now but my fasting blood sugar is higher than the normal range . Between 5 and 6.5 on a bad day.

I'm worried if I start going back to my old favourite foods, I'll go back to my old ways, put on weight and eat loads of carbs again so in a way its easier not to eat them because I don't think about them as much.

I can have one of the smaller slices of seeded bread and that's fine for me. Or I can have a couple of slices of the low carb bread and have a sandwich. Even the small wraps seem to be ok.
Do you count carbs ? I try to have no more than 100g a day and maximum 50g in a meal. Dinner usually the most carb heavy so I try to have very little carbs in other meals. People can handle different things so thats why the meter is so useful.

Jodie12345 said:

Hi, sorry to ask questions again but just after someone who can please help. I was diagnosed the week before last as a new type 2 diabetic. I’m not on any meds yet until the results of my second blood test as the doctor wants to do a fasting glucose and a second HbA1c. I am checking my levels myself with my new machine. On waking up 5.1. Two hours after breakfast 5.5. 45 mins after lunch 8.7 (Is that really high???) 5.1 two hours after lunch. There’s so much information out there it’s just so confusing. Thanks for reading.

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Hi @Jodie12345,

The numbers you report sound like pretty good levels and if anything more like pre-diabetic rather than diabetic. So, really well done and definitely very good progress.

As to whether a level of 8.7 mmol 45 minutes after a meal (or for that matter at any time) is a problem, you will probably encounter a range of varying opinions. Personally, I have always found the website bloodsugar101 by Jenny Ruhl very helpful in this respect.

Here is the section that discusses the link between blood sugar levels and a variety of diabetic complications: https://www.bloodsugar101.com/organ-damage-and-blood-sugar-level

This discusses the link between blood sugar levels and coronary artery/heart disease: https://www.bloodsugar101.com/a1c-and-heart-disease

A conservative interpretation of the studies she lists is that you would probably want to strive to stay below 140 mg/dl or 7.8 mmol at all times -- that's my interpretation anyway.

Try 'fat head' pizza and there are low carb breads - don't go adding ordinary versions on top of Weetabix, milk, sugar and crisps.