bs down after eating

serenity648 said:

my pre-meal level was 8.9

I had a bowl of lettuce, cucumber and tomato salad, 2 hard boiled eggs and full fat mayo.

my blood sugars 2 hours later are 7.1

confused. any idea why it went down? I nearly didnt eat, although I was hungry, as my levels were so high beforehand.

PS no idea why my pre meal level was so high either. I had only had some milk about 4 hours before, and that was my only intake since last night.

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Hello @serenity648.

Did you confirm the 8.9mmol/l with a second BG test? As you're probably aware, meters have an error margin of +/-15% - so it's possible that your initial reading of 8.9mmol/l may well have been as low at 7.6mmol/l.

http://www.diabetes.co.uk/blood-glucose-meters/blood-glucose-meter-accuracy.html

You may have had a liver dump after not eating for a while which might account for the higher reading. As for what you ate, that seems a low carb meal so it may not have added to your glucose levels.

I agree with @Guzzler that in all probability it was a liver dump because of your fasting. Your body thought your glucose was too low so signalled the liver to add some extra, which it did in order to redress the balance and bring you to safe levels. The problem is, with insulin resistance the liver doesn't get the message to stop, and the insulin secreted by the pancreas to deal with it was being rejected. Once you started to eat, thins got back to normal. This is my suggestion.

the bodies insulin fights all day long lowering blood glucose in type 2 diabetics this reaction is diminished or not working optimally and sometimes hardly working at all ... it could be that because you didn´t eat any carbs that your insulin has some success lowering what blood glucose was in your blood even before eating...
Sometimes there is a liver dump in the mornings right after raising from the bed... maybe some get this other times in the day too... I think I do sometimes when exercising a lot in high cardio exercises...
but type 1 diabetics also take a basal insulin because the body actually need insulin all day long, a lot more when eating but not only when eating

I think some people that maybe have an eating style where they skip meals a lot have a liver that takes over and finds that it has the main role producing the body´s glucose.... but that's a personal theory .. not anything scientifically proven... but have been writing with people that hardly ate and still had a very high blood glucose even when not being type 1 diabetic... and that's been the only explanation I could figure out

I get that kind of drop in the mornings.
If my fasting bg is highish (due to liver dump from stress, sleeplessness or whatever), and I have a protein breakfast. My bg drops over the next two hours and returns to my 'normal' levels.
I'm not sure of the exact process, but I am very happy with it, because it is another weapon in my armory to deal with my Dawn Phenomenon.

Interestingly, a breakfast containing carbs will send my bg up, and a breakfast of fat (e.g. coffeesubstitute and cream) will keep my bg steady. It takes protein to send my bg downwards in the 2 hrs after breakfast.

I have read in a couple of different places that the body will liver dump approx every 5 hours, unless we eat in that time. And will continue to do so until the glycogen stores in the liver have been depleted, and the body switches to fat as a fuel source.

Never found that particularly accurate for me though, so I would take it with a pinch of salt. And I wonder if low carbing, or keto eating may change things significantly.

Since wearing the Libre I would say that my blood glucose levels are always rising or falling, sometimes skipping about like a stone skimmed over a pond, and sometimes dipping and peaking. This happens even during fasting. The variation may not be large (1-2mmol/l) but it certainly isn't steady with rises on a 5 hour schedule!

How I understand is that various hormones tell the liver to dump glucose at any time they detect a lack of glucose in the body. This lack of glucose may be because we have been fasting, or exercising, or full of stress/illness/injury and need extra to keep us alive. The "lack" also may not be an actual "lack", just a lot less than our body has been used to.

Once this glucose has hit the bloodstream, the pancreas secretes insulin to deal with it and at the same time enters the liver to tell it to stop producing more glucose. The pancreas and liver work together in tandem to keep the body properly regulated.

This system breaks down when we have insulin resistance. The insulin can't do its job. It can't get rid of all the glucose in the bloodstream and can't enter the liver in enough quantity to tell it to stop. Consequently the liver continues to produce and dump glucose until such time as either the insulin manages to tell it to stop, or the liver stores have emptied. (They will fill up again next time you eat)