Bsl after eating T2D how high immediately after eating

[annabell1]

I'm currently trailing a Libre cgm sensor, I stll use a finger pricking monitor and always been told to see how your BSL are two hours after eating will measure how well our body processes and clears glucose after a meal yet since wearing the CGM I'm now noticing when I eat food my BSL spikes over 10mmol/L ? My question is Is this normal for T2D blood sugar to spike this high immediately after eating? Then drop down immediately as well?
then eventually after 2 hours is in range. How high after immediately eating should blood sugar rise?

Thanks
Anne

 

[lovinglife]

Yes this is normal, this happens with people without diabetes, it’s not a spike it’s how a body works after food. The important thing is your 2 hrs after first bite number. A rise of no more than 2 or more ideally as near as you can to where you started or lower.

I’ve never used a CGM for a number of reasons I won’t go into, but I do test with finger prick & I personally like to be no more than a rise of 1.

 

[lovinglife]

@KennyA has a graph of a CGM on a person without diabetes that he posts to demonstrate this

 

[KennyA]

I'm currently trailing a Libre cgm sensor, I stll use a finger pricking monitor and always been told to see how your BSL are two hours after eating will measure how well our body processes and clears glucose after a meal yet since wearing the CGM I'm now noticing when I eat food my BSL spikes over 10mmol/L ? My question is Is this normal for T2D blood sugar to spike this high immediately after eating? Then drop down immediately as well?
then eventually after 2 hours is in range. How high after immediately eating should blood sugar rise?

Thanks
Anne

Thanks for the tag @lovinglife

What you're seeing is pretty much the normal digestion process - I wouldn't call it a "spike". Carbs/sugars seem to take around 45 minutes (it varies depending on the individual, but also on things like what else has been eaten, the temperature of the food etc) to be digested and arrive in the bloodstream as glucose. Much of that glucose is then processed further by the liver and stored mainly in the skeletal muscles. We can carry around a days' worth of energy stored in muscles and liver. Excess glucose over and above that is generally stored as body fat.

You also need to remember that this is all part of a dynamic system. Blood glucose levels will go up and down naturally in response to food and things other than food - they are anything other than "stable".

It follows that the expected short-term rise in BG after eating carbs/sugars will depend on a number of things, but these will include how fast your digestion is and how well your insulin system deals with the resulting glucose. It will also be affected by how much glucose your liver thinks should be in the blood at the current time, which will be affected by things like stress.

Personal example - from my own CGM use - a small latte will take me from 5ish to 9.6 in around 45 minutes, the rise being due to the milk lactose and nothing else. By 60 minutes I was back at 5ish. The message I took from that was that my insulin response system is currently perfectly capable of handling that amount of sugar. The high point is not really all that relevant - the most important thing is that my BG was brought back to the starting point quickly.

So - the graph below (there are many similar) shows the blood glucose of a non-diabetic person over a 24 hr period. You can spot fairly easily the points where the person ate. I'm also attaching a piece of research done for CGM manufacturers who realised they didn't know what "normal" blood glucose looked like as measured by newer CGM systems.

Continuous Glucose Monitoring Profiles in Healthy Nondiabetic Participants: A Multicenter Prospective Study - PMC

Use of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) is increasing for insulin-requiring patients with diabetes. Although data on glycemic profiles of healthy, nondiabetic individuals exist for older sensors, assessment of glycemic metrics with new-generation ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Hope that helps. Questions welcomed.

 

[Lainie71]

I find my bgl will drop with first bite, then about an hour later hit its post meal level, take another hour to drop to near enough to the level before the meal then remain at the pre meal reading for the remaining day. I find it fascinating how my body works since using a cgm

 

[annabell1]

Thanks for the tag @lovinglife

What you're seeing is pretty much the normal digestion process - I wouldn't call it a "spike". Carbs/sugars seem to take around 45 minutes (it varies depending on the individual, but also on things like what else has been eaten, the temperature of the food etc) to be digested and arrive in the bloodstream as glucose. Much of that glucose is then processed further by the liver and stored mainly in the skeletal muscles. We can carry around a days' worth of energy stored in muscles and liver. Excess glucose over and above that is generally stored as body fat.

You also need to remember that this is all part of a dynamic system. Blood glucose levels will go up and down naturally in response to food and things other than food - they are anything other than "stable".

It follows that the expected short-term rise in BG after eating carbs/sugars will depend on a number of things, but these will include how fast your digestion is and how well your insulin system deals with the resulting glucose. It will also be affected by how much glucose your liver thinks should be in the blood at the current time, which will be affected by things like stress.

Personal example - from my own CGM use - a small latte will take me from 5ish to 9.6 in around 45 minutes, the rise being due to the milk lactose and nothing else. By 60 minutes I was back at 5ish. The message I took from that was that my insulin response system is currently perfectly capable of handling that amount of sugar. The high point is not really all that relevant - the most important thing is that my BG was brought back to the starting point quickly.

So - the graph below (there are many similar) shows the blood glucose of a non-diabetic person over a 24 hr period. You can spot fairly easily the points where the person ate. I'm also attaching a piece of research done for CGM manufacturers who realised they didn't know what "normal" blood glucose looked like as measured by newer CGM systems.

Continuous Glucose Monitoring Profiles in Healthy Nondiabetic Participants: A Multicenter Prospective Study - PMC

Use of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) is increasing for insulin-requiring patients with diabetes. Although data on glycemic profiles of healthy, nondiabetic individuals exist for older sensors, assessment of glycemic metrics with new-generation ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Hope that helps. Questions welcomed.

 

[annabell1]

So are you saying after eating my BSL rising upto 13mmol - 15 mmol after eating within the 2 hours then dropping

Thanks for the tag @lovinglife

What you're seeing is pretty much the normal digestion process - I wouldn't call it a "spike". Carbs/sugars seem to take around 45 minutes (it varies depending on the individual, but also on things like what else has been eaten, the temperature of the food etc) to be digested and arrive in the bloodstream as glucose. Much of that glucose is then processed further by the liver and stored mainly in the skeletal muscles. We can carry around a days' worth of energy stored in muscles and liver. Excess glucose over and above that is generally stored as body fat.

You also need to remember that this is all part of a dynamic system. Blood glucose levels will go up and down naturally in response to food and things other than food - they are anything other than "stable".

It follows that the expected short-term rise in BG after eating carbs/sugars will depend on a number of things, but these will include how fast your digestion is and how well your insulin system deals with the resulting glucose. It will also be affected by how much glucose your liver thinks should be in the blood at the current time, which will be affected by things like stress.

Personal example - from my own CGM use - a small latte will take me from 5ish to 9.6 in around 45 minutes, the rise being due to the milk lactose and nothing else. By 60 minutes I was back at 5ish. The message I took from that was that my insulin response system is currently perfectly capable of handling that amount of sugar. The high point is not really all that relevant - the most important thing is that my BG was brought back to the starting point quickly.

So - the graph below (there are many similar) shows the blood glucose of a non-diabetic person over a 24 hr period. You can spot fairly easily the points where the person ate. I'm also attaching a piece of research done for CGM manufacturers who realised they didn't know what "normal" blood glucose looked like as measured by newer CGM systems.

Continuous Glucose Monitoring Profiles in Healthy Nondiabetic Participants: A Multicenter Prospective Study - PMC

Use of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) is increasing for insulin-requiring patients with diabetes. Although data on glycemic profiles of healthy, nondiabetic individuals exist for older sensors, assessment of glycemic metrics with new-generation ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Hope that helps. Questions welcomed.

Ok thank @KennyA makes sense I guess was concern how high BSL can go after eating as mine is going up to 13 to 15 mmol before dropping within that time frame. My brain started wondering if it goes up high like this for diabetics is this why they call T2D a progressive disease and eventually our body becomes more insulin resistance. And now my brain things if people are Not diabetics but as they reach an age they become diabetic often called old age diabetics wouldn't that be why as the body no longer can use their own insulin. Ok this is how my brain things lol

 

[KennyA]

So are you saying after eating my BSL rising upto 13mmol - 15 mmol after eating within the 2 hours then dropping

Ok thank @KennyA makes sense I guess was concern how high BSL can go after eating as mine is going up to 13 to 15 mmol before dropping within that time frame. My brain started wondering if it goes up high like this for diabetics is this why they call T2D a progressive disease and eventually our body becomes more insulin resistance. And now my brain things if people are Not diabetics but as they reach an age they become diabetic often called old age diabetics wouldn't that be why as the body no longer can use their own insulin. Ok this is how my brain things lol

The real answer is "it depends". What did you eat? How many carbs? What else was going on? does this happen all the time, or only every so often? It's possible your system is very good at quickly turning carbs into blood glucose - so that you see the rapid rise you report - and also dealing with them - so that you're back to regular levels after two hours (I think you said you get back to starting levels inside two hours, which would seem to indicate that you have got a decent insulin response).

The link to the research shows that this rise in blood glucose happens when we eat carbs, regardless of whether we're diabetic or not. The difference is that non-diabetic people have a system that deals with the raised glucose level efficiently, T2 diabetic people do not.

For example - Last time I had any pastry would have been over five years ago, and I was establishing which foods did what to my levels. Pastry took me into the 13-14 range very quickly, and there hadn't been a lot of it. Stayed high for quite a while as well and was nowhere near starting level at 2 hours.

I haven't eaten pastry since. It's perfectly possible I'd get the same result today, or maybe I might be able to handle it better. Or worse. My decision has always been not to eat the foods that might give me those sorts of results, and that continues to work for me.