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Can i trust these readings?

B

Bhargavi

Member
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20
Hello

I have not been well for over a week .think its flu or something..i was feeling really ligbt headed yesterday morning so checked my blood sugar at home - showed 7.2 . Can i trust this reading? as i was unwell could that affect the blood sugars? I have hba1c scheduled for 12/09.i am a bit paranoid about tbis☹

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There are many things that affect our BG - food, exercise, stress, sickness, drugs, weather, time of day, ...
If you normally trust your meter, there is no reason why it should be wrong now.
 
Welcome to the forum

A few things to check ... were your hands clean and dry when you did your blood sugar test and are the strips in date and kept in a closed container.

Yes, being ill can affect your blood sugars - any kind of stress whether mental or physical can affect it. Testing bloods in the morning is notoriously unreliable as your liver can give you a glucose boost if it thinks you're low - perfectly natural, but annoying. I usually wait until the test before dinner (which, for me, is similar most days) to find out if my sugars are higher than expected.
 
Chook said:
Testing bloods in the morning is notoriously unreliable
Click to expand...
@Chook, I agree with all your reply about cleaning your hands, stress, etc. However, the comment I have highlight is a bit ambiguous. The accuracy of the meter is exactly the same whatever time of the day, week, month you use it: it measures the glucose in your blood at that time. I suspect what you are highlighting is that a morning value may not be a good indication of your average BG.
Sorry for being pedantic but as a type 1, my aim is to get a constant BG at all times of the day and I have an arsenal of insulin to help me achieve this. My liver may release lots of glucose to give me a kick start to the day and I need to give myself a kick start of insulin to counter it. If I thought the morning BG reading was unreliable, I would not be able to calibrate my insulin dose to achieve this.
 
I was answering from the point of view of a Type 2.
 

The tone of your question suggests that you personally feel that perhaps you shouldn't trust your reading? There is however no apparent reason not to trust it. By no means is it a particularly high reading. Blood test machines are accurate enough. They have as a rule of thumb a tolerance of +/-10%. Easy for me to suggest I know but please do not worry about your HbA1c. The result is already set and at this stage you cannot do much to change it as it is in 5 days. Worrying about it will just make you feel horrible. I really do hope that you get the result you wish for and if not then it is just work in progress
 
Listen to the people on here, they do give good advice to which I myself have found. I was also worried about my BL being higher than I would have liked. Mine was around 6.3 in the morning on waking and was told about the liver dump. As soon as I ate my BG went down when testing again. Yes, I have also read that being not well can affect your BG levels, as well as stress, humidity, even cold. If you had temperature this would also affect your reading
 
My nurse at the surgery told me that I had no need to fast for my glucose test as they do not do that anymore because fasting morning one is too unreliable. They are more interested in taking the blood glucose after I have eaten. I suppose even if we have a bad dream, even though not remembering it could up our BG levels or not enough sleep etc
 
Meant to say that I have given up taking my BG on waking, just take it 2 hours after a meal
 
Hi I always test last thing at night and first thing in the morning. This proved the Dawn effect for me. A food diary on my app and scrutinising my carbs has started to level so much out. I've felt very weird when levels are around 7 and someone suggested it could be levels dropping quickly.
 
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