Dexcom - confused what reading to take

[gemlou84]

Hi all, I’ve recent invested in a Dexcom to help manage my diabetes after a particularly high hba1c.

As you all know it takes readings every 5 mins to my phone.

Am I still supposed to check it 2 hours after eating? And ignore it if it spikes before then, but comes in under 8 mmol after 2 hours? I’m assuming it’s normal for even non-diabetics to spike a little after eating carbs.

Any advice welcome
Thankyou
Gem

 

[barrym]

The 2 hours was just a rough average to compensate for a single stab (excuse the pun) to see what the effect of a meal was.

Pretty poor really, it's amazing we had any control.

Now you are in the luxurious position of watching the effect in real-time (nearly). So you can glance at your phone and see the food hasn't made it through your stomach yet, and followed by a rise in absorption of BG. The arrows will give you a further clue of how you're doing.

So you will find a marmalade sandwich from under your hat will peak at an hour, a sticky bun might be two, and pizza three.

You'll soon get to see how things work.

NB this is not a dietary recommendation .

HTH

 

[catinahat]

As already mentioned the 2hr thing is just a rough guide, for someone without diabetes at 2hrs their blood sugar would usually be back to the level it was before their meal.
The most effective way to reduce your HbA1c is to keep a record of what you eat, how much you had and when you had it. Then compare your Dexcom results with your food diary, it will become clear which foods are causing you problems. (it will be carbohydrates in one of their many forms)
The aim is to avoid any spikes if possible and to see our levels return to pre meal values within a reasonable time (2hrs) usually we give ourselves a bit of leeway and consider a meal OK if our level is no more than 2mmol higher. Anything over 2mmol and we will rethink that meal, reduce the carbs or strike it off our list of suitable meals.

I’m assuming it’s normal for even non-diabetics to spike a little after eating carbs.

I would imagine that they do but they don't have a problem dealing with spikes like we do.
"Spike a little" is a very ambiguous term, what you might consider a little spike I could think is a whopper. A rise of a few mmol after eating is just normal, not a spike. So if a pre meal level of say 5 rises to 8 and is back to around 5 within 2hrs the carbs in that meal have been dealt with fairly well. If on the other hand it rises to something like 10 and at 2hrs is still at 7-8 , then I would not consider that acceptable.
But we're talking about you not me, so you have to make your own decisions about what is acceptable to you and how quickly you want to get that hba1c down