Explain BG trends to me.

[stephen1974]

Hi all.

Some background first.

I was diagnosed with Type 2 back in 2013 but I have no doubt i've had it for many many years and it's in pretty poor shape with my Hba1c up at 111. My problem has been the amount of fizzy drinks I have, lets say on average, 6 cans a day every day since I was 16. (Now 43).

I am obese. Used to weigh as much as 18st, now i'm 14st.

When I was first diagnosed I was put on metaformin and some statin 'incase' my blood pressure went up (it was borderline high but on the right side of it and has since dropped). I stopped taking both after 3 months as in that time I put on a stone and a half in weight.

I have neurological damage and heal very slowly now, but no loss of feeling in feet toes etc...

Fast forward to now and I decided to actually take things seriously, drop the fizzy drinks, eat better, excersise etc... and for someone who hates needles, I am monitoring my blood sugar levels.

I've only just started doing this and I need some information on how blood sugar levels rise and fall so I can make sense of what i'm seeing as if I just keep seeing random numbers I know I just won't bother with it.

To give you some reading from the last two days:
Monday
Before Breakfast: 13.8 (didnt have breakfast)
Before lunch: 9.7
2 hours after lunch: 10.9
Before Dinner: 14.0
2 hours after Dinner: 11.0

Tuesday
Before Breakfast: 11.6 (didnt have breakfast)
Before Lunch: 8.5
2 hours after lunch: Forgot to take it.
Before Dinner: 12.5

Forgetting the levels for the moment as they are irrelevant to the trend. What should I be expecting from dips and rises in my levels.

 

[Art Of Flowers]

Blood sugars do rise in the morning. This is because the body produces hormones which triggers the liver to release glucose. So first thing in the morning, you may have higher readings than last thing at night.

When I was diagnosed with T2 I immediately started to cut out things with sugar. I discovered the Chai Tea drink I had every morning was 50% sugar. I also discovered my Jordan's Country Crisp breakfast cereal had 24% sugar. I now check food labels very carefully and avoid foods with a lot of carbs and sugar. I also cut out orange juice as it has lots of sugar.

You can reduce your blood sugar by avoiding food and drinks with lots of sugar, but to really make a difference you need to cut out foods high in carbohydrates. I saw recently that the breakfast cereal Special K has a higher glycemic index than pure sugar. That means that it turns to sugar in the blood quicker than pure sugar. This is true for most breakfast cereals as are they are pure carbs.

Apart from cereals, you also need to stop eating bread, potatoes, rice and pasta. However, you can eat more cheese, full fat yoghurt, cream, butter, avocados and nuts. Fat does not raise your blood sugar, so as you cut back on carbs, you need to eat more fat to compensate - hence the Low Carb High Fat diet so many people on here use. There is lots of info and recipes for LCHF over on https://www.dietdoctor.com/.

If you eat a LCHF diet then your fasting blood sugars could drop from over 10 to under 7 in a few months. My fasting blood sugar was 13.1 last November and now it is around 6.5.

 

[Bluetit1802]

What you should be aiming for are the smallest variations you can manage between your highs and your lows. Imagine a median line of all your levels throughout the day on a piece of graph paper. Imagine a linear graph of all your levels on the same piece of paper. The areas above median and the areas below median should be narrow with flat or nice wavy lines, no big bumps, no swings up and down, as close to the median as possible. It is the swings and high rises that cause the damage, plus of course how long the high rises last. Much better to have as little variation as you can. Like this - the pale blue band shows the variation and is a fairly straight band.

 

[chalup]

@daisy1 will send you some information that is a must read about diet and blood sugar levels. Welcome to the forum.

 

[Freema]

Hi all.

Some background first.

I was diagnosed with Type 2 back in 2013 but I have no doubt i've had it for many many years and it's in pretty poor shape with my Hba1c up at 111. My problem has been the amount of fizzy drinks I have, lets say on average, 6 cans a day every day since I was 16. (Now 43).

I am obese. Used to weigh as much as 18st, now i'm 14st.

When I was first diagnosed I was put on metaformin and some statin 'incase' my blood pressure went up (it was borderline high but on the right side of it and has since dropped). I stopped taking both after 3 months as in that time I put on a stone and a half in weight.

I have neurological damage and heal very slowly now, but no loss of feeling in feet toes etc...

Fast forward to now and I decided to actually take things seriously, drop the fizzy drinks, eat better, excersise etc... and for someone who hates needles, I am monitoring my blood sugar levels.

I've only just started doing this and I need some information on how blood sugar levels rise and fall so I can make sense of what i'm seeing as if I just keep seeing random numbers I know I just won't bother with it.

To give you some reading from the last two days:
Monday
Before Breakfast: 13.8 (didnt have breakfast)
Before lunch: 9.7
2 hours after lunch: 10.9
Before Dinner: 14.0
2 hours after Dinner: 11.0

Tuesday
Before Breakfast: 11.6 (didnt have breakfast)
Before Lunch: 8.5
2 hours after lunch: Forgot to take it.
Before Dinner: 12.5

Forgetting the levels for the moment as they are irrelevant to the trend. What should I be expecting from dips and rises in my levels.

welcome here stephen1974



well your numbers all of them are pretty high , and that will over time lead to more and more damage in your body, the problem in gaining weight is not the metformin but the high amount of eaten carbs , as ones body can not use the carbs the right way anymore and can only store it as fat because one has a very ineffective but still many times raised insuline..

the way to change that is by stopping to eat carbs.. and change to eat proteins and fats instead ..

there is nothing unusual for a type 2 diabetic not in control in the way your numbers change over the day, but there is on the other hand not anything helthy in them either...

the very good thing about changing to eating very high fat and proteins and almost no carb is that one do loose really quite easily ones overweight if one is strickt about not eating carbs..

of cause it is ones own choice and no one can force anyone not to eat carbs, but it is a good idea to meditate on the perspective or a progressing diabetes which is so scary and depressing that manu do bite the bullet and change their ways , and many like myself do get so happy for loosing weight that it is all the effort worth..

so happy to see you now want to change lifestyle... there is also quite a lot one CAN eat on the low carb high fat diet--

 

[kokhongw]

Monday
Before Breakfast: 13.8 (didnt have breakfast)
Before lunch: 9.7
2 hours after lunch: 10.9
Before Dinner: 14.0
2 hours after Dinner: 11.0

Tuesday
Before Breakfast: 11.6 (didnt have breakfast)
Before Lunch: 8.5
2 hours after lunch: Forgot to take it.
Before Dinner: 12.5

You would noticed a couple of things here.
1) Morning readings can get pretty high. This is quite common for T2D. You can read up on the dawn phenomenon here
https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/dawn-phenomenon-t2d-8/
2) When you skip your breakfast, your glucose level drops below 10. That is a good sign.
3) Your 2hr post lunch reading is only slightly higher than your pre-lunch reading. That was a good meal. What did you eat?
4) Your next morning reading was better than your first morning. 11.6 vs 13.8. If you continue monitoring your carbs intake for each meal or have earlier/lighter/no dinner, you will see improvements and significantly lower fasting glucose levels.

 

[stephen1974]

welcome here stephen1974



well your numbers all of them are pretty high , and that will over time lead to more and more damage in your body, the problem in gaining weight is not the metformin but the high amount of eaten carbs , as ones body can not use the carbs the right way anymore and can only store it as fat because one has a very ineffective but still many times raised insuline..

The only change in my diet at the time was metformin and as soon as I stopped I started losing weight again, though it took over a year to lose what I had put on in 3 nmonths.
I'm on a different type of metformin now and it doesn't seem to be an issue.

 

[stephen1974]

You would noticed a couple of things here.
1) Morning readings can get pretty high. This is quite common for T2D. You can read up on the dawn phenomenon here
https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/dawn-phenomenon-t2d-8/
2) When you skip your breakfast, your glucose level drops below 10. That is a good sign.
3) Your 2hr post lunch reading is only slightly higher than your pre-lunch reading. That was a good meal. What did you eat?
4) Your next morning reading was better than your first morning. 11.6 vs 13.8. If you continue monitoring your carbs intake for each meal or have earlier/lighter/no dinner, you will see improvements and significantly lower fasting glucose levels.

Pretty much have the same lunch every day at the moment. A chicken, bacon, pasta and cheese salad from Asda.
BG this morning was 9.9
I did have breakfast but I didnt get to take readings after or before lunch. Had a tuna, pasta and cheese salad for lunch and afterwards my BG was 10.2.

It's like pick a number add 5, look out your window and divide by the number of birds you see.


Unfortunately having earlier dinners isnt always possible as I work shifts and dont get home until gone 11 some days. Likewise, sometimes im taking my morning BG at 6am, other days 9 or 10am. Though the above ones were all done between 5am and 6am.

 

[daisy1]

@stephen1974

Hello Stephen and welcome to the forum As mentioned above, here is the Basic Information we give to new members and I hope you will find it useful. Ask as many questions as you need to and someone will be able to help.


BASIC INFORMATION FOR NEW MEMBERS

Diabetes is the general term to describe people who have blood that is sweeter than normal. A number of different types of diabetes exist.

A diagnosis of diabetes tends to be a big shock for most of us. It’s far from the end of the world though and on this forum you'll find well over 147,000 people who are demonstrating this.

On the forum we have found that with the number of new people being diagnosed with diabetes each day, sometimes the NHS is not being able to give all the advice it would perhaps like to deliver - particularly with regards to people with type 2 diabetes.

The role of carbohydrate

Carbohydrates are a factor in diabetes because they ultimately break down into sugar (glucose) within our blood. We then need enough insulin to either convert the blood sugar into energy for our body, or to store the blood sugar as body fat.

If the amount of carbohydrate we take in is more than our body’s own (or injected) insulin can cope with, then our blood sugar will rise.

The bad news

Research indicates that raised blood sugar levels over a period of years can lead to organ damage, commonly referred to as diabetic complications.

The good news

People on the forum here have shown that there is plenty of opportunity to keep blood sugar levels from going too high. It’s a daily task but it’s within our reach and it’s well worth the effort.

Controlling your carbs

The info below is primarily aimed at people with type 2 diabetes, however, it may also be of benefit for other types of diabetes as well.

There are two approaches to controlling your carbs:

• Reduce your carbohydrate intake
• Choose ‘better’ carbohydrates

Reduce your carbohydrates

A large number of people on this forum have chosen to reduce the amount of carbohydrates they eat as they have found this to be an effective way of improving (lowering) their blood sugar levels.

The carbohydrates which tend to have the most pronounced effect on blood sugar levels tend to be starchy carbohydrates such as rice, pasta, bread, potatoes and similar root vegetables, flour based products (pastry, cakes, biscuits, battered food etc) and certain fruits.

Choosing better carbohydrates

The low glycaemic index diet is often favoured by healthcare professionals but some people with diabetes find that low GI does not help their blood sugar enough and may wish to cut out these foods altogether.

Read more on carbohydrates and diabetes.

Over 145,000 people have taken part in the Low Carb Program - a free 10 week structured education course that is helping people lose weight and reduce medication dependency by explaining the science behind carbs, insulin and GI.

Eating what works for you

Different people respond differently to different types of food. What works for one person may not work so well for another. The best way to see which foods are working for you is to test your blood sugar with a glucose meter.

To be able to see what effect a particular type of food or meal has on your blood sugar is to do a test before the meal and then test after the meal. A test 2 hours after the meal gives a good idea of how your body has reacted to the meal.

The blood sugar ranges recommended by NICE are as follows:

Blood glucose ranges for type 2 diabetes

• Before meals: 4 to 7 mmol/l
• 2 hours after meals: under 8.5 mmol/l

Blood glucose ranges for type 1 diabetes (adults)

• Before meals: 4 to 7 mmol/l
• 2 hours after meals: under 9 mmol/l

Blood glucose ranges for type 1 diabetes (children)

• Before meals: 4 to 8 mmol/l
• 2 hours after meals: under 10 mmol/l

However, those that are able to, may wish to keep blood sugar levels below the NICE after meal targets.

Access to blood glucose test strips

The NICE guidelines suggest that people newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes should be offered:

• structured education to every person and/or their carer at and around the time of diagnosis, with annual reinforcement and review
• self-monitoring of plasma glucose to a person newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes only as an integral part of his or her self-management education

Therefore both structured education and self-monitoring of blood glucose should be offered to people with type 2 diabetes. Read more on getting access to blood glucose testing supplies.

You may also be interested to read questions to ask at a diabetic clinic.

Note: This post has been edited from Sue/Ken's post to include up to date information.

Take part in Diabetes.co.uk digital education programs and improve your understanding. They're all free.

• Low Carb Program - it's made front-page news of the New Scientist and The Times. Developed with 20,000 people with type 2 diabetes; 96% of people who take part recommend it... find out why
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