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having trouble with monitoring

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whompa73

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I have only diagnosed as type 2 daibetic this week. Due to some bg tests that a couple of friends made ( 14.9 then 24.9 after eating sweets yep stupid I know but at time didnt know any better) I descided to buy a meter as the diabetic nurse at my docs could not see me till next week and my friends where realy woried about my levels so I bought a accu check nano it seemes realy well made as do the strips (only got 10 strips with it) it took some reading with it the nigh I bought it and they seemed to corispond with my friends meters ( minus the sweets as I had felt like st1t for 2 days after eating them) on friday I managed to talk to the nurse as my sugars where still verry high and I hadnt eaten anything sweet or with sugar for 2 days (before eating 13.2 and after eating 1 and 1/2 small tosted brown muffins with a spoon and a half of baked beans on each I tested 2 hours laster at 21.1) she did an over the fone consultation and immediately put me on metformin? I also asked about strips for my machine she said she could not find them on her list and would leave a new machine at docs to be picked up as they have a deal with the distributors and the strips would be half the price of the accu check. When I picked the tester up it seemed very poorly made compared to the accu check as did the strips. When testing there is a massive difference between the two machines the accu may say 14 which seems to fit in with my friends tester and the offical test done by the docs for diagnosis but the new tester a truresult machine may say 11 . I ran some tests and the accu tester seemed to be prety constant results but the the tru result varies wildly same finge pricked in same placewith Iin seconds of each other ranged between 12.9 and 11.3 may even have been wider I think but the shocker was when I pricked and made a lg blood spot and tested 2x using the same spot of blood with in 7 seconds of each other first reading 13.9 2nd reading 11.1 to be honest I dont know what to think or trust or is it just me being overly critical. Has anybody had dealings with either of these machines and could guid me or let me knowwhat you think of them
Regards james
 
It's a real postcode lottery either us T2's get testing empty on prescription or not - many practices / clinical commissioning groups have put blanket bans in place to save money ( contrary to NICE guidance)

The main way testing is useful is to give you info about the effects individual foods have on your blood sugars ( we are all different in which foods spike our sugars regardless of what the NHS dietary advice says) To find this out you need to test your Blood sugar, eat the food and then test again 2 hrs later. As long as your meter can accurately pick up the differences then the overall accuracy is less relevant. If I didn't trust the meter and was newly diagnosed than I might invest in another batch of strips for the meter you do trust and then test individual foods using both meters and see if they agree on the difference each food makes even if they disagree about the overall starting level
I would keep a record of what each comes up with both as info to myself for diet planning and as evidence to the GP if their meter turns out to be rubbish
 
At the moment I am testing mainly as jou said to see what food do to me and to equate how I feel to blood glucose levels and basically find my way around diabetes and increase my knowledge
 
Try cutting out all carbohydrates for a while and exercising and see what that does. Should bring the bg down and stop spikes.

I had problems when I started (in the teens) but then went to a diet of bacon, eggs, meat and greens, walks after meals and after a few days it came down and has been managed ever since.
A slice of toast recently raised my bg by 3.0 and I had a very high reading after baked beans some time ago. I can eat these things but only in small amounts.
Once you've brought the level down you can find out what you can cope with.


Sent from the Diabetes Forum App
 
Hi readings can be +/-20% so one test could be 12 the next 14.4 ( + 20%) then 9.6 (- 20%) so unless you get what you feel is really odd with what you've had to eat/drink just test once. Take care, soon it will just start to make sense what some foods/drinks do to bg levels


Sent from the Diabetes Forum App
 
Hi whompa

The first week i was diagnosed I had 4 tablespoons of baked beans on a slice of burgen bread toasted and 2 hours afterwards when I tested my blood sugar went to 9.2. I think its probably the sauce rather than the beans but i cant be certain. Other foods that spike me are potatoes, carrots To a lesser degree) and some stock cubes. Which is a pity cause I am a slow cooker nut and the base to most of the stews were stock cubes, potatoes and carrots... oh well. I tried again yesterday by cooking 2 chicken breasts in the slow cooker with 500ml of passata, diced carrot, finely diced onion and a little fresh garlic. It was very nice indeed but my blood sugar shot up to 10.0 two hours later.

I forgot to say on your other thread that I also use a website called my fitness pal which is free and lets you track your food and carbs and weight etc and has a good database of food.

Mark
 

Tesco 'value' passata 500ml is almost the same as 500g and contains 21g sugar .. that's a lot of sugar in one go ... what did your packaging say about sugar content? MyFitnessPal shows 0g sugar in a lot of the passata entries which is odd given that a tomato has 2g sugar per 100g. Passata spikes me and I'm supposed to be diabetes resolved!
 
Yes it said 21g but it was for two people and i only had enough sauce to cover the chicken. I know better now though . The thing is if I hadn't been testing and if it wasnt for this forum I would be non the wiser. I dread to think what state I would have been in by now.
Mark
 

Just updated my prev. blog. There are a lot of omissions/errors in MyFitnessPal so it's best used as a rough guide/trends etc. but still very useful. Whenever I hit upon an item of food which appears to have 0g of something I expect, then I hunt around for an equivalent which does. Just about everything I've read from Adsa seems to have nothing in it! Maybe that's why they are cheaper than the competition! :?
 

The TruResult works fine for me. HbA1C within 0.2 of average bG readings.
 
Dont know if I have fauly machine but even the nursewho ssupplied it had to agree today that it wss prety usless and prescribed me some for the machine I had bought it seems fare more stable results wise and I am happier with it . Once bitten twice shy and I realise with the best will in the world every now and then you'll get a lemon.
Cheers for the advice guys
 

Too right!! How are things on High Carb Operatics? I had liver and bacon tonight ... very low carb but the liver was a bit tough ... not sure why.....
 
I noted you mentioned eating beans and thought it was the sauce? Checkout the ingredients in beans, IIRC there is an element of sugar in there? Also as mentioned earlier, you can do one reading and another a few minutes later and they may be different, this is why the HbA1c takes an average of your BG.

Worrying about small up/down increments on the same/different meters will drive you nuts, try to 'let go' a bit.

Dave MH
 


love liver & bacon or liver and onions. Having trouble getting my head arround carbs though. Today i Got a. hm for want of a better description a welcome to diabetes pack/folder didnt realy tell me much but did have a part on diat & funnily enough in the form af a pie chart. I think they got it from a normal diet pack as it said arround 40 % of my meal should be of food high in carbs (potato's rice pasta ect) that dosnt seem to be in keeping with what I was told by nurse it also said about fresh fruit and had bananas on the list yet the dn said to avoid bananas the other day .it just all so confuseing . Tonight I had scrambled egg (luckily my mum breeds chickend and obviously has some just for eggs so I get the best organic free range eggs IN THE WORLD!!!! lol) cous cous arround 65 grams and some sliced meat. Not to sure about the cous cous looks a little high in carbs thats why I have tryed only half the recomended portion for one person. Not very insperational is it lol
 

Nor sure why liver was so tough. Someone told me is was due to the animal being alcoholic. Would you agree?
 

Do you remember that old TV show ... Mr Ed ... talking horse .. I think he enjoyed a drink or two.
 
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Do you remember that old TV show ... Mr Ed ... talking horse .. I think he enjoyed a drink or two.[/quote]
Ah# cirrhosis liver and bacon . Cant even see it going on hestons menu. Think your on a looser there mate. ;-)
 
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