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How long after meals before testing

F

fiona35

Well-Known Member
Messages
231
Type of diabetes
Treatment type
Insulin
I've decided to 'waste' some strips and see exactly what my BS do after all my meals but I'm not sure how long after the meal you wait to see whether its affected your BS or not. I have squirrelled away some strips and been really stingy in testing but have finally decided its my body, I want to live as long as I can and if I have to pay £20 each month to do so then so be it!

I think it might be 2 hours but sometimes I can only bring myself to eat a few mouthfuls for dinner - am on Byetta - but an hour later I feel like eating a small snack or the remainder of my dinner!! Would it therefore be okay to test 1 hour after eating to see whats going on, surely if my body doesn't like it, it will say at that point?

Also in a non diabetic person if they drank regular coke then 20 mins later they should be reading normal because they have released Insulin to cope with the sugar demand?
 
Hi Fiona,

For most people a test at 1 hour after eating should show your BS at around its highest level and at 2 hours it should have returned to pretty close to the pre-meal level (its not an exact science but those times are close enough). But in your case those figures may not be true because Byetta slows down the rate at which food passes through the digestive system, which in turn slows down the rate at which it gets converted to glucose. You may find that your own peak comes more than an hour after eating and that the return to normal takes longer than 2 hours. Or alternatively that the levels remain high for longer than usual before they start to drop. If you want to experiment then I would be very interested to hear the results.

Your question about the coke in a non-diabetic person - although coke will raise BS very quickly, the reaction of insulin is the same whether the carbs consumed were converted to glucose quickly or slowly. The insulin would be produced quickly but would still take up to 2 hours to metabolise the sugar.
 
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