I'm confused about my readings

You haven't said what you ate, but I don't think I could work it out even with that info

Hya,
You just said u have the headache from hell,i know when i get migraines my bloods do rise,could it be this?

Hi Fiona,
Its possible that either the unexpectedly low reading you got after breakfast, or the unexpected high reading before lunch, was a false reading from your monitor. It could be that before your lunch test you had handled something that left a residue on your skin, which could give an incorrect reading. Or that after breakfast your monitor just wasn't behaving. Remember that all monitors can be out by as much as +/- 20%. That doesn't mean that they regularly are, just that occasionally a monitor might produce an unexpected result. Best thing to do when this happens is wait a few minutes, wash your hands, then test again - often you will get a more realistic result.

There's a lot going on under the surface. Your pancreas and liver between them are constantly shifting glucose in and out of store as your demand changes. The blood actually only contains around 5 grams of glucose at any one time.

In diabetes the control mechanism gets out of phase, probably your body shuffled a lot of glucose into store after breakfast then realised you needed some back and dumped too much.

Your Low GI breakfast could be solely to blame.

If it's low GI it still has the CHO in, but takes longer to convert to glucose.

So lets say your BG was falling from overnight to 8.2 before breakfast (must have been high from previous night or a 'morning dump' pushed it up when you woke up), being low GI the breakfast could take 3 or more hours to convert to glucose so after 2 hours your BG was still dropping to 5.? - then the breakfast starts kicking in and probably spikes 3 or 4 hours later to give you a reading of 7.? when you take it before lunch.

Low GI is better but will still push your BG up latter on...

witan said:

Your Low GI breakfast could be solely to blame.

If it's low GI it still has the CHO in, but takes longer to convert to glucose.

So lets say your BG was falling from overnight to 8.2 before breakfast (must have been high from previous night or a 'morning dump' pushed it up when you woke up), being low GI the breakfast could take 3 or more hours to convert to glucose so after 2 hours your BG was still dropping to 5.? - then the breakfast starts kicking in and probably spikes 3 or 4 hours later to give you a reading of 7.? when you take it before lunch.

Low GI is better but will still push your BG up latter on...

Click to expand...

That is what I was going to say - the insulin would have started to work and then the food is converted to glucose so BG's start rising and last longer with lower GI foods. EG If you eat brown bread or branflakes or something this might happen but white bread causes sugars to rise quicker (because it is more quickly converted into glucose) but then it doesn't last as long and your BG might dip lower before lunch.

You might also want to raise your evening dose by a couple of units to achieve lower morning BG's. I've done this and it works most of the time. However as you say if I were to have a big evening snack - it tends to push up the morning BG's but I'm not sure what insulin you take so it might work differently - not sure :? Other evenings (like me) you may not want a snack so depending on this you'll have to plan ahead and try and adjust your insulin doses accordingly i.e. by possibly lowering night time dose on nights you don't have snacks etc. However don't take my words as gospel, because I'm wanting to discuss this with my diabetes clinic in the near future. Sometimes I get night readings of 5.4mmol and they have risen to around 8.2mmol upon wakening like the other morning - however this morning I had a night reading of 5.6mmol and it stayed at 5.6mmol upon wakening so it's a bit of a mystery to me :?

Dennis said:

Hi Fiona,
Its possible that either the unexpectedly low reading you got after breakfast, or the unexpected high reading before lunch, was a false reading from your monitor. It could be that before your lunch test you had handled something that left a residue on your skin, which could give an incorrect reading. Or that after breakfast your monitor just wasn't behaving. Remember that all monitors can be out by as much as +/- 20%. That doesn't mean that they regularly are, just that occasionally a monitor might produce an unexpected result. Best thing to do when this happens is wait a few minutes, wash your hands, then test again - often you will get a more realistic result.

Click to expand...

Yes sometimes I've taken a reading but made a sandwich or eaten some sort of food and my reading has been high. I've then washed my hands and it has dipped by 3mmol :!: The monitors are very sensitive - I've been told even handcreams or gels can affect the reading so I try and keep my hands as neutrally clean as possible (i.e. good rinse with hot water) before testing. I don't risk having a faulty meter now after past episodes you may or may not have read about. I have a solution so every few weeks or so I'll test the monitor, or if I think my reading is unusually high or low or other than what I predicted I'll test the monitor also to ensure I can get accurate readings all the time.

My understanding of GI is obviously different to other people's. I have only read about it, and not gone into it in great depth. But, I though the point of low GI was you get the same total amount of glucose ends up in the blood stream, but the profile it just ends up in the blood is different. The peak is lower, and it tails off slower. More along the lines of a dripping tap not one left on gushing. A slight exaggeration there I think


Slow release tablets work in a similar way.

I'll obviously have to do some more reading about GI :lol:

That is it in a round about way. I haven't heard of slow release tablets. However the Low or medium GI (low glycemic index) diet is one where you eat slow acting carbs such as brown bread instead of white, lots of veg, meat etc. but the carbs act really slow and energy lasts longer. Say you eat a slice of white bread or white rice (for a couple of examples as there are so many foods to list but these are just two examples) you would get a relatively big peak in your BG's and then a relatively quick decrease again in BG's shortly after. Whereas the brown bread or say wholemeal rice would convert into glucose but at a much slower pace due to the higher fibre content thus yes the same amount of glucose is consumed although it is released slower into the body and lasts longer because of the high fibre. The lower the GI is in the food the better for you. This should not be confused with carb counting (although I'm not familiar with carb counting but I mean a vegetable could be low GI but practically nil carbs so this is what I mean by not confusing the GI with carbs). It is just purely to keep the GI down to an acceptable level in your daily diet so that insulin works better with the glucose you consume.

A good example is attached (the blue in the graph would last a bit longer):-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index

Same thing happened with me soon after dx. I woke up and took read at 8.00am, it was about 5.2, then I had doctors appointment at 11.00am, and I did not eat anything and my sugars had risen to 6.4 at 10.45.

I told my GP and he said don't worry, everybody's BG rises naturally to some extent during waking hours, regardless of eating or not. I am unsure about his explanation, may be being over anxious as a newly dx was the reason for my bloods going up without eating.