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Is diet along sometimes not enough to get to normal levels ?

F

fendertele

Well-Known Member
Messages
221
Hey guys,

A while back I was diagnosed and managed to get into normal levels with diet alone, I very recently messed up my diet due to stress and other things going on. I attempted to get back on track a couple of months but fell off again but I've been back on my low carb diet the last 2 weeks and just today received my new Gluco strips hoping to see what the 2 weeks had done and how my levels were looking tonight.

Breakfast: 4 eggs, Onions, Garlic , Cream Cheese and spices for an Omelet with a small amount of Tomato Ketchup no added sugar or salt.

Dinner: I enjoyed the Omelet that much I had it again but this time added 2 chicken breasts to it.

Dessert : Low Carb Fat Bombs - Peanut Butter, Cocoa Powder, Coconut Oil and Xylitol.

I've not eaten anything else since for 6 hours only drinking water/ Tea with Xylitol and full fat milk or 7up Zero.

Just did a test and got 9.1mmol just to be sure tested again 5 mins later and got 9.5mmol.

I'm going to try today to stay clear of absolutely anything that could possibly cause a spike like Sugar subs... but I'm curious is it possible that at some point I may not be able to get to within normal ranges with diet alone ?

I was able to do before eating pretty much the same things i've been back eating for the last 2 weeks but if I continue to remain around 9 instead of my usual 5/6 would this suggest diet alone is no longer working or that I can no longer tolerate sugar subs and need to be more strict ? Cheers
 
Could be anything. Stress keeping your bloods up, your body being used to higher numbers so your liver helpfully dumping a little extra glucose in your system (which should resolve on its own), could be the sugar substitutes, the milk, etc... Personally I think you might want to wear a CGM for two weeks if this keeps up, see what's going on, but I do think you just might need a little more time... So before you splurge on a libre or somesuch, maybe see if the same thing still happens in a week or two, three...

Diet is one of the things we can immediately influence. Other things aren't as easy, like changes in stress, sleep patterns, hormones or medications. Give yourself a little time, and try to figure out whether anything might be different than before.
Good luck!
Jo
 
Too early to say.

I would get a very short lived rise possibly into 9ish territory from milk - it probably wouldn't be detectable via fingerprick but a CGM tends to show everything. Is it possible you might have hit a milk high?

If you've been off the wagon for a while you may need a few days or weeks to get your body accuctomed to lower carbs and running with lower BGs overall. Your liver will be using the recent weeks as its "normal" so will be doing its best to keep you where you've recently been - that's maybe a more likely explanation than xylitol.
 
Hi guys thanks for the replies after the above testing and feeling a little disheartened I made myself some Scrambled Eggs with Butter and 1 Cumberland Sausage with a dollop of Mayo, ate this then went to sleep for 6 hours.

When I woke up I tested again and firstly got 10.4 and a minute later tested again and got 11.2 ??

I'm using the Gluconavi Kit.

That is another Low Carb meal followed by 6 hours sleep and pretty high levels right ?
 
@fendertele If you have 'stocked up' your storage sites with iffy choices, then it will take a little while for the iffies to depart and a more normal situation settle into place - I felt that there was some repair work to my metabolism required in the months after diagnosis, which was more a month by month than a week by week timetable. From comments others have made I suspect that consistency in my diet choices, rather than going off course from time to time has been an advantage.
The readings after sleeping could be 'dawn phenomenon' at work.
 
Hey Resurgam, yeah I will stay on course and hopefully see results then over months I know that when i was off course for that period when i randomly tested I was hitting 18.0 and other scarily high numbers which prompted me to get back on track so that is quite possible.

I had thought it might had been out of date strips which is why i ordered these new ones for testing after a couple of weeks on the LCHF diet, the only other thing I was wondering is could the Unit need recalibrating after not being used for a period ? If so I'll need to order a new unit as i've misplaced the test strip that calibrates it.

But other than the results I feel better, I have a lot more energy and have lost a little weight possibly mostly water weight.
 
@fendertele I'm afraid I am not enough of a meter user to know the details - If you have some replacement batteries available you could try swapping them just to see if it makes a difference.
If you can contact the maker directly you could ask about getting just the calibration strip for it - or they might even offer a free replacement - you never know your luck until you try.
 
I would agree with other comments about giving your body a little time to get into the rhythm of healthier eating and if it persists there is nothing like having access to a CGM to self inform and to be able to go to your health practitioner with the data of what has been going on for you. I have a massive problem with dawn phenomena that is better at the weekend and when I am on holiday so I know cortisol drive mine up before work. I would also take out anything from my diet that fits the category of UPFs as there is more and more evidence emerging about the ways these non foods impact on insulin resistance.
 
I am always a bit suspicious of sausages. Some have a lot of non-meat carb filler - oatmeal, rusk, breadcrumbs - and they'll push my BG up. I tend to stick to the 98% meat bratwurst from Lidl.

That said, assuming the meter is accurate etc, testing after six hours you should no longer be seeing any impact from food, just from liver-set levels. If that's the case, your liver might be taking some time to adjust. It will tend to want to push your BGs back up to where you were recently - and if you were getting readings of 18 during that time, it was probably pretty high.

So - if it was me, I'd settle in for a lengthy, steady, and consistent low-carb diet, not expecting to see my liver responding for some time - weeks, maybe months. If you can keep your food-induced BG levels lower, then your liver should eventually get the message that this is the new normal and start to behave. With a bit of luck, it'll happen more quickly.
 
I try to avoid Cumberland sausages because of all the added stuff to give it the flavour, and stick with plain pork sausages with at least 95% pork.
Rice flour and potato starch as used to pack out sausages.
Having said that, I don't think there should be enough carbohydrates there to seriously bump up your blood glucose.
As others have said, it may take a while to flush all the stored glucose out of your system.
It takes me a few days of being very strict before my levels come back down, and I am on medications.
Perhaps consider a water fast for a day?
This should show if your BG will come down, or if your body is dumping stored glucose.
 
This might sound silly, but how do you test? If you test right before a meal and 2 hours after the first bite, you're aiming for a rise of 2.0 mmol/l or less between those two numbers. You miss the spike that way, but you can tell whether your body could cope with what you put in there. If the rise is consistently no higher than 2.0 mmol/l and preferably lower, your stores are being depleted, so your liver should dump less and less eventually when you experience Dawn Phenomenon, and you're on the right track. Otherwise, the meal might need examining. Also, meters have an allowed "deviation" of 15%, so you rarely get two identical measurements from the same blood drop. Nothing to worry about.

Good luck!
Jo
 
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