is this normal?

[james122]

is spiking straight after a meal to 13 every time but coming down to normal after 2 hours normal and won't cause any problems only if it's an hour after meals?

 

[DiabeticPanda]

I used to get that quite a lot when I was on MDI and still get it now occasionally. Mine used to do it because I was eating and then injecting, if you know what you're having try and inject 15-20mins before hand if you can it might help

 

[urbanracer]

If you are spiking that high after every meal then I'd suggest it may eventually lead to complications. It will raise your a1c figure and and anything you can do to prevent that from happening is likely to be beneficial in the long term.

If you're continuously having problems with glucose spikes then please speak to your medical team. As they are more aware of your medical details, they're in a better position to offer advice regarding insulin doses and diet.

 

[catapillar]

My understanding is that the long term studies of risk of diabetic complications filter the categories of risk by the blunt tool of the HbA1C result only - your HbA1C number only pulls the average and doesn't care if your number is 6.5 because you are actually at 6.5 all day long or because you constantly flit up & down between 4 and 10.

The biggest structured diabetic education course which aims to reduce complications (DAFNE) actively discourages patients from checking to see what they're levels are after meals. They only want testing to be done morning, pre-meal and bed, because they want people to avoid unnecessarily worrying about post prandial numbers. people who have attended the DAFNE course overwhelmingly end up with improved HbA1C results, and therefore decreased risk of complications.

Of course if you are spiking after meals that may well increased your average a tiny bit, but if you are coming back to a good range in 2 hrs it really will only be a tiny bit and is unlikely to push you up so high as to move you into an increased risk bracket by HbA1C result.

But it is frustrating to see the spikes and there are things you can look at to try and reduce them:
- pre bolusing - inject 20-40 minutes before you eat to give your insulin time to start working before you eat;
- lowering your carb intake or lowering the GI of the food you are eating
- do a bit of trial and error to find foods that don't cause the spike.

 

[CarbsRok]

Most type 1's find they get a better result by injecting 15 - 20 mins before the meal, if you haven't tried that give it a go and see what happens.

 

[kev1]

Definitely try injecting 15-20 mins before eating. The fast acting insulin peaks quickly and then tails off. Your glucose levels do something similar after a meal so by getting the insulin working first it will likely reduce the top level of the glucose spike. It is a bit trail and error tho. As people above have said there are other things to try as well with reducing carb quantity etc but do things one at a time so you gave a pretty clear idea of what step is improving things-or not.
There is a book by an American doctor called Think like a Pancreas where he explains how a healthy pancreas works and how different types of insulin work to try and mimic this so as to keep levels within range. It's not a medical text book -it's written for diabetics to understand rather than be completely confused and I'm only about half way through- but there is a lot of useful information there.