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Lchf Bg Rising

Here is me, also butting in. I think you need to give yourself more days free of testing. It is a strange phenomenon - The more you self test (anything like BS or BP), tends to cause the results up. I think it is something to do with subconscious worry. Also you become fixated and it becomes a big problem.
When I was only on medication - three meds at max doses eventually, I would measure fairly randomly, just a few times a week and/or when I felt unwell.
Sadly, I am now on insulin after exhausting all possibilities for oral medication. But then I have rather bad genetic inheritance.
Don't worry about your sister, my husband had basal cell carcinoma. He has a micro-surgery, it took long time over the course of a day, not all the time in surgery and with local anaesthetic. Now he is fine and everything healed fine. This is a benign type carcinoma and doesn't spread.
Wish you the best.
 

Good morning "Mazza". Sorry to disagree with you - the purpose of the exercise of only testing once a day whilst fasting is to STOP YOU WORRYING ABOUT BS LEVELS. It is something that my Doctor pointed out to me years ago - IF YOU WORRY ABOUT YOUR BS LEVELS THEN YOUR BS LEVELS WILL RISE! If you test only 3 times per day then your BS will still rise. TEST ONLY ONCE PER DAY - then get on with your life and let the BS take care of themselves.

The important thing is your HbA1c test every 6 months. That will tell you how your average BS is behaving.

Also, try to stop eating late at night and too early in the morning. Do this gradually. But don't go to bed feeling hungry. that could bring on a night HYPO. If you are hungry before going to bed eat a couple of slices of cheese. Try to delay breakfast (if you are not an employee) to mid or late morning and that way you can also delay lunch and a reduced evening meal. Also DRINK plenty of WATER during the day - it stays off hunger.

I usually eat a big breakfast about 11 am - no lunch and then my dinner at about 6 pm - and 2 slices of cheese before going to bed. Sometimes during the day I may eat some peanuts - or some fruit - or a couple of pieces of chocolate if I am driving (not recommended but I am guarding against HYPO whilst driving) - I am of course retired.

Try RELAXING and have a worry free day.
 
Kyambala said:
But don't go to bed feeling hungry. that could bring on a night HYPO.
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@mazza 2 is a diet only type 2 diabetic. She will not get a dangerous hypo, at any time.
Kyambala said:
TEST ONLY ONCE PER DAY - then get on with your life and let the BS take care of themselves.
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this is bad advice, especially when starting out and learning what foods affect your own blood sugar levels and what is safe for an individual to eat.
 
Kyambala said:
The important thing is your HbA1c test every 6 months. That will tell you how your average BS is behaving.
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And we all know about the fallacy of average. The HbA1c is not a measure of how well controlled we are on a daily basis. It does not pick up the dangerous roller coaster swings that we try to avoid. Someone with a lot of highs and a lot of lows can have the same HbA1c as someone with lovely gentle waves and no nasty spikes or drops.
 
Thank you all for your comments. It's quite confusing (I'm still a newbie) to know what to do for the best some times. I appreciate what works for one person doesn't always work for another. The reason I took the advice of testing frequently is because it makes sense to me so that I can avoid foods which will cause a higher spike than is regarded safe. It gets annoying when you sometimes eat the same foods and for some reason you get a high reading or you cannot think of a reason. I'm sure as time goes on it will get a little easier. What is confusing to me is that a lot of people say fasting will eventually give you lower readings, but I find if I don't eat in the morning my blood sugars keep rising. Will the rise stop eventually or will it only stop if I eat something. Also, as I'm not trying to lose weight, would fasting be a bad idea. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks everyone.
 
I depends on what your liver does. I have done the occasional fast and been fine, but if i dont eat in the mornings my liver dumps every few hours, giving me higher figure.

I think, at this point in your diabetic journey, its best to keep it simple and take your time. Do something for a month, minimum, dont keep chopping and changing, give your body time to adapt to something.

The morning rise tops eventually, it doesn't keep going up and up, you use the glucose your liver has dumped, and then, if you dont eat, it dumps some more. You will not be harmed by this. Type 2's still have some regulation, thats why we dont get dangerous hypo's like type 1s.
 
Hey @mazza 2 good to see that you are trying to sort things out for yourself and realizing that "one size does not fit all"! It can be very frustrating like you say getting different readings from the same food - it seems like one needs to be tweaking things all the time and that is annoying but necessary!

Your Morning fasting blood sugar is the last to get down to what you want as a "normal" level for you. Some people find it takes weeks, even months for it to settle into a decent rythym. I don't even test mine anymore as it is annoying!! I just always make sure I have my coffee with cream and a small amount of protein as adding carbs in the morning don't sit well with my sugars later in the morning! Some people, like @Resurgam, find that eating a good breakfast and then another meal later in the day works well. I think a few carbs are added to that first meal, but not sure....hopefully Resurgam will reply

Keep at it - just remember to breathe and take your time figuring things out.....some info needs to be processed more slowly and then acted on or not....don't feel you have to get everything perfect in two months or whatever!! I think if you make sure you have enough fat and protein you should be okay weight wise....others will have opinions, I'm sure!! Blessings/L
 
mazza 2 said:
What is confusing to me is that a lot of people say fasting will eventually give you lower readings, but I find if I don't eat in the morning my blood sugars keep rising.
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mazza 2 said:
Also, as I'm not trying to lose weight, would fasting be a bad idea.
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I only eat in a 6 or 7 hour window every day. Last meal starts at about 7pm. My next meal starts about 1-15pm the next day.
However, I do have to have a decaff coffee with double cream as soon as I get up before doing much else and find this stops my levels from rising. They never have risen significantly, but every little counts.

I also don't want to lose any weight, but fasting for 18 hours apart from the coffee and cream (and a cup of tea mid morning) has not had any effect at all on my weight. What it may have done is give my pancreas a good rest and stopped unnecessary insulin release, which in turn helps reduce insulin resistance.
 
lucylocket61 said:
@mazza 2 is a diet only type 2 diabetic. She will not get a dangerous hypo, at any time.

this is bad advice, especially when starting out and learning what foods affect your own blood sugar levels and what is safe for an individual to eat.
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Sorry "lUCYLOCKET" - I was getting HYPOS when I was on tablets. On one occasion I had to be rushed to hospital.because of a HYPO. I have been type 2 for 22 years. Now that I am on Insulin I have much better control.

I have found that BS goes high if you are worrying about BS - so my Doctor advised me to STOP TESTING - and guess what - they settled down. There are lots of little things that can force your BS up - trying hard to keep them down can be one of them.

Trying hard to get enough exercise is another - it makes you hungry so you snack and up goes your BS.

A quiet routine without stress does wonders for your HbA1c.

Let us wait and see what the experiment does to her HbA1c and then criticise me if you must.

Have a nice day.
 

Hello Bluetit - I agree, but let us deal with one problem at a time - the person in question is a worrier and under a lot of stress - let us try lowering her stress levels and see if that affects her BS.

IF that does not work we can try something else. The idea is to HELP HER.

I have received a lot of help from this Forum - generally speaking most people have been there - we speak out of our own experience - but let us take things one step at a time - too much information is confusing.

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK.
 

I repeat:

Mazza 2 is a DIET ONLY type 2, she is NOT on medicine which can cause hypos of the dangerous sort.
 
Thank you for that advice. I might try that for a week and see how how I go. It would be good if it helps with insulin resistance which is what my aim is. Can I ask how much double cream you put in your coffee. Thanks
 
As an example as another diet-only type 2, I have to eat in the morning or my BG goes up and up and doesn’t stabilize till midday ish. I can’t manage to eat breakfast before I walk the kids to school, but I do know that on weekends when that doesn’t happen, there’s a much shorter time for me between getting up and eating and hence my ‘pre breakfast number’ starts a lot lower.

If I have a carb-free breakfast, my 2hr difference readings are always in the minus numbers.
Eg,
7:30 wake up BG 6.5, then coffee with cream
9:00 BG 8.6, maybe scrambled eggs, mushrooms, bacon
11:00 BG 7.0

But, if breakfast includes 2 slices of HiLo toast too (a mere 10g carbs add on!), the 11:00 reading would be around 10.6

That difference means it takes much longer to finally get to under 7 numbers... which is why my morning eggs now miss their toast ;(

I’m not sure if that info helps at all? For me, I can have loads of cream in my coffee and it makes no difference at all. Milk, on the other hand, makes quite a big difference to me.

I used to panic a lot about my morning numbers, especially when I saw people posting much lower numbers. Now I’m much more content about it, as everything usually resolves itself. But I only know that from testing before and after every meal. I’ve given up the early morning testing... as that would just stress me out... but not enough to make me get out of bed earlier!
 
mazza 2 said:
Thank you for that advice. I might try that for a week and see how how I go. It would be good if it helps with insulin resistance which is what my aim is. Can I ask how much double cream you put in your coffee. Thanks
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I don't actually measure it. I tip the tub and slurp some out, twice. I can tell by the colour of the coffee if I have enough. Not at all scientific, but I haven't needed to count anything for a long time now.
 
That's very helpful, my blood sugars also keep rising until I eat and I'm not great at wanting to eat as soon as I wake up. I like to have my cup of tea first. I'm going to try coffee with cream on waking and the test just before breakfast in about an hour after the coffee, just to see if it stops the rise. It's a strange thing sometimes as on Friday when I had to accompany my sister to the hospital for her operation, I had to get up at 5.30am in the morning and my blood sugars were only 5.6. Normally, when I get up about 8am my sugars are always in the mid 6's. Maybe I need to start my day earlier!!!
 
My body knows my routine and dumps glucose (as far as I can tell) about 20 mins before I fully wake up. So on Friday you changed your routine and caught the liver dump on the hop. If you regularly got up at that time, the liver dump would probably still happen.

I hope all went well for your sister.
 
Well, in a way that's good as I don't think I could get up at that time every day lol. My sister is home now but in a lot of pain. Unfortunately, she can't take the strong painkiller as she reacts to them. She's due for another operation in about 4 weeks time. She still looks beautiful to me, but because the skin cancer had invaded into the bone of her nose and the tumour which was removed was on the bridge of her nose, it's going to take some time to reconstruct her face. I'm sure it will all turn out o.k, and thank you for asking.
 
lucylocket61 said:
I repeat:

Mazza 2 is a DIET ONLY type 2, she is NOT on medicine which can cause hypos of the dangerous sort.
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Hello "lucylocket" - point taken - but "Mazza" needs to lower her stress levels and it looks like from her latest Post about her sister that her stress levels are going to be high for a long time. I wish her all the best. Thank you for your post.
 
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