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New, BG results odd?

Z

ZoeDingwall

Member
Messages
5
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Hiya,

I've been reading and soaking up all the newbie information for the past week, but this is my first post. Hello - nice to meet you!

I'm newly diagnosed type 2 (just a week) and advised by my Nurse and you good folks on here to go low carb. Not a problem - I'm getting on with it I've not gone very low carb to start with, and am eating around 120-130g a day while I see how I get on.

My Nurse would not give me a BG meter as I'm type 2, however it makes total sense to me to self monitor my BG levels to be aware of spikes etc and how each meal is affecting me. I went and bought one from ASDA and have been testing before and 2hrs after each meal as well as waking and bedtime.

So far so good, and I've had no big spikes over 2mmol/l at the 2 hour mark. I was rather pleased! However the last couple of days I've noticed something strange- if I have a V low carb meal (bacon and eggs for example) for lunch, my BG level at 2 hours has plummeted from what it was right before eating. I've had readings of 3.1 and 3.2 at the two hour mark for the past couple of days after lunch, and felt weird and shaky.

I've googled (a lot!) and can find info on reactive hypoglycemia, but this would seem to be caused by a carby meal, a spike, followed by a big drop. But as I'm eating non carby meals this doesn't really apply so I'm confused.

Do any of you lovely people have any idea why this is happening?

Thanks

Zoe
 
hey welcome here ZoeDingwall

a level of much under 4mmol like under 3.5 mmol I think is a hypo, and not the best level to be at... so at that level you can eat a little more carb maybe like half a piece of fruit or a half bisquit

it is usually not dangerous when one is not injecting insuline or taking insuline affecting medication. Do you take any insuline affecting medication ?

but if one feel so bad that one can faint from it , there is obviosly not anything goo in being that low..I think you really need to keep an eye on that and keep on measuring .. dont go to bed with a number under 5 mmol, and phone you GP or nurse and tell them of this problem as it is seldome in type 2 diabetics not on insuline or insuline affecting medication and they need to know that and that is by the way a very good reason to give you a meter to have control
 
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I'm no great expert on reactive hypoglycaemia, Zoe, but I'll tag @Brunneria who has first hand experience, and hopefully she'll be able tp help a bit. I'm not sure if she's around at the moment, but she does look in very regularly.
 
You rang?

It looks like you have done your research, @ZoeDingwall and you are right, RH is usually triggered by a carby spike, followed by a drop. So it looks like it might be helpful for you to do a bit of detailed note taking and testing for a while.

Are you on any medications? Even ones that aren't connected with diabetes? If so, I would have a good look at the info leaflets, and maybe do some online searches, and see if any of them have reported side effects of lowering blood glucose.

Also, if you keep a diary of what and when you ate, including carb amounts, and then test before, and after, as you have been doing. If you feel like burning through strips, you could test at 90 mins and 150 mins too, just til you understand what is going on.

You may see a pattern, a food type, exercise pattern, a time of day... see where I am going?

I realise it is a phaff, but it might be really helpful. And I agree, dipping to the low 3s like clockwork after food is no fun. What have you been doing to raise your blood glucose? A diabetic would use quick acting carbs, and that is good advice, but my experience of RH suggests that it is best to keep those quick acting carbs to very small amounts, otherwise an RHer might start off the spike and drop cycle all over again.

Hope this helps, and am very curious to hear how you get on!

I also wonder if you might find it useful to have another chat with your nurse. She is obviously aware of the benefits of LC, so she might be able to give you some guidance. And with the evidence of your meter, showing that you dip to the low 3s, hopefully they will start to do more investigations.
 
Aah thanks so much for your reply

I'm not on any medication at all, GP has mentioned starting metformin when I next see him, but wanted to test my kidney function first (I only have one) so that's why the week wait between diagnosis and starting any medication. I thought I'd get right on the ball in the meantime!

I'm using a similar app to My Fitness Pal to log all my food and even drinks too. No correlation food wise at the moment, but then it's only been a couple of days this has been happening. It's has been mid afternoon each time though after a low carb lunch.

To raise it, the first time my husband was eating oatcakes - so I scoffed one it didn't bring me up much but got me back into the mid 4 range. Today I had a handful of walnuts which had a similar effect. I didn't think it wise to go sugary as I thought that may send me in the wrong direction!

I'll speak to the GP on Tuesday and if he's not very forthcoming I'll ask to see my nurse again. In the meantime I guess it's just monitor closely and see!

Thanks for your reply, much appreciated
 
Not sure which meter you are using, but remember that despite their displays showing 0.1 increments, they really aren't that accurate. I've found the whole process (finger prick, strip variance, meter) seems accurate to about plus or minus 0.3/0.4 (by doing things like testing 3X in a row).
So 4 could mean 4, or it could mean 3.7, or 4.2, etc.

And for the future... I wouldn't rely on walnuts to raise glucose levels... it could have been your liver kicking in to give you a boost.
 
Aah, I see - thank you. What would be recommended please? I didn't want to have anything too sugary in case it sent me silly I'm still learning
 
Oh, and also - if that is the case with my levels coming up because of my liver, would that be a good thing or a bad thing. Should I just leave it to do it's thing and bring my levels up (so long as I don't feel rubbish) or would it be better to eat something?

Thanks v much
 
Diabetics usually use something like lucozade, jelly babies, glucose tablets, or similar, because they want to get glucose into the bloodstream as quickly as possible.

So you can try those. They don't really work for me though - several reasons. The last thing I want is to spike too high afterwards, and I am in awe of anyone who can stop at just one or two jellybabies. I would just eat the whole pack...
I would also crave the sweet carbs afterwards.

My hypo treatments tend to be something like a couple of swigs of milk from the fridge, a 9Bar (16 g carbs, of which a small number are sugary, and the rest come in slow release nuts), or some chocolate. 70% choc, because that is all I ever have in the house. Or in my handbag. But then, I am a definite RHer, with very different needs from a type 1 diabetic. The benefit of all of these for me is that they contain a small amount of quick release carbs, with a followup of much slower release that follows, allowing my blood glucose to stabilise rather than bouncing.

Ideally, I would follow any hypo treatment with a proper meal, because I always find my blood glucose levels are unstable and jangly for a while after a hypo. At least a day. Sometimes more. So once I treat the hypo I go uber low carb, with good filling LC meals (cooked breakfast, steak and salad, roast chicken and veg... anything from the dietdoctor.com website recipes would do) for a while, because I don't want to give my body an excuse to throw another wobbly. lol.
 

I don't know. I really don't. We each find different coping mechanisms.

You can say that yes, allowing your body to cope by itself is a good thing. And it is certainly better than falling into a habit of popping jellybabies a few hours after every meal. But allowing the body to 'cope' with a hypo is a pretty stressful thing. Stressful for the body, I mean. It has to go on High Alert, swamp the blood stream with stress hormones to trigger a release of glucose from the liver, and the consequences are the wobbliness and shakes, and feeling rough. RHers can cope with this for a while. But after weeks or months, there are longer term consequences, like weight gain (over treating hypos), hair trigger stress hormone release (my liver used to do its 'panic dump' far too early, and boy did it over-react after years of this), and nobody feels well when they regularly have stress hormones floating about. Tiredness, depression, etc. etc.

I would strongly urge you to try and work out what is causing these lows, and prevent them from happening in the first place. Or, failing that, work out when one is due, and have that oatcake, or 9Bar, or a couple of squares of 70% before you get the hypo symptoms. Much easier on your body and your mind, that way.
 
I tend to get a slump in mid afternoon now, which takes me back to my days at school and into my early 20s - I used to take a biscuit with me.
These days I find that I need to eat a small amount of carbs with every meal in order to keep my levels steady. It might put my Hba1c levels up, as I was dropping to lower and lower BG levels as each week went past until I realised that old familiar mid afternoon slump was back.
It helps, as I only eat twice a day, to eat earlier - in mid morning rather than at lunch time. This is the opposite of what many people do, having meals closer together and then fasting.
I think that each person has to sort out their schedule for best effect, as what is great for one makes another person miserable.
 
One thing that hasn't been mentioned is alcohol. I've found I drop a bit lower than perhaps I should if I've had a drink. Last couple of evenings I've been a bit below 4 mid evening. I don't feel hypo though and TBH I've been wondering if the batch of strips I'm using are just reading low even though in date, because if they are right then I have better control than I thought.

So maybe alcohol? If your liver is busy dealing with that it doesn't put so much glucose in the blood
 

some people can´t feel they are low at all

and if one is feeling okay and it doesn´t drop futher is is not really allways dangerous ... but if you start feeling dizzy or even like fainting or cold sweating and very ill there is nothing good in it even when not being really dangerous for ones brain like leding to brain damage... some even don´t feel it when they are around 2 mmol ---

BUT : when taking insuline or insuline affecting medications it can be very dangerous and also lead to brain damage and even death if it keeps lowering lower and lower... So if you take any of this kind of medication you need to take care as you cant know really at what time it will be fatal, it can also be fatal because some become halucinating or very foggy in thoughts and the moment where one cant take the right decision can be long passed and one can also fall an have head injury ...
 

The hormone dance is hugely complicated - certainly much more complicated that I attempt to understand.

My long term theory is that (in my case, and for whatever reason) my glucagon release is either inadequate, or is delayed, so that the insulin is not blocked/inhibited at the appropriate time. Since this only happens when I eat more carbs than is ideal, I believe that excess insulin starts the process. No way of testing my theory, with hormone tests, but it is bourne out, on my Libre screen, every time I eat quick release carbs, even in comparatively small amounts. Other low carb eating (in large amounts) does not do the same, so I am utterly convinced that 'low carbing' is NOT a contributor to RH, but is rather a way of preventing RH from happening. Not a cure, but a control.

The problem is made far, far worse, that very few doctors, and most endocrinologists don't believe RH exists. They focus on high bg, not low, and seem to miss the bigger picture. Unless they can find something like an insulinoma as a cause. There are a few endos who do recognise RH as more work is done on the subject, and the number is growing, but I am absolutely certain that thinking of, and approaching RH as being on the glucose intolerance spectrum is helpful, I am equally certain that people who approach it with a T1 or a T2 mindset are missing a very important part of the jigsaw.

Edited for clarity in the last para.
 
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As you have only be diagnosed a week, it is possible your body is producing too much insulin in expectation of higher carb meals. To add to the confusion two other meals will be higher in carbs

As you are easing yourself in, you could try spreading your carb allowance more evenly accross the day. Or having your no carb meal at breakfast.
 
Under 4 is a hypo
Eat some bread with your bacon and eggs or other carbs. I was eating salad for lunch and did not have any carbs in that meal so was told by a dietitian to eat carbs and egg and bacon has no carbs. If you suffer low sugar episodes buy your self a bottle of glucojuice or glucotabs which you can get in most chemist and some boots, the juice is amount of juice to put the sugar in to you blood inone go or the tabs eat about 3 of the to do the same. As for the meter, doctors don't want to give the out any more. My doctor won't give me a meter and I am on gliclaside which is a blood glucose lowering drug and do from time have hypos. Hope this help you
Kim
 
it is important to buy a meter no matter what they tell you, look around in this forum , we wouldn´t be that many with excellent control in here if we didn´t measure our blood glucose regulary and even daily in most cases ! I would say that is a fact
 
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