New Libre 2 Plus sensor readings

Hi All,

Thanks to the great advice on this forum I have got a two week trial from Libre.

I have installed it this afternoon and have got readings which is good.

It was 6.4 mmol at 5pm and then I ate a meal of minced beef and salad (lettuce, tomatoes, onions, peppers and salad cream (low fat one)).
It spiked at 7.1 mmol and has now (1 hour and 11 minutes since) gone down to 5.9 mmol.

From reading up on it, it seems to be that this is a non-diabetic response. Is this not what should happen and that it goes to 7.1, my body produces the insulin and then it goes right back down?

I have lost 6 stone since I was diagnosed and do a lot more walking etc. I am now 13 stone which is slightly overweight. My initial diagnosis was in Jan 2023 when I was 110 h1abc, within 6 months it was down to 70, then 52, then 48 and now 38.

Is it possible that my body is working normally again? or am I just hoping for a miracle?

I'm going to have a grab bag packet of crisps tonight to see what happens.

Thanks for the reply.

The thing is though, it spiked at 7.1 so I did have some sugar (the mince was in gravy) and then came back down to 4.6 mmol within 1 hour and 45 minutes. I'm now eating the big bag of crisps and will see what happens.

I ate the grab bag of crisps 2 hours ago which had 60g of carbs in it. I was 6.1 at 70 minues and then it dropped. Just checked now and it is 6.2 mmol.

Haha, I'm at a friends house and to test it we looked at the highest amount of carbs in a bag of crisps she had.

They are Doritos Zingy Salt & Vinegar 70g bag which says on the packet it is 60g per 100g (that had confused me a bit, haha). By my calculations it is actually 42g of carbs.


I totally agree about going down the same track again would be back to square 1 again pretty quickly, but I will not be doing that. However, it would be really nice to actually be able to go out for a meal again every now and then. At the moment I only ever eat what I have made myself to make sure there was not too many carbs.

I've been invited for a meal at a toby carvery tomorrow lunch so I'm going to see what figures I get then.

I had my breakfast this morning at 8am and the readings were a lot higher, haha. My hope of a miracle was short lived, haha.
I had two slices of toast (wholemeal bread containg 20g of carbs), margarine and 4 eggs.

Within minutes the readings started going up and by 8.30am it peaked at 9.1 mmol. At 8.55 I was 6.8 mmol and now at 9:20 I am 6.1 mmol. I'm presuming that's pretty bad to go up so high when I didn't have many carbs?

It's now down to 5.9 mmol 2 hours and 15 minutes since eating. I do like this monitor, really easy to use.

Ok, that was fun.

I had the Toby Carvery. I had three large spoons of mashed potato, 2 roast potatoes in animal fat, carrots, turkey, gravy and mint sauce.

My readings spiked at 11.2 mmol 55 minutes after eating. It then came back down, one hour and 30 after the meal it was 8.3 and then exactly 2 hours after it had gone down to 3.4 mmol and I got a audible warning to say that was too low - I was in the car at that point so I couldn't eat anything. It went back up to 3.9 mmol 5 minutes later and then hovered around that for anoth 20 minutes before returning to 4. I ate a small penguin chocolate bar (all someone had in their bag) and within about 15 minutes I was back to 4.8 mmol and that is what I am now.

Obviously the 11.2 mmol is too high really - but I did eat quite a lot of potato. However, does this mean insulin then kicked in and rapidly came down but went too far? I take it that is really bad?

Obviously I will not be eating that sort of meal for quite a while again, and next time I would just have the roast potatoes and no mash potatoes.

Any commenting on this would be appreciated. It is all very new to me, the CGM, but I am finding it very interesting so far. I now plan to go back to the food I like (the low in carbs stuff, meat, salad instead of chips, eggs etc.) and see if things go back to normal. I then plan to eat, say a bit of ice cream one night, a small chocolate bar another night. Does this sound like a good idea? just to see what really raises my mmol and what doesn't.

Incidently, it brought up a sensor error as it went down to 3.4 so quickly. It said it was just checking things and making sure the device was ok and to check back in 10 minutes. Sure enough, it came back up 10 minutes later - I wonder if it was because it dropped so quickly that it thought there might be a fault?

Antje77 said:

Because interstitial fluid lags behind blood glucose a bit, the sensor won't give you numbers at a very steep drop.

Sensors are very useful to find patterns and trends, they're not that useful for absolute numbers, especially not with quick drops and rises. So I wouldn't believe that 3.4 reading without a fingerprick to confirm, you may have treated a hypo that wasn't there.

According to your profile, you're on metformin only, is this still correct?
Metformin is not a drug associated with hypoglyceamia, and I'm assuming you didn't have symptoms of a hypo.
Have you ever had a hypo that got you in trouble before you tried the Libre?
I'm sure you've eaten similar meals, not knowing what your BG was, and nothing ever happened.
When not on hypo inducing medication, the body is quite good at correcting a slight low, and dipping into the mid to high 3's is not unusual for non diabetics, it isn't a problem.

The reason that 4 is the cut off point is because of some built in safety for insulin users, a bit of a buffer between being perfectly fine and dropping on the floor. Glucose meters and sensors were developed with those people in mind.

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Hi, thanks very much for the reply it is so helpful. It's still a bit of an unknown minefield for me even after being diagnosed for two years.

Yes, I am still only on Metformin but have dropped down to 2 tablets a day instead of 4 about a month ago. I spoke to my diabetic nurse who was happy for me to completely come off Metformin as my H1bac is down to 38 (was originally 110 in Jan 2023) but I thought maybe just cutting down first was a good idea. Since I've cut down I now never get diarrhea at all - it was constant when I took 4 tablets.

As far as I know I have never had a hypo at all. The problem with me is that none of the diabetes has ever made me feel ill which is a bit annoying. If I felt ill then I would know something was happening.

Thanks for explaining the hypo stuff, I guess it doesn't really affect me with being type 2 and only taking metformin. Nothing really happened much after eating the chocolate bar - I went up to 5.4 mmol and that was it. I've since eaten a 70g bag of crisps (43g carbs) this afternoon and I went up to 6.6 mmol but that seems to be about it.