New to all this - how do these first set of readings look?

[Daisy1234]

Hubby is Type2. Started today with blood glucose tester, how do these look? We have no idea what we should be aiming for!

Morning, 30 mins after waking - 6.5
2 hrs after breakfast, (2 x weetabix) - 5.3
2 hrs after lunch (bacon, mushrooms, scrambled eggs) - 6.7
2 hrs after tea & 2 biscuits - 5.8

Thanks all!

 

[Fenn]

Hi, well what you should really be aiming for is to stop eating sugary foods, ie. biscuits, also weetabix is not ideal as it’s very carb heavy, carbs are sugar by a different name.

On saying that, the numbers look pretty good so I assume his insulin resistance may not be too bad, this is good news as it means your diagnosis could be used as a warning and opportunity to stop things before they progress.

You are aiming to keep numbers around 4.5 without food, no more that 2 points over your before food reading- two hours after food.

This is my uneducated opinion, based purely on my experience and research from the internet, my wife has set a helpful president of ignoring everything I say. this is assuming he does not take insulin or other blood lowering meds (except metformin). If other drugs are taken, the numbers change due to hypo risk.

Best of luck, keep reading.

 

[KennyA]

Hi Daisy.

You really need the numbers before eating as well as the numbers at the two hour mark. That shows you what the impact has been. I found that with some things the BG rise and fall had taken place within two hours and with others it took longer, so I also fiddled around with testing at +1,+2 and +3 hours - but you need to know where you're starting from.

For example, I'm happy with a BG reading anywhere in the 4s or 5s before eating, and am usually somewhere in the 5s or occasionally 6s after. That is consistently resulting in low-normal HbA1cs around 36-38.

Both Weetabix (and the milk) and biscuits are carb-heavy, where bacon/egg/mushroom isn't. The after meal figures you're reporting look OK in themselves - they're not high - with the rider as above that there's no way of telling what they were before eating. Other things do affect BG levels (exercise, stress, illness, outside temperature etc) although food generally has the biggest impact.

Morning readings tend to be high because of a thing called "dawn phenomenon" where your liver helpfully dumps a load of glucose into your bloodstream as you wake up. This tends to stay high even when other readings fall, and is usually the last reading to come down. It seems to take livers a bit of time to adapt.

 

[Daisy1234]

Hi, well what you should really be aiming for is to stop eating sugary foods, ie. biscuits, also weetabix is not ideal as it’s very carb heavy, carbs are sugar by a different name.

On saying that, the numbers look pretty good so I assume his insulin resistance may not be too bad, this is good news as it means your diagnosis could be used as a warning and opportunity to stop things before they progress.

You are aiming to keep numbers around 4.5 without food, no more that 2 points over your before food reading- two hours after food.

This is my uneducated opinion, based purely on my experience and research from the internet, my wife has set a helpful president of ignoring everything I say. this is assuming he does not take insulin or other blood lowering meds (except metformin). If other drugs are taken, the numbers change due to hypo risk.

Best of luck, keep reading.

Thanks, we are still learning - and finishing off the Christmas biscuits.....

 

[Daisy1234]

Hi Daisy.

You really need the numbers before eating as well as the numbers at the two hour mark. That shows you what the impact has been. I found that with some things the BG rise and fall had taken place within two hours and with others it took longer, so I also fiddled around with testing at +1,+2 and +3 hours - but you need to know where you're starting from.

For example, I'm happy with a BG reading anywhere in the 4s or 5s before eating, and am usually somewhere in the 5s or occasionally 6s after. That is consistently resulting in low-normal HbA1cs around 36-38.

Both Weetabix (and the milk) and biscuits are carb-heavy, where bacon/egg/mushroom isn't. The after meal figures you're reporting look OK in themselves - they're not high - with the rider as above that there's no way of telling what they were before eating. Other things do affect BG levels (exercise, stress, illness, outside temperature etc) although food generally has the biggest impact.

Morning readings tend to be high because of a thing called "dawn phenomenon" where your liver helpfully dumps a load of glucose into your bloodstream as you wake up. This tends to stay high even when other readings fall, and is usually the last reading to come down. It seems to take livers a bit of time to adapt.

Thanks. Trouble with the weekend is we got up late and then breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, were each pretty much 2 hrs apart. So the readings at 2hrs were the after meal readings and pre-meal for the next one. Not ideal but we are still learning. He can't test at work, due to nature of the work and environment he works in (can't say much more than that) so we will replicate a work day at the weekend and see how that is. I've told him to speak to someone else at work who is Type 2 and get some advice there too.

 

[Goonergal]

He can't test at work, due to nature of the work and environment he works in

Reasonable adjustments ought to be made, but in the absence of those, I’d suggest a 2 week free trial of the freestyle Libre - only requires scanning once every 8 hours and the occasional finger stick to see how the readings compare to the meter. You’d get a lot more information than through finger sticks alone.

 

[Fenn]

Thanks, we are still learning - and finishing off the Christmas biscuits.....

Yes lots to learn, I’m still learning, you have found a good place for it, very nice folks here.

As part of the treatment I think you should send me those biscuits nom nom nom