Newly diagnosed T2

[pattyhigh]

Hi everyone

On 12 March during a BUPA health check i was diagnosed with T2 diabetes, HBA1C 57.
It was a bit of a shock since on 22 January I was still in the pre diabetic range HBA1C 46. I have been under a lot of stress because of work and reached the burnout point.

I have been pre diabetic for 6 years, also high cholesterol, NAFLD .

Back in December 2025, I was prescribed mounjaro by an endocrinologist. Since I was going to do lots of travelling and also a bit fearful of the side effects of Mounjaro I kept postponing it.

So the day after I had my T2 diabetes diagnostics I took the plunge and had my first mounjaro dose.

I have not felt much of a difference and no side effects after 2 injections.

I also decided to get a Libre 2 CGM and I am really confused on the reading as so far I have been in Range for 99% of the time.

However I have noticed big glucose spikes (more than 2 points). I get these big spikes even after eating really healthy meals, with lots of vegetables and protein.

While not eating my glucose readings are 5.2-5.5. However because of the spikes after meals I am getting an average of 6.1

Anything that can be done to minimise the spikes ?

Thanks

 

[There is no Spoon]

big glucose spikes

Hi @pattyhigh there will be some one along shortly who can offer advice from personal experience the Libre and mounjaro injections.

When your newly diagnose there is so much to wrap your head round it can be a bit daunting. Years ago I saw a excellent Japanese documentary on Glucose Spikes.

The up- shot was eating the food on your plate in a specific order can lower the glucose spike you would typically get from that meal.

Lets take rice, vegetables and chicken.
First eat the vegetables = Carbs with fibre and takes a while to digest.
Next the chicken = Protein also takes a little longer to digest, even longer if consumed after veg/fibre .
Finally the rice = Carbs no fibre and is digested quickly. Leading to increased glucose spike unless it the final part of the meal and the previous veg & chicken are still being digested.

As with so many things what works for one person might not work for the next, but it requires so little effort to give it a try. With you Libre you will see the results for yourself straight away.

Hope this simple change works for you Patty.

 

[Melgar]

Hi and welcome @pattyhigh . I’m not on Mounjaro so I can’t speak about that, but I do use CGM devices.

They are very useful devices as they give you up-to-date information on what your blood sugars are doing. The Time-in Range (TIR) is very useful for looking at the bigger picture over a period of time, not so much on the day-to-day stuff. The graph feature is more useful.

What you are looking for, when reading your CGM graph is a smooth line as possible, without big rises in blood sugars. Of course, one will always get rises in blood sugars after eating, but one needs to keep these rises to a minimum by eating accordingly. If you get a steep rise in blood sugar then you know your body is struggling with the food you have just eaten - the amount of carbs, starches or sugars contained in that food.

Something to bear in mind, all carbs and starches are turned into sugar by your body.

Lowering your carb intake in most cases reduces blood sugars. We are all different, so what works for one person may not work for another. So identifying which foods don’t bump up your blood sugars will help. For instance I can eat waxy new potatoes without raising my blood sugars too high, but I can’t eat old fluffy Russet potatoes as my blood sugars go way up. Some people cannot eat waxy new potatoes with big rises. So we are all different. Try different foods to see what you can eat. Generally speaking lowering carbs is the way to go.

The TIR function on your CGM is good for looking at general patterns ( dependant on the range you set it at) but for day to day the 24 hr graph gives you a better idea of which foods you can eat and which foods send your blood sugars up.

Edited to add a sentence

 

[KennyA]

Hi everyone

On 12 March during a BUPA health check i was diagnosed with T2 diabetes, HBA1C 57.
It was a bit of a shock since on 22 January I was still in the pre diabetic range HBA1C 46. I have been under a lot of stress because of work and reached the burnout point.

I have been pre diabetic for 6 years, also high cholesterol, NAFLD .

Back in December 2025, I was prescribed mounjaro by an endocrinologist. Since I was going to do lots of travelling and also a bit fearful of the side effects of Mounjaro I kept postponing it.

So the day after I had my T2 diabetes diagnostics I took the plunge and had my first mounjaro dose.

I have not felt much of a difference and no side effects after 2 injections.

I also decided to get a Libre 2 CGM and I am really confused on the reading as so far I have been in Range for 99% of the time.

However I have noticed big glucose spikes (more than 2 points). I get these big spikes even after eating really healthy meals, with lots of vegetables and protein.

While not eating my glucose readings are 5.2-5.5. However because of the spikes after meals I am getting an average of 6.1

Anything that can be done to minimise the spikes ?

Thanks

Hi and welcome. The thing about blood glucose rising after eating - it's meant to do that, and it's perfectly normal. A rise of 2 mmol/l is not (imo) a spike of any kind. And averaging your fingerprick tests often doesn't really give you a lot of useful information. I'm going to attach a piece of research that demonstrates standard blood glucose rises after meals in normal (ie non-diabetic) people.

All digestable carbohydrate, which includes starches and sugars, is digested to glucose. So if your meal includes starches and sugars you will get glucose produced via digestion. The body will respond by releasing insulin in a two stage process, which should, over the next two hours or so, bring your blood glucose levels back roughly to where you were when you started. The peak glucose level is usually around 45 minutes after eating, although this can depend on the individual and what exactly you ate. The problem for those of us with T2 is often that we have a level of insulin resistance, so that although we are producing enough insulin, our body does not respond sufficiently well to it.

That's why the standard recommendation on blood glucose testing is to take a baseline reading immediately before you eat, and a second one two hours later. This is because the testing is not to see "how high you go". The process is actually testing for how well your insulin response dealt with the carbs in what you ate. If it hasn't fallen back to within 2mmol/l of the baseline reading after two hours, there were too many carbs for your system to deal with.

The solution that worked for me was to greatly reduce the amount of carbohydrate I ate. For the last five years I've been on around 20g a day. This seem to have allowed me to recover a fair amount of insulin sensitivity and my last diabetic level reading was in January 2020. No medication ever.

best of luck - questions are encouraged.

Continuous Glucose Monitoring Profiles in Healthy Nondiabetic Participants: A Multicenter Prospective Study - PMC

Use of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) is increasing for insulin-requiring patients with diabetes. Although data on glycemic profiles of healthy, nondiabetic individuals exist for older sensors, assessment of glycemic metrics with new-generation ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[pattyhigh]

Hi @pattyhigh there will be some one along shortly who can offer advice from personal experience the Libre and mounjaro injections.

When your newly diagnose there is so much to wrap your head round it can be a bit daunting. Years ago I saw a excellent Japanese documentary on Glucose Spikes.

The up- shot was eating the food on your plate in a specific order can lower the glucose spike you would typically get from that meal.

Lets take rice, vegetables and chicken.
First eat the vegetables = Carbs with fibre and takes a while to digest.
Next the chicken = Protein also takes a little longer to digest, even longer if consumed after veg/fibre .
Finally the rice = Carbs no fibre and is digested quickly. Leading to increased glucose spike unless it the final part of the meal and the previous veg & chicken are still being digested.

As with so many things what works for one person might not work for the next, but it requires so little effort to give it a try. With you Libre you will see the results for yourself straight away.

Hope this simple change works for you Patty.

Thank you so much!
Managed to find the documentary you mentioned online and I will be watching it very soon! Thank you!
I have read about the order to eat your food, but I tend to forget! Will try to be more mindful while eating!