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One Teaspoon of Sugar - what's your BG like before and after?

Cocosilk

Well-Known Member
Messages
818
Location
Australia
Type of diabetes
Gestational
Treatment type
Insulin
Before you read this, if you are easily triggered by food talk and will be tempted to eat something naughty, click away now.

I have quite a sweet tooth and am slowly getting used to not eating sweet things like I was. Going cold turkey for a month after a diagnosis of gestational diabetes has made it easier to appreciate the natural sweetness in vegetables and makes the naughty sweet things taste sickening, which I am happy about. But sometimes I just feel like making a low-carb nut cake, eg. hazelnuts, eggs and a tiny bit of sugar. I'm still confused about whether sugar, or honey is worse (sucrose vs fructose I guess?) for your blood glucose levels. I've only heard from the Diet Doctor spiels that fructose is stored only in the liver so if you have impaired fasting levels, fructose could well be worse than sucrose. Have I understood that correctly? Has anyone else read anything about it?

Anyway, I have been experimenting today doing my before and after readings when I am eating something with a small amount of added sugar. The hazelnut cake I made today had 4 teaspoons of sugar in total so if I ate two small pieces in a two hour period, I probably had a total of one teaspoon of sugar. My BG was very normal beforehand after eating only salad with a bit of meat and cheese so my before was only around 5.0 mmol. At one hour after the first portion of cake (with probably only 1/2 teaspn sugar), I was 5.6. So I had a second slice (told you, sweet tooth), and then an hour later I was still only around 5.3 mmol.

An hour and a half after eating salmon and 1/2 cup of rice, on the other hand, I was 6.2. And the other day a couple of hours after eating corn chips, dip and an almond milk with honey it in, I was 9.9 mmol.

So I'm just wondering, rice does seem a healthier option if you are going to have any carbs, but if a teaspoon of sugar here and there doesn't give you too much of a spike, do you continue consuming sugar in homemade goods? Would honey be better?
I recently tried Stevia in something and decided artificial sweeteners not only leave a bad after taste, but will more likely allow my sweet tooth habit to remain in full force as the tendency is to keep things as sweet as before. But really, that after taste, I'd rather have something natural in tiny proportions if I can do it.

I guess the last concern is, if sugar is what attaches to LDL cholesterol and causes it to stick in your arteries, is that a case for using honey or fruit as a sweetener and lean more towards fructose than sucrose if I'm going to treat myself to something a bit sweet?
 
Well, 1 teaspoon of sugar is about 5 grams of carbs and 1/2 cup of rice over 20. And I guess there were a lot more carbs in the corn chips. So it would be expected to make your bg go higher.

I never heard of sugar attaching to LDL cholesterol and making it stick in your arteries, but I admit that I do not know a lot about cholesterol.

I can't check out your profile to see if you've read @daisy1 info sheet already, so I tagged her and she will put it here.

May I ask you the recipe of your hazelnut cake? It didn't make your bg go up by much and it sounds yummy
 
Still not confident enough to willingly experiment on my body like that........even if it is just a spoon of sugar. Just think that if anything went wrong subsequently.......even something unrelated........I'd be constantly blaming myself for being complacent/blase?
 
On the LDL cholesterol part of your question, glucose can oxidise LDL making it toxic, when it gets under the endothelial area within the arterial wall - not good. Think of a block of iron which is exposed to water, the effect this has compared to water on stainless steel.

Cholesterol is a complex area, as it about context. LDL tends not to be a problem if Trigs are low and HDL high (and insulin and blood pressure are low), context is so important.
 

But Traceymac, when you think about the seemingly innocuous things, many contain a darn sight more than a teaspoon of sugar, most fruit for example, an apple has about 5 teaspoons!
 
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There are a couple of things to think about here. Firstly, carb creep.
Then there is the fact that under normal circumstances the human body holds about 5g (roughly a teaspoon) of glucose at a time. This is apart from glycogen stores. A non Diabetic will sort this out quick smart. So a teaspoon of sucrose (table sugar is sucrose, sucrose is made up of one molecule of fructose and one of glucose) doubles the amount of glucose in the body.
The glucose will go straight into the blood stream provoking an insulin response. The fructose will go to the liver to be stored there as fat. (If fructose is eaten by way of fruit then a tiny bit will be changed into glucose, another small amount will be carried through to the gut with the fibre and the rest, the bulk, will go to the liver).

That was a long winded way of saying there are two things we cannot measure, the fructose that ends up in the liver and the insulin response. So, is it worth it? That is a personal choice.
My own choice is that my body knows what to do with sugar, albeit badly, but with regard to sweeteners my body may struggle to deal with the chemical make up. So, I have decided that a treat of something sweet once in a while is ok but once in a while equates to three or four times a year.
 
This is really interesting. As a type one wearing a glucose sensor, I can tell you that one three gram dextrose tablet raises my bg by 0.6mmol. But that’s just me, your mileage may vary
 
KK123 said:
But Traceymac, when you think about the seemingly innocuous things, many contain a darn sight more than a teaspoon of sugar, most fruit for example, an apple has about 5 teaspoons!
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YeAh but it just seems a bit reckless to just swallow it as an experiment........rather than enjoyment.......probably a weird mindset but hey.....that's me
 
Mel dCP said:
This is really interesting. As a type one wearing a glucose sensor, I can tell you that one three gram dextrose tablet raises my bg by 0.6mmol. But that’s just me, your mileage may vary
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If you were to add 3 grams of glucose to a 5 litre bucket of blood the concentration of glucose would increase by 60mg/dL which equates to 3.3 mmol/L. This fortunately doesn't happen in the human body. My guess is that the glucose reaches the bloodstream slowly enough for the body to use it or store it. This assumes that insulin is doing it's job. I don't know what happens with a Type 1, any ideas @Mel dCP ?
 
The problem with sugar is not so much the glucose burden - bread is often worse - but rather its direct contribution to hepatic insulin resistance thanks to the 50% fructose content that no one sees on their glucose meter. So while x amount of sugar my be tolerable on day 1, the impact on insulin sensitivity might mean that the same amount of sugar isn’t quite so tolerable on day 2.

Sugar really is poison. Especially to insulin resistant diabetics. My advice is to avoid it regardless of anything, but of course everyone is free to make their own choices.
 
It would be transported into the cells and used/stored, courtesy of the insulin. A healthy human typically has just 5g glucose circulating at any one time, so unless we have far too much insulin in our bodies, we type ones don’t actually need the vast amount (15g fast carbs followed by 15g slow) to correct a hypo as we’re told. Basal testing while fasting is key to establish the correct amount of background insulin to use.

If I take a 3g tablet, I can watch it hit my bloodstream in 15 minutes on my CGM feed - and that has a ten minute delay from actual fingerprick readings. So it’s there and in my blood in five minutes. I tend to crunch and suck the bits, to make it absorb quickly across the mucous membranes in my mouth. For a hypo I’d take two and turn my pump off for half an hour.
 
So even though the glucose is in your bloodstream within 5 minutes, that is long enough for it to be used or stored, amazing really. When you take the 6g of glucose what would your BG typically be before and after? Could you take say 12 grams of table sugar instead the 2 dextrose tablets, would that have the same result?
 
If my bg drops to 4.2 on a work day, (I’ll run it down to 3.8 if I’m chilling at home and not driving), I’ll take my two tabs and suspend the insulin for 30 minutes. I’ll be at 5-5.5mmol in 15-20 minutes and pretty much stay there until something else happens to affect my levels (food, insulin, stress, illness, hormones, exercise etc). I’ve occasionally used table sugar for a hypo in a pinch, and two heaped teaspoons (so probably 12g) has exactly the same effect.

Of course sometimes my body doesn’t do what it’s told, but that’s T1 life for you. Where every day is a science experiment and most of it’s on fire
 
Thanks, that's very interesting, you are indeed a science experiment. As Type 2 with only the occasional finger prick test to go on, these things are just theory, so it's good to hear from someone who really knows.
 
Mr_Pot said:
Thanks, that's very interesting, you are indeed a science experiment. As Type 2 with only the occasional finger prick test to go on, these things are just theory, so it's good to hear from someone who really knows.
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I guess the difference is that I don’t have insulin resistance, so it could be that the same amount of glucose would raise a type 2 more than it would me. I guess a comparison could only be made with a T2 who is completely dependent on exogenous insulin and no longer makes any of their own. I only take 20-30 units a day, where as I believe someone in that position would be taking several hundred? You’ve got me thinking now, always dangerous...
 
Your exogenous insulin works, it gets the glucose where it is supposed to go (in theory, if not always easy in practice). With insulin resistance the glucose can hang about and hang about for ages which is why less glucose from fewer carbs is just plain common sense in my book.
 

Indeed. A type 2 who is endogenous deficient is still resistant to exogenous. Totally different ballgame to an otherwise metabolically ‘healthy’ autoimmune diabetic.
 
Cocosilk said:
One Teaspoon of Sugar - what's your BG like before and after?
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I cannot see the point of this, why test before ingesting a spoon full of carbohydrates, then testing a couple of hours later to see the result. :***:
 

The original recipe was one that my Croatian grandmother used to make and it was basically walnuts, eggs and sugar, and that's it:
250 grams walnuts (you'll need a nut grinder that can make them nice and fluffy), but I often use ready-ground Hazelnut meal.
6 eggs
6 tablespoons sugar (but I reduced this to 4 teaspns and it's mildly sweet and yummy enough. You could certainly use an artificial sweetener instead. I don't like the aftertaste.)

Preheat oven to 160C (150C in fan forced)
Separate eggs. Beat egg whites and sugar till it forms soft peaks.
Slowly stir through ground nuts.

When I use hazelnut meal, I sometimes add a couple of tablespns of cocoa powder as well to give a choc/hazelnut cake (a few more carbs so watch that one but it's a nice combination.)

Bake for around 40 - 50 mins (middle rack) (when I start to smell it, it's usually done but you can stick a knife in and when it comes out clean it's done.) .

On the second day, serve it with cream if it starts to dry out.

I consider this cake more of a meal. More of a sweet nutty omlette. I still think with half to one teaspn of sugar in a small slice of cake, and served with cream that it's going to cause less of a bg spike than a bowl of cereal would.
 
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Fair enough too. I think I want to eventually get over my sweet tooth altogether. You can only have your head in the sand for so long really, can't you?
 
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