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Questions about BG maybe stupid

T

Talya2022

Well-Known Member
Messages
92
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Non-insulin injectable medication (incretin mimetics)
So is it important to keep blood sugar under 6 when not eating?
Is it important to keep it as steady as possible? Is it ok if it fluctuates between 3.5 and 6 when not eating?
What should I do (if anything) if it goes under 4?
What can I do if it hits 8?
Should I exclude all food that makes me go above 8?
Thanks so much! I haven’t had any information from my GP just that I’m diabetic 2!
 
Hi, I have no idea what incretin mimetic are so you really should ignore the following

under 6 when not eating? If you can, that would be nice.
steady as possible? Yes.
fluctuating between 3.5 & 6 is fine assuming your meds do not lower your blood sugars then 4 & 6 is safer.
under 4? Nothing if meds don’t artificially lower bg.
hits 8? Don’t eat that again, go for a walk/ light exercise or just wait.

Hope I helped (first time for everything)
 
Fenn said:
Hi, I have no idea what incretin mimetic are so you really should ignore the following

under 6 when not eating? If you can, that would be nice.
steady as possible? Yes.
fluctuating between 3.5 & 6 is fine assuming your meds do not lower your blood sugars then 4 & 6 is safer.
under 4? Nothing if meds don’t artificially lower bg.
hits 8? Don’t eat that again, go for a walk/ light exercise or just wait.

Hope I helped (first time for everything)
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Thanks so much!
Why is the upper limit set at 8?
 
A cereal bar is worse for my bg than a bowl of pasta!
 
Both very bad, the upper limit isn’t 8, it’s as low as you can manage, the answer would have been a yes if you had said 10
 
Talya2022 said:
A cereal bar is worse for my bg than a bowl of pasta!
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How many carbs in each? There will certainly be more sugars in the cereal bar than in the Pasta. If the pasta is not fresh made, but made, cooled and kept overnight in fridge before being re-heated it will have a much lover BG effect than if it were consumed freshly made.
 
Carbs are sugar, sugar is a carb, the less you put in, the less you will have, the lower your number the better = eat less carbs :)

This is my uneducated opinion, always refer back to ignoring me, it’s wise Lol.
 
Talya2022 said:
So is it important to keep blood sugar under 6 when not eating?
Is it important to keep it as steady as possible? Is it ok if it fluctuates between 3.5 and 6 when not eating?
What should I do (if anything) if it goes under 4?
What can I do if it hits 8?
Should I exclude all food that makes me go above 8?
Thanks so much! I haven’t had any information from my GP just that I’m diabetic 2!
Click to expand...
Hi Talya2022

I'm a T2 on no medication, so you need to read this with that in mind. I think my answer to a lot of your questions would be "it depends" on the context - was it a reading two hours after eating? a first thing in the morning reading? etc. There are two big sources of the glucose in your bloodstream - one is food and the other is your liver. The problem is that while you can generally control what you eat, you really have very little chance of doing anything short-term about your liver. It will change, but livers seem to be slow learners.

A lot of things can provoke your liver into making your blood glucose rise and fall - apart from food. Heat, exercise, illness, time of day, adrenalin/stress - there's a long list. My fasting BG eventually came down under 6 after several months on VLC: that was just my liver taking time to adapt.

I'd be really surprised if I didn't get daily BG fluctuations (I'd think 3.5-6 would be OK) when not eating, for the reasons above. Normally when my BG goes low my liver just dumps some extra glucose, I don't need to do anything. This happens to me most mornings about 4-5am.

I also don't think I particularly need to do anything if I get a BG reading of 8, but again it depends. I know that a small milky latte will take me from 5.4 to 9.5 in about 20 mins. I'll be back at 5.4ish after an hour. I think that's OK for me.

The point about me testing is not to see "how high I go", but to establish how quickly my system deals with the added glucose in whatever I ate, and returns me to baseline. That said, if I wasn't back within two points of where I started and below 7.8 after two hours, I'd think seriously about totally dropping whatever food it was.
 
KennyA said:
That said, if I wasn't back within two points of where I started and below 7.8 after two hours
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Do you mean “within two points”?
To me, as an engineer, that means “two decimal points” and our BG does not stay that stable in 2 hours. If anyone (whether they had diabetes or not) had a BG of 5.1, for example, when they started eating a meal, I would be surprised if it was between 4.9 and 5.3 after two hours.
I assume you mean “within 2”. For example, two hours after eating the meal above, I think you are looking for a BG no higher than 7.1.

Sorry to be pedantic but if this is misinterpreted, it could lead to unnecessary confusion and anxiety.
 
In Response said:
Do you mean “within two points”?
To me, as an engineer, that means “two decimal points” and our BG does not stay that stable in 2 hours. If anyone (whether they had diabetes or not) had a BG of 5.1, for example, when they started eating a meal, I would be surprised if it was between 4.9 and 5.3 after two hours.
I assume you mean “within 2”. For example, two hours after eating the meal above, I think you are looking for a BG no higher than 7.1.

Sorry to be pedantic but if this is misinterpreted, it could lead to unnecessary confusion and anxiety.
Click to expand...
I'm not an engineer, and I'm simply quoting the normal advice given to people testing before and two hours after eating. If your team gets three points at the weekend, that's whole numbers to me, not decimal points. If I'd meant decimal points, I'd have said decimal points. I guess it's what we're used to.


Incidentally, I regularly see the same BG or lower at the two hour point after eating.
 
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