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Reading

Jc3131

Well-Known Member
Messages
329
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
Hello everyone

Im after a bit advice/reassurance regarding my latest reading.

I have got my readings down from the high teens to below 10mmol. This morning before breakfast i was 7.8mmol. Just before lunch i felt light headed and a bit queasy so I did reading, it was 4.4mmol.

Is this a normal reading? Also will it be because my sugar levels have dropped so much in a relatively short space of time?

Cheers John
 
Assuming you are an unmedicated Type 2 4.4 is great.. you might feel a bit odd if you are not used to having blood sugars at those levels but after a while you will get used to them.
 
During the early months after diagnosis I went from a period of relatively stable blood glucose as my averages reduced gradually, and then I was suddenly dropping much lower quite quickly and having wobbly moments, even became disorientated walking to the bed in the dark.
I think that it is actually a good sign, that a stuck metabolism is beginning to restore some sort of normality - it could be that your breakfast is too high in carbs - I have to be careful to eat about 5 gm of carbs fairly early in the day to stay right, and it doesn't result in too much insulin being produced to push my blood glucose down, but I tried fewer carbs, eating earlier, later - until I felt better. I did have some mid afternoon crashes onto the bed during the process, so it can be rather a battle to find just how to get control.
 
bulkbiker said:
Assuming you are an unmedicated Type 2 4.4 is great.. you might feel a bit odd if you are not used to having blood sugars at those levels but after a while you will get used to them.
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Im on 80 mg Gliclazide and 500mg metformin in the morning and 40mg Gliclazide and 500mg metformin at tea time.

A friend told me they may reduce my gliclazide if its dropping too low.
 
I had porridge made with water (yuk) with a few summer fruits in for breakfast.

I felt light headed as soon as i stood up after sitting for ten mins. Ive felt like this in the past before i was diagnosed and i used to just buy a bar of chocolate and i was ok.
 
Ah - porridge is one of the foods I can't eat, far too many carbs. Eating carbs without fat is also something I can't do without a huge and really fast spike. Adding in fructose from berries too - that breakfast would be very bad for me.
 
Resurgam said:
Ah - porridge is one of the foods I can't eat, far too many carbs. Eating carbs without fat is also something I can't do without a huge and really fast spike. Adding in fructose from berries too - that breakfast would be very bad for me.
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I need something that fills me for breakfast as if not im hungry all day. Bread seems to spike me, even the low carb stuff. Al- bran made me jump from 7.3 to 13.8 the other day. Porrige seems a bit better even though it still raises my bg levels a bit.
 
Carbs just make me hungry.
I tend to eat a few hours after I get up - breakfast tends to be eggs - scrambled eggs with cheese and a tomato, or a mushroom omelette or sweet peppers - though sometimes I have an early lunch of a huge salad - depends how I feel. I can then find I am not hungry until long after dinner time.
 

Could that be a blood pressure issue? BP can drop in those circumstances.
 
Jc3131 said:
A friend told me they may reduce my gliclazide if its dropping too low.
Click to expand...

Your friend is correct, but you would need to gather some evidence of dropping low with the levels and circumstances, then speak to your nurse/GP about your medication needs.
 
Start the day with coffee, butter and double cream?

It should stop the hunger cravings at least as well as porridge.

All Bran is not - it has a lot of sugar in it.

If possible, avoid all variants of breakfast cereals as they seem to be designed to boost your blood sugar to wake you up in the morning. Not ideal for T2s.

We are programmed to view breakfast cereals as breakfast.

Cheese, eggs, meat are a far better start to the day. That is what you get on most of the Continent.
 
Bluetit1802 said:
Your friend is correct, but you would need to gather some evidence of dropping low with the levels and circumstances, then speak to your nurse/GP about your medication needs.
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The dr has been ringing every few days so next time i will mention it.
 
I don't like coffee so I would need something else. Something quick to prepare would be ideal as I have school runs etc in morning.
 
Jc3131 said:
I don't like coffee so I would need something else. Something quick to prepare would be ideal as I have school runs etc in morning.
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In Tibet I am unreliably informed that they almost live on tea with Yak's butter.

I'm not sure I could hack cream in tea (not the same as a cream tea) so it is an interesting challenge to work out a high fat quick breakfast.

Berries and double cream might be a way to go.
 
I was naughty and had a mince pie to give me a boost. 2 hours after it i was 10.9 mmol
 
Doesn't raised blood glucose just make you feel shattered and sleepy?
Breakfast always used to be a chop or kippers/herring - depending on how far you were from the sea. The idea of eating grains for breakfast is fairly recent - I think that the first breakfast cereals we would recognise as such were marketed about 120 years ago. The idea arrived before then, but not the technology to process them.
Even porridge was something taken out of the house to be eaten out in the fields or with the sheep or cattle. It was cooked and poured into a box or drawer, then cut into cubes to be carried away and warmed up briefly in water or milk, or even just put into a lidded can and shaken to break it up, then eaten or drunk down cold.
 
Jc3131 said:
Im on 80 mg Gliclazide and 500mg metformin in the morning and 40mg Gliclazide and 500mg metformin at tea time.

A friend told me they may reduce my gliclazide if its dropping too low.
Click to expand...

Great if they cut it. It is a relatively strong drug...certainly compared to Metformin. I was put on 40mg when diagnosed...which was increased to 80mg. To be clear, 4.4mmols is definitely NOT too low...it's great. The only real concern would be if you were also really cutting down on carbs, as this added to the Gliclazide COULD potentially cause hypos. I stopped it completely following nightmares (a known side effect) and focused purely on LCHF dieting. Never looked back. Don't worry about the 4.4...the queasy feelings are very probably your system getting used to lower levels as others have said.
 
Im not as bad with tiredness at the moment, but when my levels were reading 15 plus i just wanted to sleep all the time.

I know when my levels are high as my vision changes.

Ive been told to eat fish but i cant bare to eat any sort of sea food. Ive been eating mainly chicken, but if I eat much more of it I will turn into one.
 
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