So Much Information

this is too difficult said:

If you can go a month without it, why not cut it out all together. 10 is quite high.

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I know I should stop eating weetabix altogether, but I only have it now when I am either feeling very stressed / ill and need some carbs to feel better, or when I can't sleep and need a 'fix' at 2am.

It's my crutch, my special treat when everything seems dark.

Gudrun said:

I know I should stop eating weetabix altogether, but I only have it now when I am either feeling very stressed / ill and need some carbs to feel better, or when I can't sleep and need a 'fix' at 2am.

It's my crutch, my special treat when everything seems dark.

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we all need something don't we.

piiwan58 said:

Good advice, I wasn't aware that skimmed milk contains more carbs then whole milk.. interesting.

Another interesting point is that my doctor told me it's a waste of time getting a glucose meter as he says your sugar level goes up and down like a yo yo each day and you'd never get a true reading.

He says they need to check my glucose levels over a three month period.

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piiwan58 said:

Good advice, I wasn't aware that skimmed milk contains more carbs then whole milk.. interesting.

Another interesting point is that my doctor told me it's a waste of time getting a glucose meter as he says your sugar level goes up and down like a yo yo each day and you'd never get a true reading.

He says they need to check my glucose levels over a three month period.

Click to expand...

Sometimes I despair at advice we are given.... Yes, the early morning readings (of fasting blood sugar) can go up and down; they can even be different taken off different fingers immediately afterwards, but at least you can see a trend with a monthly average.

More than that, however, is that you can check one and two hours after a meal how your blood sugar reacts to it. If it goes high after a reading, that means you need to avoid whatever raises it. My advice is to stop eating potatoes, rice, bread, pasta (all high carb / starchy foods). They are all likely to raise your blood sugar levels.

Follow a low carb / high fat (or medium fat) diet that is recommended on this forum by many and you can bring your blood sugar levels down. But you need to test and test and test again before you know what you can eat without making your condition worse.

The 3 monthly test your doctor refers to (HBA1c test) will then measure your average over the last few weeks. Why not surprise him by following advice given on this forum and bringing it down?

Buy a meter... it's the best thing you can do.

Your doctor is talking *****.

piiwan58 said:

Good advice, I wasn't aware that skimmed milk contains more carbs then whole milk.. interesting.

Another interesting point is that my doctor told me it's a waste of time getting a glucose meter as he says your sugar level goes up and down like a yo yo each day and you'd never get a true reading.

He says they need to check my glucose levels over a three month period.

Click to expand...

Your doctor is talking *****. If you don't test you don't know what different foods do to you. The three month test will give you an average but wont tell you WHY it is good or bad.

this is too difficult said:

Your doctor is talking *****.
Your doctor is talking *****. If you don't test you don't know what different foods do to you. The three month test will give you an average but wont tell you WHY it is good or bad.

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Where's the love button?!!!!



Sent from the Diabetes Forum App

Diagnosed prediabetic Easter 2014. Just left to get on with it, no guidance or help from GP. Every day I'm learning something new.

Hi Piiwan58,

Blood glucose meters read like yo-yos?

Well, yes, they do, but the way to deal with unreliable precision is, as Gudrun said, to squint past the noise, to look at trends over many measurements. I just took 10 readings in row spread out over 8 minutes. It was early afternoon, local time, and except for the two mugs of coffee this morning, no sugar, lightened to a dark chocolate colour with milk, I have not eaten since 7 PM last night. So my blood sugar was bound to be stable over the eight minutes it took to get the measurements. A precise meter should report 10 copies of the same number.

Here's what I got: 4.6, 5.1, 4.7, 4.4, 4.9, 4.8, 4.6, 4.6, 4.6, and 4.7. Now I'm not recommending burning 10 strips to get a reading. But meters, like all measurement tools, exhibit measurement error and it is up to us to discriminate real differences from noise. If you take regular readings under the same conditions, as in morning fasting readings, look at the trend over weeks or months. Plotting really helps, I think, as the eye readily picks up an increasing or decreasing -- let's hope -- trend. Take a look at my own chart if you will:

http://web.ncf.ca/fx536

There's a saw-tooth pattern that corresponds almost perfectly to readings taken after a day of fasting compared to a day of eating. The meter is properly tracking. (But a margin of error has to be imagined to bracket each point.) It's important not to be alarmed over a half point up or thrilled about a half point down on a single reading. (Although I confess to having done both.) Like the 5.1 and 4.4 in this series, there are random discrepancies that we can appreciate by looking at the overall picture.

The imprecision has an important implication for food diaries. I'm not compiling a food diary, but if I were to do so, I would take readings of the same meal on several occasions before deciding to remove or to consume more of any particular food. Starting off in guiding food choices, it would be better to use existing tables of glycaemic indeces and glycaemic loads for a first approximation rather than to rely on a single reading from a home meter. Then, once a particular food has been measured for its impact on your bloods a few times, you can base your consumption on readings instead of tables, and thereby tailor food choice to your reactions.

Meters are imprecise, and likely to be inaccurate too, but are they useful? Oh yes. One just has to know how to use them. Getting a meter was the best thing I've done for myself.

Best of luck in exploring what works for you,
George 1951