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Spike due to low carbing most of the time?

Cocosilk

Well-Known Member
Messages
818
Location
Australia
Type of diabetes
Gestational
Treatment type
Insulin
I don't test my blood sugar as regularly as I did when I was gestationally diabetic, but I do still occasionally to keep an eye on things because the one follow up oral glucose tolerance test that I had postpartum revealed a possible impaired glucose tolerance when my 1hour spike reached 12 or 13 mmol.

Today I had only cheesy scrambled eggs fried in butter for breakfast followed by a cup of tea with milk. I didn't test my fasting today but a few days ago I had one fasting of 5.1 mmol in the morning, but also an in-between-lunch-and-dinner-5-hour fast of 5.8 mmol on another day recently. So it seems to vary.

At around 11am I had a half slice of our homemade sourdough rye, which, by itself would normally only spike me in the 6s, but I was naughty and had raspberry jam on it, then followed that with a small slice of poppyseed cake from the European bakery.

I thought I should watch what it does. I didn't test before I had it but I would assume I was in the 5s.

If I had only tested at the one hour mark, I would have thought I had really healthy blood sugar levels because at 53 mins (not quite the hour), it was 6.6 mmol. The again at 1h15, it was 6.4mmol and now at 1h30 it's 6.3mmol. But I also tested at 30 mins and saw 9.1 mmol. Not ideal although I know most doctors wouldn't bat an eyelid at that level if the rest were in the 6s. I'm wondering if the low carb breakfast is enough to cause the delayed response to the carb hit if by one hour it seems to come back down.

Thoughts?

I still insist on warning myself that I'm possibly heading for diabetes to keep me on the straight and narrow as far as carbs are concerned.
 
It looks like you had some very high-sugar food, and your body had a normal response to it: going into the 9s is obviously not good, but you took a big sugar hit and were still back in normal range within one hour or less. I wouldn't be overly concerned because the spike seems to have been very short lived and not necessarily delayed. That's not to say eating jam is a good idea, but just this particular episode doesn't look too untoward as a one off.
 
If you eat any high carb food, you're likely to see your glucose levels rise at some point whether you're eating a low carb diet or not and whether you're diabetic or not - as @Geordie_P said it's a perfectly normal reaction. The main difference is that non-diabetics tend to manage carbs and resulting glucose fluctuations better than carbohydrate intolerant T2s.

What else you eat at the time can determine when, how long, and the type of rise you see, e.g. higher carbs combined with fats will generally cause a (sometimes much delayed!) bump rather than a short sharp sugary spike. Even keeping to the low carb straight and narrow, your glucose levels can still rise for other, non dietary, reasons such as response.to stress, some medications (e.g. statins, steroids), illness, pain, exercise....
 
Somethings you might do is split the meals over 2 or 3 days as the exclusive carb hit. Rather than raspberry jam, add some whole raspberries and mush a bit on. Make your own seed cakes with either almond flour or coconut - there is no way shop bought versions will use anything other than sugar and regular flour.

I make coconut, cream cheese and psyllium husk flat bread. Over time I don't even notice the coconut taste so can use this anywhere that bread would have previously. Great with bacon or peanut butter, especially just out of the pan.
 
Cocosilk said:
I'm wondering if the low carb breakfast is enough to cause the delayed response to the carb hit if by one hour it seems to come back down.
Click to expand...

Sorry but you've been round here a while.. it appears you are trying to "blame" the low carb breakfast for causing a spike in blood sugars after a carb fest?

It was what you ate in the "naughty" meal and that alone.
 
bulkbiker said:
Sorry but you've been round here a while.. it appears you are trying to "blame" the low carb breakfast for causing a spike in blood sugars after a carb fest?

It was what you ate in the "naughty" meal and that alone.
Click to expand...

The naughty thing was a rather small portion compared to what I might have eaten a few years ago too. A half slice of sourdough with jam and a tiny slice of a cake... I could have eaten 3 or 4 times that amount in the past. The spike was excessive for the small amount I had. I think a metabolically sound person eating the same wouldn't have left the 6s. At least that's what I keep reading - 4 to 6 mmol is where it's at before we ruin it with years higher carb eating, right? And just to add insult to injury, my slide back into naughty food world started over a week ago after a visit to a big city market with lots of imported goodies that I hadn't seen in well over a year. I thought a few bites here and there wouldn't kill me, but the extra sugar that I hadn't really been eating anymore seems to have given me back and neck pain as well...gah!
 

I normally do all that. I just slipped up when I saw some "old friends" (by that I mean foods that I used to love but haven't touched in a long time). I got a bit carried away hoping that after 2 years of low carb eating, I might get away with it. Nope.
 
What you have seen, I have viewed with banana, cereal and other third party tests, being the early spike is often not seen, so there is an assumption all is fine. I think it comes down to do you believe the 7.8 mmol/L cut off for supposed micro damage is true for most, and is the spike worth it. Where worth it, is defined by your tolerance.

Doing low carb does effect a OGTT, unless one carbs up for a couple of days before hand, so maybe a similar effect with higher carb food also occurs. Your numbers came down quite quickly which is a good sign, but you can't do an historical back to back with your pre-diabetes status to know would you have got a 9.1 when you were 21 years old.

Did you test your fbg the day after, would be interesting to know if you were at your expected.
 


I meant to test this morning first thing but my kids distracted me and when I thought of it I'd already been running around with them. But often when I have had carbs, I get hit in the morning fasting reading where it gets just into the prediabetic range sometimes - like 5.6mmol instead of the usual somewhere between 5.1 and 5.4mmol.

I know this argument about whether these naughty treats are worth it or not is a hard one. The ritual and enjoyment of a sweet treat for the addicted is hard to beat. But I did notice pain in my body this week - aching neck and back - also the odd headache which I don't usually get, as well as a flare up of dermatitis on my hands after having got it under control with the recent change in steroid creams. So those extra problems must be due to inflammation from the extra sugars (and possibly gluten since the treats were also wheat based and I've been mostly avoiding processed grains).
So the "is it worth it?" question is slowly but surely leaning more towards the "Nope, actually it's not." But even today I still felt the compulsion to make my homemade treat of a teasp of coconut oil, cocoa, teaspn (or less) of maple syrup, desiccated coconut, cream and macadamia nuts, which I've used as a biscuit replacement to get me away from the more poisonous processed things. It doesn't make sense logically to keep eating things which we know are poisoning us. I can only say this must be what dealing with addiction is like.
Fortunately I've never been addicted to a hard drug, but having a sweet tooth is a hard hard habit to shake, isn't it? Even when I no longer crave sweets after a few days of extreme low carbing, mentally I crave the ritual. It might not be till my small children grow up and I get some more time to look after myself that I can move on from it and distract myself with other work rather than being stuck at home with the kids where the kitchen is only ever a few steps away. I suppose I could just not buy the things in the first place, but other people in our house like eating a variety, even my husband, whose father had diabetes, can still be found spooning his homemade Nutella into his mouth late at night, and he puts some sugar into that. Oh well, enough ranting. Doesn't change anything. Most of us here are probably fighting the a similar struggle.
 
What you are describing people get paid a fortune to resolve. I experienced a small version, with this months willful complete removal of nuts; before removing I knew they were the only item in my diet which if I over ate would cause a little bloating and belching, but I put up with them due to liking the mouth feel, crunch morish-ness.

The thread Goonergal opened on the 1st of the month, provided an opportunity to confront my copious nut eating from 2016. I have made a mental compromise to keep the nuts in my diet after this month, but strict portioning, with no over indulgences, so mine is not sweet, it is umami. I am a bit type A, so once I make up my mind I can stick to what I decide. It looks like your taste buds have not switch from sweet to savoury, but as you can see with me, challenges still remain.

Maybe try small changes, like the maple syrup for stevia or erythritol. For my evening meal I did a body building trick of earning my extra carbs, by crushing more deadlifts at 150 kg than i've ever done - not for everyone, but works for me. These were just 1 additional cherry tomato and a few more butternut squash chips. Some might see this as a boring choice, but my wife treated me to a full flavour tomahawk steak and mushroom dinner. I would encourage you to keep trying to find what works for you and maybe get your other half to read this thread; neither of you need or want the diabetes complications I had. I came from a martial arts back ground where world class people would punch and kick me, sometimes bare knuckle, this did not compare to what I experienced at the end of 2014 due to the wrong foods, I want even let myself spike past 6 now, due to the mental damage of experiencing the results of 20 plus.
 


On top of the health problems due to the complications of undiagnosed diabetes, I imagine many must also grapple with the emotional and physical effects of anger at a system that not just allows but promotes foods that are clearly slow poisons to humans. You've been through the wars and none of us deserve that...

I feel fortunate that I've been able to catch things early, but it's easy to take things for granted still at this stage. If only we could check our insulin levels daily as well.

This morning I took both mine and my husband's fasting levels. I was mostly back to low low carb yesterday, my husband not I don't think. He hasn't had any signs of diabetes but his father did have it so I encourage him to let me test him periodically since we are both midlife. I got 5.1 and he was 5.2 before breakfast. I checedk him at around 45 mins after his breakfast of his homemade sourdough rye and bacon and cheese. His bg was 4.8... Now knowing that I would have missed my spike altogether if I had just checked at the 1 hour mark, I think I'm going to test him again 30 mins after eating because I suspect he had an early spike that then dropped him below base levels even before the hour was up. (edited: now my husband tells me he was eating plums off our trees in the backyard at least half an hour before breakfast... so those levels are not accurate afterall. )

On the subject of sweeteners, I know maple probably isn't much better than sugar but I try not to have more than one teaspn on any given day. I've tried eryithritol but it upset my tummy enough to make me prefer a small amount of sugar instead which doesn't give me that immediate reaction. Plus when I make a cake with erythritol, I felt it gave me licence to eat larger portions so I wasn't respecting that it's still something naughty (taking things for granted, see?...)

The bodybuilding to earn extra carbs sounds like a good idea. I don't do that but when I saw 9mmol the other day, I put my shoes on and walked down the hill to the bottom of the street and back - maybe only 10 mins - and by the one hour I was back in the 6s. I think it took off at least 1 mmol. But not eating in the first place is what I need to focus on. I was to try fasting one day, longer than just skipping breakfast, which I can do now fairly easily.
 
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