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shandromeda

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As i posted yesterday my D.nurse has asked me to test first thing in morning before each meal and before bed twice a week,after two and a half hours i also did a test for my own benifit to see how the test were after i'd eaten,i have been getting quite high readings last week testing after low carb food,i tried an experiment today i had i whole grain toast this morning and i had three small new potatoes with plain fish and brocolli and my reading have been the lowest i've had over a day than i've ever had infact my last meal the test before was 9.4 and two and a half hours after it was 7.5 :?: do i need a few more carbs in the day than i thought puzzling any advice on this please,shan x
 
Sometimes more carbs can give you lower numbers.

It sounds contradictory until you understand the complexity of the systems involved. Glucose release from your liver is switched on by glucagon and switched off by insulin, so if you eat enough carbs to generate enough insulin to switch off the liver *and no more* you can end up with lower BG than if you'd eaten none at all and your liver was still working. This can also vary by time of day.
 
Tell me more, Trink - that sounds VERY interesting... I've had a few high readings when I've eaten NO carbs (except the ones found in leafy/green vegetables).

It's been baffling me!
 
Thank you for that Trikwasser i was begining to feel left out in the dark,it has happened again since,before my meal my reading was 7.8 two and a half hours after a meal of three small new potatoes and fish it went down to 6.8 the lowest reading i've had in a month!!! so is it from what you said that i can have a few carb's but not to much more ? I did try weet a bix this morning and it shot up to 10.2 so i can't have that again,any chance you have any more info for us please,shan x
 
I am in a simular situation at the moment. My GP took me off Metformin to try diet only for a week, yeasterday morning I had two toasts with cheese and my BG went up to 9.8. For lunch I had 2eggs on bread, tomatoes and mashroom but my BG went down to 7.5. Day before I had 2 slices of bread with ham for breakfast, BG 6.2. For dinner I had steak & kidney pie and chips, BG 7.2.

It seems like the more carbs I eat the lower BG readings I get. :?
 
This might give you some background

http://www.elp.manchester.ac.uk/pub_pro ... efault.htm

http://themedicalbiochemistrypage.org/glycogen.html

Basically your total blood volume only contains around 5g glucose at any one time. There's a constant shuffling act between insulin stashing dietary carbs/glucose into store and the glucagon releasing it again, principally from the liver ("liver dump") and as you can see the system only has to be out by around 5g for your BG to double, or to crash through the floor.

This is really stuff they *should* tell you but didn't. Once someone pointed it out to me a lot of things became obvious - one of the things I suffered from was exercise-induced liver dumps principally in the morning, whereas the same exercise in the afternoon would be more likely to drop me low.

Insulin resistance is also a factor, within the control circuit as a different problem from that at the muscle receptors. The sensors don't detect BG levels as such, they detect insulin levels, which in normal people are closely related, but not necessarily for us. This is often a major factor in Type 2 but some Type 1s also suffer, the one who explained this to me probably underwent radiation damage from being at Ground Zero after some of the early nuclear tests and used to suffer from crippling hypos where his liver never woke up and also severe highs for no apparent reason where it dumped all the glucose it could until it was empty. I'm not nearly that extreme but a similar thing seems to happen where the two sides of the system stop communicating.

Carbs provide the greatest insulin release. Protein induces some insulin release but not so much. Fat produces none.

Dawn Phenomenon is a typical example where eating the right amount of carbs and/or protein either at breakfast or the previous night can switch it off.

I had one the other day, for no apparent reason my fasting BG was about 1 point higher than usual and breakfast shot me up about two points above where I should have been. After that my liver calmed down and the rest of the day I never broke through 5.8. There was absolutely no dietary reason for the numbers to be that far out, usually I can eat the same things and predict the results quite accurately.
 
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