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Taking the plunge (Newbie to monitoring) Advice

Tim1966

Member
Messages
15
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
A little back history,

Was diagnosed beginning of September 19

Hba1C - 77
Weight 130kg
BMI 44.9
Exercise - Sedentary (almost stopped!)
Metformin - 2 tablets twice a day prescribed

Immediately researched diagnosis / diet etc switched to moderate to low (hopefully healthy) carbs of approx 80 - 100g a day and low calorie 1200 - 1500kcals a day. Currently I stick to this using a 16:8 fasting approach with the majority of my calories coming in the early evening (7.00pm ish) during the week and a slightly more spread out approach over the weekend.

October 19
Hba1C - 47
Weight - 119kg
BMI - 41.1
Exercise - 3km brisk walk a day
Metformin - 2 tablets twice a day continuing

February 20
Hba1C - Just tested, results at the end of the week!
Weight - 96.1kg
BMI - 33.3
Exercise - 6km brisk walk per day

I am hoping that my a1c reading will have come down again but more importantly after a lot of reading on here and reading posts with advice from some of the experts on here, I have come to the conclusion that I really do need to be more proactive in terms of understanding what is going on in my body. I have ordered the Gluco-navii meter from home health along with strips which should arrive by the weekend.

I think my initial testing regimen needs to be as follows

On waking
Before lunch then 2 hours after
Before evening meal then 2 hours after which will also be pretty close to bedtime.

Does this sound reasonable or is there something I am missing/not doing. Are there any ;tips' for making it effective. NB I really love use apps to track what I am doing so I am adicted t my fitness pal for food / macro tracking and have downloaded mysugr in preparation for the meter to arrive (I am keen to see an estimate of hba1c in this app as it annoys having to wait for a full three months with no feedback.

I have read a lot of posts discussing similar questions but just trying to get some definitive advice!

Sorry for the long post but any help/advice would be appreciated.
 
Hi @Tim1966

Congratulations on great progress so far.

Your proposed testing regime will give you some important information about the impact of what you eat on your blood sugars.

Depending on what you’re eating you may want to consider testing additionally at the 1 hour and 3 hour mark. If your meal includes a lot of fat then any peak can be delayed so sometimes you might miss a peak if only testing at 2 hours. Likewise something relatively more carby might have a rapid spike.

It can also be instructive to test before and after exercise - if you’re anything like me, some things (lifting weights for example) might temporarily raise levels whereas others (swimming in my case) will reliably bring them right down.

The important thing is to be consistent so that you’re comparing like with like and track progress.

If it’s within your means, use of a Libre sensor - even just for one two week period - can be very helpful in showing what is going on throughout the day. It has certainly shown me some unexpected results and a couple of foods that might have passed muster if testing only at the two hour mark are now firmly out of bounds list!

Let us know how you get on.
 
Hi Tim and welcome to the forum! Well done on your progress so far!
Just a comment on the MySugr app, which I love! The HbA1c estimate, is just that an estimate. I have found comparing it to my lab HbA1cs it has been up to 5 mmol/mol lower. However it is really good tool for watching trends up or down.
 
If you eat breakfast you should probably be testing before and after that too.

And it's useful to be aware of other issues that may be affecting glucose levels, such as exercise, stress, illness, pain, some medications (e.g statins, corticosteroids). So sometimes it's worth doing extra tests for these if the need arises.

Watch for patterns and trends - for me these are often more informative than actual numbers.

And I'd certainly agree about using a Libre sensor, even if only for a month or two, as it can show you in far greater detail what's going on. My sensors also regularly read lower than glucose testing but the patterns have been very similar, and its HbA1c predictions (and those of my meter averages used with our diabetes.co.uk HbA1c calculator) have always been lower than my actual HbA1c test results - though again they are consistent in those differences.
 
Thanks for the tips everyone there is some really useful information there. I am very interested in the Libre Freestyle but as far as I could tell it was not possible to buy one at the moment due to shortages. It is certainly something I will look to the future dependent on how things go.
 
I just used a simple meter as it was pretty obvious - eat carbs - whoosh, eat salad and stirfry just wait for the clunk as levels drop to normal.
I was seeing 8mmol/l after meals, two hours from first bite, so I stopped testing beforehand, just ate twice a day, and saw my numbers drop below 7 - which seems to keep me consistently at Hba1c of 42, which I think is good enough.
 
Okay, so my bg meter arrived today. I tested before my evening meal and got a reading of 5.8 mmol/l this was immediately after a 40 minute brisk 4.5km walk.

Two hours after my meal it was 5.5 mmol. I was expecting it to go up! Would the exercise have been a factor?

Evening meal 180g Piri Piri chicken, vegetable antipasto (olives peppers sun dried tomato onion courgette in olive oil dressing) apple and 40g roast almonds.

Need help interpreting!!
 
I find that exercise, even a little walk raises my blood glucose, especially before eating. Supposedly exercising after eating is good way to use the glucose that is circulating in the system after food.
 
The one thing I usually recommend to people poke your finger more off to the side and not on the tip of your finger, particularly since you are new to testing. Your fingertips are among the most sensitive area of your body. They are densely packed with thousands of nerve endings. I'm not sure that the side of the finger has less but the sides of your fingers has less direct contact with things in day to day life so in the long run it seems to hurt less.
 
Thanks to everyone above.

I got my latest HBA1C result today

Sept 2019 - 77
Oct 2019 - 47
Feb 2020 - 34

I am absolutely delighted as I thought one or two excesses over Christmas would have had more of an impact. The excellent advice on here about significantly reducing carbs has certainly really helped me.
 

Fantastic news!
 
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