• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

Testing after food

B

Bows

Active Member
Messages
37
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
Just to ask is testing bg after food 1 or 2 hours after meal is finished or when you commence a meal
 
If you test blood sugar before/when you start meal you will only getting a postprandial reading, that can be a good indicaton of how much you should eat. Like if your postprandial are high you should avoiding too many carbs.

If you rather want to know how high your blood sugar peak (and how rapid) you have to test 30 min after eating. Helpful if you want to diet and need to know how much different foods increases your blood sugar.

If you want to test how effectly your insulin lowers your blood sugar you have to test 2 hours after eating. Can be a good indication of how well your meds are working.

So there is no singel way of test blood sugar, it all depends on the situation and what kind of information you need.
 
I believe the standard recommendation is just before your first bite, one and two hours after that. Of course anytime in between if you feel off

This will tell you how a food/ meal effects your bs. The idea is to stay as steady as possible without large peaks and drops. Slow and steady wins the race.
 
Emile_the_rat said:
If you test blood sugar before/when you start meal you will only getting a postprandial reading, that can be a good indicaton of how much you should eat. Like if your postprandial are high you should avoiding too many carbs.

If you rather want to know how high your blood sugar peak (and how rapid) you have to test 30 min after eating. Helpful if you want to diet and need to know how much different foods increases your blood sugar.

If you want to test how effectly your insulin lowers your blood sugar you have to test 2 hours after eating. Can be a good indication of how well your meds are working.

So there is no singel way of test blood sugar, it all depends on the situation and what kind of information you need.
Click to expand...

Don't mean to be pedantic but, postprandial is surely after the meal and preprandial is before?
 
miahara said:
From when you start the meal.
Click to expand...
I have never understood the logic of making timings from when you start eating. If you are trying to find out how your blood sugar recovers after say 2 hours then you could still be eating and increasing your blood sugar for a significant part of the 2 hours.
 
Mr_Pot said:
I have never understood the logic of making timings from when you start eating. If you are trying to find out how your blood sugar recovers after say 2 hours then you could still be eating and increasing your blood sugar for a significant part of the 2 hours.
Click to expand...
Must admit that as a newbie, taking the timing from when you start eating doesn't seem to make sense because I've certainly been at dinners for significantly longer times than that. However, I can see that for a T1 that maybe it makes sense as they need to take insulin preprandial to cope and so they'll need to monitor again during such a dinner and need to know when they started to be able to calculate what insulin might still be in their system. Maybe that's fuzzy logic but it's one possible explanation maybe?
 
Our food starts to digest as soon as it hits our tongue, and fast release carbs will be glucose very soon after. The time to test is a time after your first bite. If you have a meal that lasts a very long time, then testing after the 2 hour mark is indicated. I have frequently tested at an hour, at 90 minutes, at 2 hours, at 2 and a half hours and at 3 hours.
 
Back
Top