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What do you class as high blood sugars

R

rossworld

Member
Messages
5
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
I have been a type one for about 3 years now and thankfully have always manages to maintain good control.

My exercise regime has taken a bit knock recently as I have had a chest infection , but ever since most of my readings have been between 10.00 and even 14.00 I find my self having to eat and inject a high dose to compensate !

What are your thoughts on what you class as high ?

Just tot add my recent hba1c came back at 5.8 and doc seemed happy , doesn't make me feel any better tho
 
I count anything over 6mmol/l as high.

My blood sugar is near normal most of the time.

I manage this safely due to the food/insulin regimen I follow. And I test my blood sugar quite a lot - mostly using visually read strips, rather than a meter.
 
I've always classed above 8 as high but what level do you think it would begin to affect my health ?

What can / can't you get away with ?
 
My blood sugar is unusually well controlled.

And 8mmol/l isn't very high. You can get away with such readings for a very, very long time.

But rather than think in terms of acceptable/unacceptable blood-sugar readings, if I were you I would concentrate on the art of control.

And for that, in my opinion, you particularly need to think about what you eat.

Don't worry too much about the occasional high readings. It's the HbA1c reading that's most important: together with a lack of hypos, it will demonstrate your control.
 
It's good to stay under ten because at that level you are putting your kidneys under load. At slightly higher levels (teens) you start to get a risk of ketoacidosis. Anything under 9 is "just" a matter of your long term complications.

You are supposed to be given targets by your health care team and these are supposed to be individual to your circumstances. The trade off they consider is that the closer to normal BG you can maintain, the better for long term health, but tight control carries increased risk of hypos, psychological pressure, and the risk that people will give up or feel like failures.

If you are regularly having to correct high blood sugar it could be that your chest infection is still active at a low level. You might want to increase your basal insulin for a while. This will also help the infection (if any) to resolve. Hopefully after that you can lower your basal insulin again.

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At slightly higher levels (teens) you start to get a risk of ketoacidosis
Click to expand...
Nonsense - high BG is a symptom of DKA (no insulin => cells can't use glucose => liver dumps more glucose because cells are starving).
 
Anything above 8.0.

I dont see the reasoning behind eating more and more insulin etc if you are being between 10-14 currently as this will not be helping you to gain your better control back again.

The more carbs you have, the more your body wants.


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Doctors and consultants will generally say anything above 10 after eating is high but not extortionate! My doctor always said to me, anything up to 10 won't harm your body long term as an average person without diabetes' sugar levels are between 4-10


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I'd class 10 and above as high. I'm aiming for 8 as I have little hypo awareness.
 
AlexMBrennan said:
Nonsense - high BG is a symptom of DKA (no insulin => cells can't use glucose => liver dumps more glucose because cells are starving).
Click to expand...

OK maybe "risk" isn't exactly the right word. I couldn't think of the right word. But in the teens you need to start checking for ketones. Since as you say high BG is a symptom of DKA. I'm not exactly sure why you are saying this is nonsense, or what you are saying is nonsense. I didn't say high BG was a cause of DKA. I said it indicates a risk of it.


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My take is - and this is the key in my log: 5-7 on target, 7-10 keep an eye on it, 10-13 take action with hydration and movement, 13+ inject insulin.

Last night, my levels fell from 13 to 8.1 within half-an-hour by just drinking 2 pints of water.
 
Zedar said:
Last night, my levels fell from 13 to 8.1 within half-an-hour by just drinking 2 pints of water.
Click to expand...

That's some pretty severe dehydration then. Are you sure there wasn't also any insulin involved? Also at 10+ your kidneys are dumping glucose into urine, provided that they can get sufficient water to do so. But you really don't want to be relying on that mechanism, it's what causes kidney failure in the end.
 

I've been mulling that one over for the past few weeks as I tried to deal with my weight increasing after being constant for a decade.

Insulin is also known as the fat storage hormone.

So if the function of insulin is to facilitate the movement of glucose out of the blood stream and into muscle and fat, and if the muscle cells are insulin resistant, there seems little point in trying to force the glucose into muscles by bombarding the insulin receptors with more insulin. The insulin is impotent in that respect but still very effective at storing the metabolized glucose in fat tissue.

Now, it seems to be well-documented that moderate exercise enhances cells sensitivity to glucose and that exercise moves GLUT4 to the surface and opens the cells' insulin receptors independently of the presence of insulin. So what I take from that is 30 min minimum moderate exercise to deplete glycogen, 60 minutes to double insulin sensitivity and a further 60 minutes to double it again. That last bit I'd like to see a bit more evidence on.
 
A radical and quick interpretation there. Nope, kidney and liver all tickety-boo and really I prefer hydration and contraction of muscles over the see-sawing hit-and-miss insulin corrections. I'm not being critical of your need to take an insulin shot - it just doesn't work for me.
 
I aim for <6.0 pre meal, <7.0 post meal, except for extended exercise where I'm happy to let it drift up to mid 6's to minbimise the exercise induced hypo risk.

I was correcting 7.x last week with an additional 0.5 units bolus at meals as I knew I'd have been >8.0 afterwards otherwise.

Seemed I needed an extra 0.5U basal in the evening to prevent that upward drift through the morning
 
In an ideal world i would like to look at 5.5 pre meal & 7.5 an hour or so after eating..? Then control around 6 till the next pre meal 5.5..

Which is a "norm" (non D) way of going with a proper pancreas... Correct me by all means if wrong, but keep the big guns holstered.
 
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