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High Blood Test - Error?

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tomcamish

tomcamish

Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 1
Morning All,

This morning I did a blood test when I got up and it said 8.3.

I then realised I was late for work so skipped breakfast. I then cycled to work which is about a mile, and when I got to work I drank a coffee I made with my blender which consisted of 1 cup decaff coffee, half a cup of sugar-free coconut milk, some ice cubes and 1 sweetener.

An hour an a half later I felt really tired, and though I'd check my blood even though I havent had any sugar/carbs, and it said 14.0.

How on earth can my blood sugar have nearly doubled when I havent eaten anything?

Confused!

Thanks in advance.
 
Your blood sugar isn't affected by just your food!

The other big player is your liver.

Your liver, aside from doing a great job of removing toxins from your blood, is also basically a big bag of sugar stored within your chest for emergencies. When your body needs energy, it usually chooses to tell your liver to start pumping out some of that sugar into your blood.

If you don't eat food, your body thinks "I need energy! I can either burn this fat I've been storing...or, hey, wait, I've got a big bag of sugar! Yep, let's have some of that instead!" and then your liver dumps glucose.

This is particularly common in PWD in the morning - there's something known as dawn phenomenon which is essentially your body preparing you so you've got energy to get up and go hunt a mammoth for breakfast - your liver dumps glucose so you have energy in your blood to use. If you have a normal insulin response, this is just mopped up by your insulin, but of course, us PWDs don't have this, so it just sticks around.

The other side of this is the terrible secret that no-one seems to tell us about...which is that exercise doesn't always lower your blood sugar. Some types of exercise actually encourage your liver to dump glucose for energy and it varies from person to person, but cycling is definitely on the list of potential ones.
 
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This thread is now closed. Please contact Anna DUK, Ieva DUK or everydayupsanddowns if you would like it re-opened.
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