Blood test results

[casey jones]

Does any one record their blood test meter results. I test each day before food. I use excel spreadsheet 1 page month with results graphed daily. I use accucheck mobile meter and it stores my results but I find plotting daily records show whether my results are stable, going up or down each month. My meter has 7,14,30 and 90 day averages but find it is easier to see changes. I can make notes if high (usually if a Chinese meal the previous night) just curious to see if any one else does the same or similar

 

[Bruce Stephens]

Does any one record their blood test meter results. I test each day before food. I use excel spreadsheet 1 page month with results graphed daily.

Used to, but I regularly forgot, so I was very inconsistent. One of the major benefits of using a CGM is that it just does it for me. (I'm sure I should have looked long ago for a meter which allowed downloading of its readings (they've been around for years, I think) but I never did.)

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

I logged my BG results and the carbs and doses for my meals full-time for years. I used a variety of different apps, but settled on MySugr in the end as it was really easy to make notes at the time.

I found it really handy to be able to search back for the last time I’d had a particular meal, see the dose (and split / timings) and see how my BG had responded.

 

[casey jones]

I logged my BG results and the carbs and doses for my meals full-time for years. I used a variety of different apps, but settled on MySugr in the end as it was really easy to make notes at the time.

I found it really handy to be able to search back for the last time I’d had a particular meal, see the dose (and split / timings) and see how my BG had responded.

I had not thought to record meal types and have never been taught about carbs etc. so would like to get info on this

 

[Lucyr]

Does any one record their blood test meter results. I test each day before food. I use excel spreadsheet 1 page month with results graphed daily. I use accucheck mobile meter and it stores my results but I find plotting daily records show whether my results are stable, going up or down each month. My meter has 7,14,30 and 90 day averages but find it is easier to see changes. I can make notes if high (usually if a Chinese meal the previous night) just curious to see if any one else does the same or similar

What’s the point? Surely you know if you have Chinese it will be higher the next morning. Once per day blood sugar alone doesn’t tell you anything you can act on really though.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

I had not thought to record meal types and have never been taught about carbs etc. so would like to get info on this

Have you considered keeping a brutally honest food diary for a week or two?

Note down everything you eat and drink, along with a reasonable estimate of the total carbohydrate content in your meals and snacks - it doesn’t have to be gram-perfect, the nearest 5-10g is fine. It might sound like a bit of a faff, and will involve weighing portions, squinting at the fine print on packaging, and possibly looking up things on the internet, but it will give you a really good idea of which foods are the main sources of carbs in your menu.

Once you can see which meals or snacks are your ‘big hitters’, and where carbs might be unexpectedly lurking, the process might also suggest some likely candidates for swaps, portion reductions, or using lower carb alternatives (eg celeriac or swede mash, or cauli ‘rice’).

Plus if you record your BG immediately before eating and again 2hrs after the first bite of the meal you can get an idea of how big a ‘meal rise’ you got. Then adjust the portion size of carbs in the meal to aim for a rise of less than 2-3mmol/L above the premeal number.

 

[casey jones]

What’s the point? Surely you know if you have Chinese it will be higher the next morning. Once per day blood sugar alone doesn’t tell you anything you can act on really though.

By doing daily before food I am able to see what food I had eaten the day before. I have been doing this for last 10 years so have got used to knowing which type of meals can be high. But checks to make sure nothing has changed over time as diabetes will steadily get worse over long term if not monitored. It also gives me use of my pc for a little more than just internet searches

 

[casey jones]

Have you considered keeping a brutally honest food diary for a week or two?

Note down everything you eat and drink, along with a reasonable estimate of the total carbohydrate content in your meals and snacks - it doesn’t have to be gram-perfect, the nearest 5-10g is fine. It might sound like a bit of a faff, and will involve weighing portions, squinting at the fine print on packaging, and possibly looking up things on the internet, but it will give you a really good idea of which foods are the main sources of carbs in your menu.

Once you can see which meals or snacks are your ‘big hitters’, and where carbs might be unexpectedly lurking, the process might also suggest some likely candidates for swaps, portion reductions, or using lower carb alternatives (eg celeriac or swede mash, or cauli ‘rice’).

Plus if you record your BG immediately before eating and again 2hrs after the first bite of the meal you can get an idea of how big a ‘meal rise’ you got. Then adjust the portion size of carbs in the meal to aim for a rise of less than 2-3mmol/L above the premeal number.

Thanks for info, I have never had this explained so will start to do this and will look forward to improved control and hpefully some weight loss

 

[Lucyr]

By doing daily before food I am able to see what food I had eaten the day before.

A morning reading is so long after the day before readings that it’s pointless though. Yesterday’s food will have long since digested. If you want to know if your body processes a meal ok and brings the rise back down you need to test before and 2 hours after it. Not 12+ hours after it.

 

[casey jones]

I have been racking my memory back to when first diagnosed. I seem to remember a diatician talking to me but I was on total denial, then it passed from my mind, so @everydayupsanddowns thanks for making me try to recall over thirty years ago diagnosis. I am 76 and memory of that far back is almost gone but will do my best to find more out

 

[Docb]

Does any one record their blood test meter results.

Yes and I have now got best part of 6000 results. They are stored in an Access database, a spreadsheet and I am now working on a standalone application. I generally test first thing, last thing and sometimes at random times during the day.

I do it mostly for fun, but it does allow me to see trends, oddities and make pretty good predictions of my current Hba1c. I have never really tried to relate blood glucose to food in a systematic way, but have used it to see the effect of something specific. Checking the effect of the piece of lemon drizzle I had at a coffee and chat this week was a timely reminder of why it is not a good idea for me to eat cake!

 

[casey jones]

A morning reading is so long after the day before readings that it’s pointless though. Yesterday’s food will have long since digested. If you want to know if your body processes a meal ok and brings the rise back down you need to test before and 2 hours after it. Not 12+ hours after it.

Thanks for info. I am getting a lot of help from the forums that I had long forgotten. It has taken me 30+ years to start reading up on how to properly monitor my bloods. This is as a result of poor medical help before I discovered DUK.

Yes and I have now got best part of 6000 results. They are stored in an Access database, a spreadsheet and I am now working on a standalone application. I generally test first thing, last thing and sometimes at random times during the day.

I do it mostly for fun, but it does allow me to see trends, oddities and make pretty good predictions of my current Hba1c. I have never really tried to relate blood glucose to food in a systematic way, but have used it to see the effect of something specific. Checking the effect of the piece of lemon drizzle I had at a coffee and chat this week was a timely reminder of why it is not a good idea for me to eat cake!

i have been doing spreadsheet for several years and it is mostly to find a use for my pc. I also like to know when supper previous night was too naughty for my own good. Using graphic enables to see on one page the month trend and by having a trend line I can easily see trend up and down.

 

[Nick Cliff]

Hi @casey jones, as others have said, I have found the best approach is to do a test before eating my main meal (pre-prandial), which +/- equates to fasting/normal blood sugar level (depending on what I've been doing), and then do a test 2 hours after I finish eating that meal (2 hours post-prandial). If my blood sugar level is outside the acceptable threshold after 2 hours, then I do another test an hour later (3 hours post-prandial). I also record the sort of carbs, protein and fats - eg Potato; fish - nothing too elaborate. Every few months I transfer these results to a spreadsheet to observe trends. Obviously, I pay immediate attention to any unexpected bad results in the meantime.
The thresholds I use: post-prandial blood glucose levels should to return to within 2 mmol/L (ideal) or 3 mmol/L (acceptable) of the pre-prandial value, and should be below 8.5 mmol/L. Pre-prandial value should ideally be below 7 mmol/L – but of course it can be influenced by other factors, most typically, having snacked within 2 hours of the test. I obtained these “rules” some time back, so can't reference an authority for the values, but they work for me.

When my control started deteriorating a few years ago, and I had to be less arrogant about being in control, I did what @everydayupsanddowns has suggested and, for a period, monitored everything that I ate. I worked out the weight of carbohydrate involved in common meals and products and also the calorific content (as, being thin, I need low-carb, high calorie). I also considered the glycemic index of the various foods, as some say this has a bearing on how your blood sugar spikes. I found https://foodstruct.com/ very helpful, as well as other sources. This was all a bit of a pain, but it helped me adapt my diet. I'm aware there are apps to help with this, but I haven't researched these, having done this "long-hand".

Hope this helps.
Nick

 

[CliffH]

Does any one record their blood test meter results. I test each day before food. I use excel spreadsheet 1 page month with results graphed daily. I use accucheck mobile meter and it stores my results but I find plotting daily records show whether my results are stable, going up or down each month. My meter has 7,14,30 and 90 day averages but find it is easier to see changes. I can make notes if high (usually if a Chinese meal the previous night) just curious to see if any one else does the same or similar

I just use Novo Nordisk's paper 'Home Monitoring Diary'.