A 14.4 and deleting things from memory on the Spirit Healthcare Tee2+

[ConfusedCraig]

Someone I know wanted to get thier blood tested because they suspected they too might be diabetic. 1 hour after eating thier last meal of the day they had a blood glucose of 14.4, largish normal kind of meal. Is this something they should talk to the doctor about or not?

Also, I forgot to set it for test on the Spirit Healthcare Tee2+ blood monitor I have because I was surprised by how high it was, so it will now be screwing up my averages on the monitor. Is there any way to delete it out of the memory, or change what kind of result it is (ie to test so it gets filtered out). I can't see anything about that in the manual, but I know some people here use it.

I thought I'd ask here before sending an email to spirit's customer service.

 

[trophywench]

Well that was a bit of a waste of time - testing somebody an hour after they'd eaten, how long does it take anyone non diabetic to get their BG back down to 5 after eating? I don't know anyone non diabetic who tests their BG to find that out!

Then how often do you actually NEED to look at averages? And how often do you test your BG?

One rogue result isn't going to affect your average for very long, anyway, is it? Your doctor won't rely on meter readings that much because he relies solely on your HbA1c results. You only use the before and after meal tests etc to inform future food choices - NOT increase or change prescribed medical treatment.

Even if you test 10x a day, that's only your BG for those 10 seconds of that day. Every day has a few more seconds than 10, and the meter can't tell any of us what our BG is doing or has done for the other 86, 376 seconds of that or any other day!

 

[ConfusedCraig]

" how long does it take anyone non diabetic to get their BG back down to 5 after eating? "

That's kind of why I was asking. I have no idea how high non diabetics blood sugar can go after eating. Everything I have seen says non diabetic blood sugar should never go above 8 or so (American Diabetes Association says 7.2 1 hour after eating for instance).

But if it's actually normal for a non diabetic to go over 8 or over 10 then it doesn't matter.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

But if it's actually normal for a non diabetic to go over 8 or over 10 then it doesn't matter.

Depends how much and what they eat, I think. And I'm sure there's quite a bit of individual variation.

 

[Docb]

Hi @ConfusedCraig. There is little value in taking a one off reading of blood glucose to find out if somebody has diabetes unless they are clearly unwell with symptoms of diabetes. 14.4 might be high for that individual or it might be perfectly normal for them, you have no way of knowing. If your mate is worried then he needs to go to his GP for a HbA1c test.

Don't know that meter but I would be surprised if you remove one result. I'm guessing you would have to reset the meter, probably by removing and replacing the battery, clear the memory and start again.

 

[Eddy Edson]

From the data I benchmark against:

- Non-diabetics on average spend 1% - 2% of their time above 7.8. But it's skewed - some spend a lot more than that; others spend none.

- The average peak BG is 8.0 +/- 1.6. That's the one standard deviation range, so for about two-thirds of the time, the peak is in the range 6.4 - 9.6. Plenty of people can go above 10 from time to time.

- Peak is usually 30min - 60min after eating, but lots of variability.

As everybody says, you can't really tell much from one reading. But 14.4 is high, regardless. In some jurisdictions, a random reading above 12 (or somehwere around there) is taken as a strong indication of possible diabetes, requiring further testing & clinical follow-up for confirmation.