Coffee and blood sugar

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annealex1

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Relationship to Diabetes
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I use coffee bags for my morning. Offer with almond milk so no carbs. I notice that it raises my blood sugar by .8 . Is this usual? I test within the hour of drinking it,
 
annealex1 said:
I use coffee bags for my morning. Offer with almond milk so no carbs. I notice that it raises my blood sugar by .8 . Is this usual? I test within the hour of drinking it,
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.8 is just noise, I suspect. (Our meters aren't that accurate, after all.) And even if you don't drink anything, it's not at all unusual for someone's blood glucose to change by .8 in an hour.

So I think it's usual and doesn't mean anything (and doesn't say anything about the coffee or the almond milk).
 
It is also possible that the increase is down to Dawn Phenomenon and not the coffee. Assuming the almond milk you are using is of course carb free. It may just be that it is because you drink coffee in the morning, when DP is most likely to occur, that you are seeing a rise. Have you tested just drinking coffee (and no food) at some other time of day? .
 
Your blood sugars don’t stay absolutely static throughout the day anyway, and the meters aren’t deadly accurate, so a difference of 0.8 is nothing really. I wouldn’t worry about it 🙂
 
I have a coffee mid morning, and I always used to see a spike, especially if I’'d had a strong one, or a second cup. I think it’s the caffeine. I only drank decaf coffee for ages after diagnosis, because I'd got used to the real stuff dehydrating me more, and when I started drinking it again, the caffeine had more of a marked effect than it does now, so my body has obviously got used to it again.
Bruce is right in saying that a 0.8 difference can just be the allowed tolerance in the accuracy of a meter, but if a rise happens consistently, it’s probably real.
 
Caffeine will raise your blood sugars 🙂
 
Bruce Stephens said:
.8 is just noise, I suspect. (Our meters aren't that accurate, after all.) And even if you don't drink anything, it's not at all unusual for someone's blood glucose to change by .8 in an hour.

So I think it's usual and doesn't mean anything (and doesn't say anything about the coffee or the almond milk).
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Thanks
 
rebrascora said:
It is also possible that the increase is down to Dawn Phenomenon and not the coffee. Assuming the almond milk you are using is of course carb free. It may just be that it is because you drink coffee in the morning, when DP is most likely to occur, that you are seeing a rise. Have you tested just drinking coffee (and no food) at some other time of day? .
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Yes, no carbs in the almond milk. I will try at other times of the day.
 
Really? So should we have it or not? It's supposed to be good for liver!
 
Ditto said:
Really? So should we have it or not? It's supposed to be good for liver!
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coffee is a drug like any of the alkoloids,with INE in the ending,ie caffine,tannine,nicotine,cocaine etc they have all sorts of effects,to the brain ,organs and venous system,many not good or fully understood!
 
I had a coffee with breakfast which was cold pizza. Something made my heart pound like crazy, but I'm thinking the pizza. I shan't have that again, it was just what family left and I thought it would fill a hole, my one solid meal for today. Horrible actually! I should have stuck with Ryvitas and cheese which is what I meant to have. I've only been drinking coffee since they said it was good for liver. I was iffy about it before because of my Dad dropping dead at 43 and he only ever drank Nescafe instant.
 
Isn’t it now generally accepted that up to about five cups a day of coffee/caffeine is good for you?

I have two or three cups of espresso based coffee with and after breakfast every morning, but no coffee thereafter. Sometimes a mug or two of masala tea later in the day.
 
Ditto said:
I've only been drinking coffee since they said it was good for liver. I was iffy about it before because of my Dad dropping dead at 43 and he only ever drank Nescafe instant.
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(I'm not convinced that Nescafe Instant is actually coffee in a meaningful sense.) I doubt that it's worth drinking coffee just because someone said it's good for the liver; chances are if there was a strong effect everyone would know about it.

Much better is likely to try and eat and drink a good variety of things.

So if you like coffee (as I do) drink it (even if it might increase blood glucose a little), and if (as I do) you like a little cinnamon with it then fine. (Just don't imagine the cinnamon's going to decrease your blood glucose or (on its own) have any particularly healthful effect, because it probably won't.)
 
ask your vascular surgeon,caffine causes constriction and hardening of the arteries
 
atoll said:
ask your vascular surgeon,caffine causes constriction and hardening of the arteries
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I'd never heard that before @atoll so had a look for more info. I could only find a very small study from about 10 years ago that wasn't sufficient to draw any conclusions from and nothing since (summarised by NHS in link below). Have you seen anything more recent/conclusive than that?

www.nhs.uk

Coffee and blood flow

A “single espresso a day ‘can damage the heart,’” The Daily Telegraph reported. It said a study has found that one cup is enough to reduce blood flow to the heart
www.nhs.uk www.nhs.uk
.
 
No, it doesn't cause constriction of of the arteries, though it theoretically might prevent expansion. Nor does it cause hardening of the arteries. Some studies have indicated that moderate consumption may reduce the incidence of stroke, in fact. Caffeine's only significant effect is on the brain, thankfully. If it really did cause constriction and hardening of the arteries, half of the world's population would be dead at fifty.

It doesn't have any measurable effect on blood glucose either. I woke this morning on 5.8 before a double espresso, black and powerful.Spent the rest of the morning varying between that and 6.0, which are all essentially the same readings. I've been drinking an occasional strong black tea since then, also a caffeine source, so apart from a blip for lunch everything is running normally.

As with anything, excess consumption of caffeine can cause problems - specially if you switch to decaff, which I regard as one of the worlds daftest inventions, when you might get withdrawal symptoms, but it's otherwise on one of the least harmful of the addictions you could acquire.
 
LucyDUK said:
I'd never heard that before @atoll so had a look for more info. I could only find a very small study from about 10 years ago that wasn't sufficient to draw any conclusions from and nothing since (summarised by NHS in link below). Have you seen anything more recent/conclusive than that?

www.nhs.uk

Coffee and blood flow

A “single espresso a day ‘can damage the heart,’” The Daily Telegraph reported. It said a study has found that one cup is enough to reduce blood flow to the heart
www.nhs.uk www.nhs.uk
.
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i'm only quoting what my vascular surgeon asked me to avoid to reduce further damage and high blood pressure etc,as i said before all things with INE in the ending have potential side effects,but as yet they are not fully understood,nor fully tested on what the long term health impacts are.
however they are easy to cut out from your diet,but treating possible long term impacts to heart and vascular system are not
 
I think it’s a bit strange to say that caffeine has not been fully tested. Folk have been testing it for two millennia at least, and nobody appears to have noticed coffee drinkers dying young.

I wouldn’t avoid everything that ends in INE. Wine? Pesto (contains pine nuts). And many amino acids end in INE. That’s what you are made of.

That said, I’ll give you cocaine and smoked nicotine.🙂
 
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