Experimenting with the Libre 2

[susan-k-s]

They are not ‘spikes’ You are not experiencing ‘crashes’.Nothing you have said suggests you have anything other than a normal response to food and the website you have shared is for a company who want to sell you stuff.

So are you saying saying it's normal to eat something and then feel shaky, weak, irritable and hungry within 90 minutes? If that wasn't a crash, I don't know what is! The levels clearly went down way below the starting point after my first meal. The sensor allows me to identify these events and try to avoid them in the future. I think it's a great tool in diabetes prevention.

 

[Inka]

OK, I get your point. However, you can't argue with the fact that diabetes is on the rise. It has doubled in the last 15 years. And all those people had previously "normal" sugar responses. Perhaps what they tell you is normal is far from it. My source did say that variation matters more than actual levels. The fact that my BG shoots up and then crashes below the starting point within 90 minutes is not a normal response even though it is within "normal" levels. Knowing this will help me avoid those situations.

That’s nonsensical. Of course all people who went on to develop diabetes had normal blood sugar beforehand! Yes, that’s when they weren’t diabetic! I actually had my blood sugar tested a few years before I got diabetes (friend had a meter). It was 4.3 - and then, years later I developed diabetes. However, that doesn’t mean 4.3 is an abnormal blood sugar!

For the millionth time - your blood sugar doesn’t shoot up! 7 isn’t shooting up. It’s exactly the same as me saying that my heartrate ‘shot up’ from 60 when I woke up to 72 when I was getting my breakfast. Both those figures are normal. They are expected movements within the normal range.

If you want to reduce your chance of getting Type 2 diabetes, then stay a healthy weight, keep active and watch out for abdominal fat.

I find your obsessing over normal blood glucose quite offensive actually. It’s like going onto a COPD forum and fussing because you got out of breath walking up a hill. You clearly have excessive anxiety about this. That anxiety will damage your health longterm not blood sugars between 4 and 7.

 

[susan-k-s]

I think you are misinterpreting GV. On MySugr when it tells me the variability, that is to do with the variability from the average blood glucose of the day. So if your fasting blood glucose is 4, and your 2 hour post meal glucose is 7, then your average BG is 5.5 and the variability is 1.5.

I don't think I'm misinterpreting it.

"The broad definition of GV considers the intraday glycemic excursions, including episodes of hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4543190/

 

[Saoirse]

So are you saying saying it's normal to eat something and then feel shaky, weak, irritable and hungry within 90 minutes? If that wasn't a crash, I don't know what is! The levels clearly went down way below the starting point after my first meal. The sensor allows me to identify these events and try to avoid them in the future. I think it's a great tool in diabetes prevention.

As others have said, the numbers and your graph are within a normal expected range. Your blood sugar rises to just 7 on from approx 9.30, and is back in the 4s by 11.30/12 ish a two hour window, which is normal. A fall in bg over 2 hours of 3 mmol/l is not a crash, (and it wasn't a spike). I appreciate it may have felt like your blood sugar was 'crashing' that does not mean it was actually doing that- it just felt like it. I am not diminishing the unpleasant feelings you are experiencing on occasion but your actual blood glucose levels are fine. Anyways- It doesn’t feel helpful to comment further. I wish you well.

 

[Satan’s little helper]

As some of you know, I'm experimenting with a Libre 2 to find triggers for my BG spikes. Below is yesterday's graph with a photo of the culprit. Who would have thought a tiny bowl of "healthy" "no added sugar" cereal first thing in the morning will spike me over 7, while a substantial heavy carb evening meal (taken with apple cider vinegar!) will result in a much smaller rise?

The cereal spiked very quickly and made me hungry within an hour - you can see how I then crashed under the baseline well within two hours. My subsequent midday meal was several pancakes (made with oats/coconut flour/flax seeds to substitute wheat flour) followed by a long walk and some nuts consumed on the way. This gave me a much smaller rise and I did not feel hungry for several hours until dinner.

I don't normally eat this many carbs in a day - but this only shows that it's not necessarily about the carbs! My pancakes will have contained more carbs than the raisin wheats - yet I managed to avoid the spike with the exercise and the impact of the evening meal was offset by the ACV!

This morning I had the same amount of cereal but consumed some ACV beforehand - I still got a spike but much lower at just over 6. If I had gone for a walk straight after eating, I bet it wouldn't have spiked at all!

A follow-up I posted further down:
Thank you to those who have replied to my post. I know these levels are considered normal - however, normal is not necessarily optimal. Frequent spikes, especially when crashing below the baseline, are not ideal. I was just trying to illustrate how a seemingly innocent food item that's considered healthy can cause problems in the wrong context - ie. first thing in the morning on an empty stomach.

Glycemic Variability (GV) is something that I keep seeing on the internet - you want to keep that as low as possible regardless of the absolute BG levels. In non-diabetics, GV should be under 1.7 - so if the baseline is 4, the spike should not be higher than 5.7 - similarly, if your baseline is 5, the spike should not be higher 6.7, etc.

Here's an excerpt from an article: " Frequent spikes and the subsequent insulin surges can cause health problems over time, including insulin resistance. Blood sugar crashes can cause more immediate effects like fatigue, depression, and anxiety. But variability itself has negative consequences as well over the long term. Studies show that these big spikes and dips in glucose can damage tissues more than elevated but stable glucose levels. Extreme glucose variability has been linked to heart disease, diabetes, and metabolic dysfunction."
https://www.levelshealth.com/blog/what-is-glycemic-variability-and-why-does-it-matter

Hello,

Was there no milk with the “raisin wheats?”

 

[Leadinglights]

As some of you know, I'm experimenting with a Libre 2 to find triggers for my BG spikes. Below is yesterday's graph with a photo of the culprit. Who would have thought a tiny bowl of "healthy" "no added sugar" cereal first thing in the morning will spike me over 7, while a substantial heavy carb evening meal (taken with apple cider vinegar!) will result in a much smaller rise?

The cereal spiked very quickly and made me hungry within an hour - you can see how I then crashed under the baseline well within two hours. My subsequent midday meal was several pancakes (made with oats/coconut flour/flax seeds to substitute wheat flour) followed by a long walk and some nuts consumed on the way. This gave me a much smaller rise and I did not feel hungry for several hours until dinner.

I don't normally eat this many carbs in a day - but this only shows that it's not necessarily about the carbs! My pancakes will have contained more carbs than the raisin wheats - yet I managed to avoid the spike with the exercise and the impact of the evening meal was offset by the ACV!

This morning I had the same amount of cereal but consumed some ACV beforehand - I still got a spike but much lower at just over 6. If I had gone for a walk straight after eating, I bet it wouldn't have spiked at all!

A follow-up I posted further down:
Thank you to those who have replied to my post. I know these levels are considered normal - however, normal is not necessarily optimal. Frequent spikes, especially when crashing below the baseline, are not ideal. I was just trying to illustrate how a seemingly innocent food item that's considered healthy can cause problems in the wrong context - ie. first thing in the morning on an empty stomach.

Glycemic Variability (GV) is something that I keep seeing on the internet - you want to keep that as low as possible regardless of the absolute BG levels. In non-diabetics, GV should be under 1.7 - so if the baseline is 4, the spike should not be higher than 5.7 - similarly, if your baseline is 5, the spike should not be higher 6.7, etc.

Here's an excerpt from an article: " Frequent spikes and the subsequent insulin surges can cause health problems over time, including insulin resistance. Blood sugar crashes can cause more immediate effects like fatigue, depression, and anxiety. But variability itself has negative consequences as well over the long term. Studies show that these big spikes and dips in glucose can damage tissues more than elevated but stable glucose levels. Extreme glucose variability has been linked to heart disease, diabetes, and metabolic dysfunction."
https://www.levelshealth.com/blog/what-is-glycemic-variability-and-why-does-it-matter

You may think 'no added sugar' cereal is a good option but that does not mean it is low carbohydrate, your 30g bowl of raisin wheats is about 24g carbs plus some milk at maybe 5g carbs so it was quite good that your level only went up to not much more than 7 for many it would be up at 10 or more.
People are often more sensitive to carbs in the morning which is maybe why the increase was more than you saw for more carbs later in the day. You may also have been more active later . Those levels you are seeing are quite normal and ones which many people would be delighted to be getting.

 

[jgubits]

I'm a new user of Liber 2. After one successful month, 2 sensors that worked each fully 2 weeks, I applied a new sensor and get the following message "Glucose reading is unavailable Try scanning again in 11 hours"!
anyone has an idea what is that? do I really have to wait 11 hours? or it's a bad sensor that needs to be replaced.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

"Glucose reading is unavailable Try scanning again in 11 hours"

I must admit that seems like an insane message to me. You aren't the only person to have reported such a thing (though I think most of us have only seen the "Try again in 10 minutes" messages). I've no idea what to suggest, though I'd definitely be contacting Abbott to see what they say.

10 minutes is reasonable enough now and again, but 11 hours seems crazy to me.

 

[harbottle]

I must admit that seems like an insane message to me. You aren't the only person to have reported such a thing (though I think most of us have only seen the "Try again in 10 minutes" messages). I've no idea what to suggest, though I'd definitely be contacting Abbott to see what they say.

10 minutes is reasonable enough now and again, but 11 hours seems crazy to me.

May be that the sensor is going through some sort of recalibration process.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

May be that the sensor is going through some sort of recalibration process.

I guess. Still seems a bit crazy. If it were doing something that fancy I'd expect the phone (or reader) to be involved in some way, perhaps in combination with test strip readings? At least, I'd hope for some kind of description of whatever it's doing in the manual (maybe I missed it but I don't remember seeing anything).

I guess my basic feeling is that provided whatever it is is rare enough, a better response would just be to replace the sensor. That's much simpler.

 

[rebrascora]

Did you try scanning again just a few minutes later? Sometimes with the "scan again in 10 mins" it will give a reading before the 10 mins is up, so I would definitely keep trying in that "11 hour" 😱 interval and see what happens and definitely contact Abbott about it but fingers crossed it will be some minor blip and be working properly now.