Guidance on testing blood after meals

[Flower3333]

Hi Everyone

What is the latest guidance on a how long a type 1 diabetic should wait to test their blood after meals?

 

[Kaylz]

Most of us might do a 2 hour check at some point, others check at 1, 3 etc, I would say it is completely up to you though, if you want to check then check 🙂 x

 

[Northerner]

Hi Everyone

What is the latest guidance on a how long a type 1 diabetic should wait to test their blood after meals?

Hi Flower3333, I would say a lot can depend on what you are eating, what insulin you are using and how long prior to eating you are injecting. What you are ideally looking for with your post-meal tests is finding the'peak' blood glucose level caused by the food - as you digest the food the glucose should ideally build slowly and steadily to a peak level and then start to tail off and get back to pre-meal levels before your next meal. Because of this, you might have to test the same meal over several different occasions in order to determine the peak and decide if it is too excessive and therefore need rethinking.

Using test strips/blood tests this can be difficult because you might miss the peaks a lot, but use of a Freestyle Libre sensor makes the whole business much easier, because you can test as often as you like after eating, plus the scans will show you whether your levels are rising, falling or staying steady and to top it all give you a nice graph of what happened 🙂 Might be worth asking your nurse GP if they will prescribe a Libre if you feel you are having problems 🙂

 

[mikeyB]

🙂 Might be worth asking your nurse GP if they will prescribe a Libre if you feel you are having problems 🙂

Aye, then Flower3333 can sit back and watch the pigs floating among the clouds.🙄

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

National guidance for post-meal levels in T1 is less than 9.0 by 2 hours after eating.

You might feel this is hopelessly optimistic, or far too high - but there seems to be scientific evidence that shows that 9 at 2 hours after eating provides positive benefits.

Depending on what you are eating you might find you are higher at 1 hour, or (if a meal is slowly absorbed) your peak for different foods might be after 2 hours. So really it’s a case of you deciding what our personal post-meal target is (and/or what you consider to be an acceptable rise from a meal) and then aiming for that with a combination of dose, dose timing and food choices.

Plus it’s important to recognise that perfection isn’t possible, and there will be occasions where despite your best efforts your diabetes simply won’t play ball. 🙂