Low blood sugar reading

[Hells]

Hi all,

I have been diagnosed with T2, 3 months ago and have been advised by my DN to change my diet and exercise before any medication is prescribed. My HbA1c reading was 57. I was given 6 months before i go back to the DN and have a further blood test.
So i bought a blood glucose monitor from amazon and had a reading of 65mg/dl after eating my breakfast this morning. Is this too low? I have cut all snacks from my diet and upped my exercise regime. Should i introduce healthy snacks to avoid hypos? Any advice very much appreciated!

 

[rebrascora]

Did you double check that reading?
Which BG meter do you have?
What did you have for breakfast and was this reading 2 hours later or did you test earlier because you felt wobbly?
How did you feel?

Sorry for all the questions but generally a reading below 4 when you are not on medication which can dangerously lower your BG, is not a cause for concern, so as you are not on medication I would not be overly concerned about that reading. 65 equates to 3,6 and whilst hypo is usually considered sub 4, that is usually because those of us on insulin or gliclazide need to preserve our hypo awareness, as that is our safely net, so we treat under 4 as hypo when in fact technically I believe hypo is considered below 3.5. Even then, without medication, your own body has the ability to bring your levels back up by the liver releasing glucose. However, if you have exercised extensively (think marathon or extreme cycle ride) and really depleted your stores of glucose, then your body may not actually be able to raise your levels and you would need to eat some fast acting carbs like a jelly baby or two or a small glass of orange juice to bring them up.
The exception would be if you had a condition called Reactive Hypoglycaemia where eating something high carb causes your BG levels to rise sharply because your insulin response is slow and then the insulin kicks in too late and too strongly in response to those high BG levels and causes you to crash. Dropping from high levels to low ones can make you feel really rough so the hypo sensation is usually very strong and some people can drop really low and pass out. This is why I asked what you had for breakfast to see if perhaps some breakfast cereal might trigger that sort of response. HR (should have typed RH) can occur in the early stages of Type 2 diabetes where the pancreas and liver are clogged up with visceral fat and their switching system for balancing BG levels are compromised, but it is not common. If you had a low carb breakfast this would almost certainly not be the cause.

The other thing to consider is that BG meters are not terribly accurate, so that 65 could be as much as 15% higher. If you exercised after breakfast, that might be why it was a bit lower than normal, but as long as you felt fine it is nothing to worry about.

 

[Inka]

Are you in the U.K. or abroad @Hells ? If you’re in the U.K., you want your meter reading in U.K. measurements not US/European ones. Which meter do you have? Some aren’t as good as others and some seem to read incorrectly low.

 

[JITR]

Snacks are not good, time to digest food between meals is very important.
Go for nutritious foods as Dr David Unwin recommends in his Diet Sheet
He has helped dozens of patients just like you into remission so worth watching his presentation: The nuts & bolts of drug free T2 diabetes remission by Dr David Unwin: