Low reading advice please

[Hazel1010]

Hi all , had boiled egg and warburton small slice of toast at aprox 10 this morning, did a test at 12.45 and my reading cam up Low no numbers …..so I ate a sweet while I made a small chicken wrap and a packet of lidle curls for lunch .
my question is when would you test again to make sure you are back to normal level ,
im really new to this and not getting a lot of help at surgery and I’m not on any medication for it etc so any input would be good

 

[rebrascora]

How are you testing your BG levels? Finger prick or Freestyle Libre sensor on your arm? Either way I would suspect a fault with either the test strip or the sensor. You should double check with a second test straight away if you get an unusual test result which is either high or low when you aren't expecting it. Could it be that your fingers weren't properly dry before you tested? ie. some water droplets on your fingers diluted the blood? Did you feel OK?

Of course, having eaten a sweet and perhaps your lunch now, any reading you take now will be affected by those. There is no harm in checking what your level is now but my feeling is that the previous reading of LO was incorrect. LO generally means a reading of less than 1.8 I believe and you would likely be close to unconscious with that sort of readings and feeling exceptionally ill.

What you need to understand is that if you are not on any medication which can actively and dramatically lower your BG levels (like insulin or Gliclazide) then you are not going to go too low, so you don't need to carry sweets with you or worry about having a hypo. Your liver will pump out some glucose to top your levels up if they run down a bit, unless you have run a marathon or something and your liver has been severely depleted.

 

[Hazel1010]

me run a marathon, I did feel a bit sort of nervous for no particular reason and not brilliant, my eyes have been more blurry than usual
I’m using a finger prick safe AQ monitor , as I say I wasn’t particularly panicked about this just thought maybe I was taking the taking at the wrong time etc as I don’t really know what I’m doing

 

[rebrascora]

Sounds like it is probably a faulty test strip then. If you get more rogue readings then contact the manufacturer. The Safe AQ is not a meter which is recommended by people here on the forum so I am a little suspicious of it. They are all supposed to conform to set standards but some people have had problems in the past with erroneous readings on some of the cheaper meters available.
As I said, you should always repeat a test if the result seems odd but if you are not on any medication for your diabetes then there is no reason why your levels would go too low. Even with genuine hypos (levels below 4) due to an insulin overdose, you still have time to retest, so don't panic.
Blurry vision is common in the early stages of diabetes until your BG levels settle into the normal range and your eyes readjust.

 

[silentsquirrel]

Some (most?) meters give you an error reading when you fail to get enough blood on the strip, but I had one once that would just give a very low reading. First time it happened I had just driven for almost 2 hours, had stopped to test, and got LO, on this meter that meant less than 1.2!!! Minute of full panic mode, thinking I had just been driving at a totally unsafe level, but then common sense kicked in, not feeling at all hypo, retested and reading in the 7s. Phew!