I don't very often take my pre-meal reading because i was led to believe that it is the 2 hour post-meal reading which is more important but when i have tested pre-meal it is usual in the 5's. :
I've been asking this question for years and never seen an answer that makes sense. (asked it just last week again elsewhere). Just what is supposed to be significant about 2 hours? Theres nothing in particular that happens at 2 hours for a T2 not on insulin. Theres no logical reason for it to tell you anything significant.
The peak glucose release from a meal is typically 1 hour.
Thats significant. At 2 hours its already halfway down, in most cases so its not telling you anything significant.
There IS a reason for insulin users, in that the one hour reading is when the bolus insulin peaks as well as the peak glucose release. So its a bad time to think about corrections. 2 hours is far better to see how things are going.
So I suspect that the main reason T2s are told to test at 2 hours is because its a hangover from when T1s were the only ones testing - when meters first appeared and were even more horrendously expensive.
But the trick is to look at how far the BG rises for a meal. A meal may cause a rise of 3 mmol/l. But if you only test after the meal, not knowing where you started then you don't know how much of an effect it had.
It may often be at 5ish, but there might be times when its spiked up before a meal - if you have a liver dump for example. So you might be starting at anywhere from 3.5 to 8. So you cannot see how far the meal has made you rise.
Have the same meal twice, but with two different starting points and you will get wildly different end results.
So if you test before and after, then see what effect the meal has you can get a better idea of what meals are "safe", what meals might need a tweak to make em safe and which meals to avoid. Once you start doing that you will build up a picture of what difference individual foods make to the mix.
But just be aware that 1 hour tests are likely to be higher than 2 hours in most cases (pizza and pasta are notable exceptions because they can spike twice and very late). So try not to be shocked if you start testing at 1 hour and see the real effect of a meal instead of the much milder 2 hour version.
But according to a lot of recent research, its the peaks that cause the damage in ways that do not show up in the A1c. So reducing those peaks appears to have far more importance than just the a1c.
Just a final note, I've seen various dietitians who appear to think that a tiny bit of fat slows the carbs down to reduce the peak by half. This is complete and utter cobblers.
We've tested it. They haven't.
