Leadinglights
Well-Known Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 2
OK. There are a couple of measures of your blood glucose, one is the HbA1C test which is a 3monthy average and is given in mmol/mol. Your result is 51mmol/mol. That will be from a blood sample taken from your arm and sent to the lab.
The monitor you are getting and you use by taking a finger prick blood sample and essentially will give a blood glucose reading which is a moment in time and that result is in mmol/l. That reading will go up and down during the day and night and will be influenced by many things but mostly what you have eaten and how active you are.
So by using the monitor and testing as suggested you can find out your waking/ fasting reading which should gradually come down as you make dietary changes. The before and after eating readings will tell you if you are able to tolerate the amount of carbohydrate in your meal. The aim is to tailor your meals so that increase is less than 3mmol/l. So say you have a medium sized (220g) jacket potato which would be about 45g carbs and that causes an increase of 4mmol/l then you would know that was too much so you might then try a smaller potato. You can do the same testing with various foods to determine the portion size which you can tolerate.
You may find the book Carbs and Cals useful to look at the carb values for portions of a whole range of foods, there is also an app or you can look on shop web sites, packet or just google for the carb value but make sure you look for UK sites.
I hope that helps explain.