Testing blood sugars

[Topsy]

Hi all
Please can I say don’t bash me about what I’m about to post
Just positive comments please.
I’ve just been asked to check my blood sugars
Week 1:before meals
Finding things but strange as when tested at docs 15.8
Before dinner 7.3
Breakfast today11.8
Before lunch7.3
How can it vary so much and do these class as high?
I’m eating sensible and have cut carbs right down
Can anyone help me get my head a round it?
As 2nd week 2hrs after I’ve eaten
Thanks

 

[freesia]

Hi @Topsy , i have my target range between 4 and 10 so for me, 7s are ok. Everyone is different though and levels can be affected by so much more than what we eat although that is probably the main thing. They can be affected by whether you are well or not, how active or inactive you have been Are you on any medication? It helps to keep a diary of your levels, what you are eating and how much exercise you have. You might start to spot patterns

 

[Inka]

@Topsy Are you saying that you’re only testing after meals in the 2nd week? It wasn’t quite clear to me.

Yes, blood sugar will go up and down during the day, diabetic or not. I’d say the 7s were ok but the 11 was higher than ideal and the 15.8 was too high.

The most useful thing is to test before the meal and then again two hours after if you’re trying to see the effect the food in the meal is having on you. That way you can see how much your blood sugar rises in response to the food.

 

[Topsy]

Hi Inka
Thank u for reply
I’ve been told a week before then second week 2 hrs after my meal.
Trouble I have with even meal is I don’t finish work till 6pm everyday
So any help eating wise if you don’t mind would be great.

 

[Drummer]

The trick with food is to have things which do not cause spikes in your blood glucose which push you more than two whole numbers higher at two yours after starting to eat.
These days I tend to have either a whole chicken or a pack of chicken thighs, or joints of other meat so there are several meals from it. At the moment there are a lot of reduced prices, I am gradually filling up my freezer.
When I was working I used frozen foods, but put them to defrost in the morning or the previous evening if necessary, as that cuts down cooking time I usually cooked a double amount and put half in bowls with lids in the fridge for even shorter preparation time next day.

 

[Squirrel768]

I suspect that the reason for 'splitting' the tess over 2 weeks, is because Type 2 doesn't usually qualify for (or only for a very limited amount of) test strips. As a Type 2, you are not taking insulin, you are not at risk of hypos (apart from a small number of medications), so I'm guessing that your team are looking to find some sort of pattern. As @Inka said, the best way to establish some sort of patten is to test before and after meals, as that will reveal how your levels change over a mealtime. Why not ask your team if you can have sufficient strips to test more thoroughly for a couple of weeks? It should help them as well in the longer term.

I hope you can carry on with your progress - levels of 7-ish and below are pretty good going, so I am confident that you will get to grips with this 🙂

 

[Inka]

Hi Inka
Thank u for reply
I’ve been told a week before then second week 2 hrs after my meal.
Trouble I have with even meal is I don’t finish work till 6pm everyday
So any help eating wise if you don’t mind would be great.

Ok, well I still think testing before and after the same meal is most sensible because then you can see any rise. If you only test afterwards in the second week, you don’t know how far your blood sugar went up.

Yes, it’s hard when you’re working. I tend to have a few quick meals I make, and also batch cook and freeze meals for use during the week. If you give us an idea of what you like to eat, you might get some good suggestions. Even an omelette with green veg is a reasonable meal - hardly any carbs and healthy veg. If you eat meat, then you can freeze portions of casseroles, etc, or roast a chicken to have over a few days. Fish is quick to cook too. Planning ahead helps a lot because getting home and thinking about what you can cook is depressing and often leads to less healthy choices.

 

[Topsy]

Ok, well I still think testing before and after the same meal is most sensible because then you can see any rise. If you only test afterwards in the second week, you don’t know how far your blood sugar went up.

Yes, it’s hard when you’re working. I tend to have a few quick meals I make, and also batch cook and freeze meals for use during the week. If you give us an idea of what you like to eat, you might get some good suggestions. Even an omelette with green veg is a reasonable meal - hardly any carbs and healthy veg. If you eat meat, then you can freeze portions of casseroles, etc, or roast a chicken to have over a few days. Fish is quick to cook too. Planning ahead helps a lot because getting home and thinking about what you can cook is depressing and often leads to less healthy choices.

I love meat and veg.
Don’t do fish sorry
For breakfast love baked oats overnight nights and bran flakes. Lunch time is my main problem and what time I should eat my evening meal.
I love fruit as well. Thank you for your kind words

 

[Topsy]

I suspect that the reason for 'splitting' the tess over 2 weeks, is because Type 2 doesn't usually qualify for (or only for a very limited amount of) test strips. As a Type 2, you are not taking insulin, you are not at risk of hypos (apart from a small number of medications), so I'm guessing that your team are looking to find some sort of pattern. As @Inka said, the best way to establish some sort of patten is to test before and after meals, as that will reveal how your levels change over a mealtime. Why not ask your team if you can have sufficient strips to test more thoroughly for a couple of weeks? It should help them as well in the longer term.

I hope you can carry on with your progress - levels of 7-ish and below are pretty good going, so I am confident that you will get to grips with this 🙂

Thank u
Just feeling down with the 15.1 etc just don’t understand why

 

[SB2015]

Welcome to the forum @Topsy

As others have said, testing both before and after a meal, alongside a record of how many carbs you have eaten will help you make decisions about changes you need to make. As your levels do go out of range at times you need to work out which foods you can tolerate to be able to make a difference to these.

In the simplest terms your body is not able to make/use enough insulin to deal with the glucose that comes from absolutely any carbs that you eat. So less carbs means you need less insulin. By reducing the carbs from what you are eating there will be less glucose requiring insulin.

 

[pm133]

I love meat and veg.
Don’t do fish sorry
For breakfast love baked oats overnight nights and bran flakes. Lunch time is my main problem and what time I should eat my evening meal.
I love fruit as well. Thank you for your kind words

The problem you have is that cereals are high carb and the same goes for fruit so you either need to weigh your food or reduce the portion sizes or cut them out of your diet.

Testing before meals and 2 hours after will show you what works for you.

 

[Topsy]

I suspect that the reason for 'splitting' the tess over 2 weeks, is because Type 2 doesn't usually qualify for (or only for a very limited amount of) test strips. As a Type 2, you are not taking insulin, you are not at risk of hypos (apart from a small number of medications), so I'm guessing that your team are looking to find some sort of pattern. As @Inka said, the best way to establish some sort of patten is to test before and after meals, as that will reveal how your levels change over a mealtime. Why not ask your team if you can have sufficient strips to test more thoroughly for a couple of weeks? It should help them as well in the longer term.

I hope you can carry on with your progress - levels of 7-ish and below are pretty good going, so I am confident that you will get to grips with this 🙂

I have reduced my carbs and have been looking at different meals
I’m going to get this and any advise or help will be gratefully revived

 

[grovesy]

I don't usally eat Granola, but recently we had a full box as my son had gone gluten free, over a number of days I worked out that I could only tolerate about half the recommend amount by weighing and testing.

 

[Inka]

I love meat and veg.
Don’t do fish sorry
For breakfast love baked oats overnight nights and bran flakes. Lunch time is my main problem and what time I should eat my evening meal.
I love fruit as well. Thank you for your kind words

Well, with meat you’ll be avoiding a lot of carbs. All you need to think about is avoiding veg that’s too carby for you (eg parsnips are quite carby), so maybe stick with salads and things like broccoli, cabbage, etc, and then avoid carby accompaniments. So, for example, if you made a chicken curry, you could have cauliflower rice with it instead of normal rice. You can even get frozen cauliflower rice for speed (just microwave it to cook it).

Some Type 2s get on ok with oats, some don’t. Testing will tell you. If you don’t, then you can still have a few oats or granola sprinkled on Greek yoghurt with some berries. Berries are usually lower carb than many fruits.

For lunch, instead of a sandwich, have low carb soup and/or a salad plus a cooked chicken portion, just as an example. Hard boiled eggs travel well too.

I always think it’s best to have an earlier rather than later evening meal as far as you’re able.

Don’t get down. Take it slowly. It’s hard to start with, but it gets easier and you’re among friends here who understand.

 

[trophywench]

Here's a jolly good testing regime with a really sensible explanation of why you're doing it!

Test, Review, Adjust

Managing blood glucose levels for type 2 diabetes. Learning how to achieve long term control by testing and diet.

loraldiabetes.blogspot.com

 

[Squirrel768]

Thank u
Just feeling down with the 15.1 etc just don’t understand why

I know the feeling, @Topsy - when your levels seem to he holding up well, then everything goes pear-shaped ... all we can do is pick ourselves up and carry on.

In my case, I can add in some extra insulin (like yesterday - nicely within range all day, then two additional bolus doses overnight when it was climbing into orbit! I know the cause in this case, so I know who to blame (yep, ME LOL), but very frustrating when you an't identify why. I fully appreciate that you don't have that option, so it is much harder to do anything about the 'highs'. You are clearly thinking very constructively about how to get to grips with it, though, so top marks for your work on this, over time you will gain a lot of experience and it will become more second-nature. (Frustrating always, but second nature nevertheless ... )

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

When was your Drs appointment? And what was the meal you ate before it?

As others have said, the ’spread out’ checks are helpful, but they don’t necessarily give you meal-specific information. There are other things that cause BG to rise and fall during the day (exercise, illness, stress) so the before-and-after method is intended to help you check and see what one specific meal does. If your after check is 8.2 at 2hrs after eating, that might be great... but it‘s slightly different if the before-meal check was 4.5 vs if it was 7.3. The latter would be almost no rise at all (and therefore a great meal), while the former would be a slightly bigger than ideal rise.

If you can aim to keep your meal-rises to 2-3mmol/L you should see your overall average BG levels gently drop over time - even if some of the numbers you see at the beginning are a bit on the high side.

Keeping the rises from meals small means your BG isn’t continually being pushed up so much 🙂