Who thinks I should probably do some 2 hours after meal or after bolus testing?

[mum2westiesGill]

I'm wondering whether to do some 2 hours after meal or rather 2 hours after bolus tests. Would this be a good idea or should I keep things simple and stick to waking, meal to meal and bedtime?

Obviously because these are the only times I test these are the only times I get an advised correction from the bolus calculator or I find I might be hypo so treat to get myself back to a normal level again.

I did do a couple of tests today
2 hours after lunch - 13.7
4 hours after lunch (which is usually just before my tea but tonight I'm not eating until around 9pm ish) 8.1

 

[Sally71]

It depends what you hope to learn from them. We’ve never been told to do them, and haven’t even done them, and personally I can’t see the point because all it tells you is that you’ve gone up from your food. I think it’s probably more useful for type 2s who want to know how much they have gone up to decide whether the meal they have eaten has too many carbs or not.

If you are usually back in range by the next mealtime then I don’t think you’d learn much; maybe if you go up a lot in between meals that might suggest that you need to do your insulin earlier to try to reduce the spike. Other than that I don’t know what you’d learn. Knowing what you are like you’d probably panic if you thought things were not as they should be, so if it’s going to cause you more stress rather than be helpful then I wouldn’t bother.

 

[mum2westiesGill]

It depends what you hope to learn from them. We’ve never been told to do them, and haven’t even done them, and personally I can’t see the point because all it tells you is that you’ve gone up from your food. I think it’s probably more useful for type 2s who want to know how much they have gone up to decide whether the meal they have eaten has too many carbs or not.

If you are usually back in range by the next mealtime then I don’t think you’d learn much; maybe if you go up a lot in between meals that might suggest that you need to do your insulin earlier to try to reduce the spike. Other than that I don’t know what you’d learn. Knowing what you are like you’d probably panic if you thought things were not as they should be, so if it’s going to cause you more stress rather than be helpful then I wouldn’t bother.

Thank you @Sally71 for a great piece of advice again! I don't want to learn anything from them - it was just to see what's happening in between times but like you say I will only see that my level has gone up. Apart from feeling hypo when do you test?

Some mealtimes I'm back in range, some I'm a tiny bit under or over, some I'm hypo and some I'm high like some of the lunchtime mealtimes.

Like you say knowing me I would probably panic and cause myself unnecessary stress.

 

[Sally71]

When we were doing finger pricks only we were told to do mealtimes and bed time and then only in between if we suspected something was wrong e.g. hypo or high. Then of course if you are low or high you have to do some retests to make sure things have gone back to normal.
After 4 years we got the Libre, had to do finger pricks to do food boluses because of the way the pump worked (and Libre is possibly not accurate enough to use for boluses), most of the rest of the time we would just scan though because it was easier. Up and down arrows were very useful and to be honest most of the time it doesn’t matter if you’re 6 or 8 unless you’re doing a bolus so we didn’t mind that it isn’t deadly accurate. Except when coming out of a hypo because sensors can still be reading low after BG has returned to normal so always check that with a finger prick.
Now we have Dexcom and have found it so accurate that we hardly do any pricks any more, it reads out on her pump and also our phones and the alarms alert us if she’s below 4 or above 14 so it’s different now, we can see what’s going on at any point easily if we really want to. Don’t check it much unless the alarms go off and when daughter does her bolus the pump automatically knows the BG from the sensors so she just has to input the carbs. I usually look at the 24 hour graph at the end of each day just to see whether any adjustments are required (although you need to compare several days to look for patterns before you start changing things). At the moment she seems to be a bit high in the afternoons so if this continues for another few days I might do a basal increase at that time of day. If not I’ll leave it alone.

 

[Lucyr]

Are you planning to change your diet or start pre bolusing based on the results? If yes then it’s useful to test post meal. If not you’ll probably find it stressful and of little benefit.