Why would eating carb-free/sugar-free foods raise your BG?

[Purple_Panda]

So ftr I haven't taken my meds this morning yet.

I ate some sugar free jelly belly jelly beans, and some sugar free gummy bears. Pretty good actually.

I then had some microwaveable pork rinds I ordered online. Just tested my BG just now and it's 7.5?!!!

How is it 7.5 when all I ate was what's listed above? Furthermore whenever I eat things like fish or chicken it doesn't raise my BG so why would these candies and the pork rinds do that?

 

[helli]

There are far more things that carbs that can affect blood sugars. This chart gives you an idea of some of the things.


There may also be something within your sugar free sweets. Just because they have no sugar does no mean they contain no carbs. For example, a quick look shows the Sugar free jelly belly jelly beans contain 12% carbs. This may be in a sugar alternative chemical (it mentions "sugar alcohol") which still affects some people's blood sugars.

 

[Purple_Panda]

Got no idea what the arrows are meant to indicate

 

[Deleted member 21371]

So ftr I haven't taken my meds this morning yet.

I ate some sugar free jelly belly jelly beans, and some sugar free gummy bears. Pretty good actually.

I then had some microwaveable pork rinds I ordered online. Just tested my BG just now and it's 7.5?!!!

How is it 7.5 when all I ate was what's listed above? Furthermore whenever I eat things like fish or chicken it doesn't raise my BG so why would these candies and the pork rinds do that?

7.5 is a normal level.
Your body, your liver, tries to keep you in the normal range.

 

[helli]

Got no idea what the arrows are meant to indicate

This is the whole article https://diatribe.org/42factors.
I think it is important to understand what can affect your blood sugars. Things like stress and illness can make a large change. It is not just food

 

[Becka]

There is no such a thing as a correct blood glucose level because the body is not that exact. This is why everyone talks about a normal range. Because a person's levels are constantly going up and down, no matter what you do, up and down, all the time.

If your levels get too low, the body releases some of the glucose it stored. If your levels get too high, the body produces more insulin. Up and down, every minute, all day, every day.

Diabetes is essentially a disruption to that process where, for whatever reason or type, the body cannot keep that balance so you need to assist it.

As helli has shown, the process can be affected by various other factors, not just by consuming carbohydrates (for which a healthy body produces and is sensitive to insulin to counteract it). But though the normal range is cited as 4–7 mmol/mol, that is an average and some people will be at the higher end, and others at the lower end, of that range.

It is not abnormal for a healthy person to be as high as 7.5 when resting. Besides which, the margin of error for the latest glucometer standards are ±20% for readings of 5.6 mmol/mol or greater. So a reading of 7.5 could mean you would be read as low as 6 mmol/mol in a laboratory test.

It is not just consuming glucose directly that can raise your levels, but any behaviours which cause the body to release more of its stored glucose or reduce its insulin production.

Incidentally, I assume on that chart the red up-arrows mean it is something that will raise you levels and the blue down-arrows are those which will drop them. Some things can have either effect so will have both arrows. And the yellow right-arrows are used with either of those where though the item may raise or lower them, depending on the arrow shown, it may also have no discernible effect.

 

[Inka]

Could it just be a slight waking rise? Maybe the lack of real food caused your body to pump out some glucose?

 

[Deleted member 21371]

Could it just be a slight waking rise? Maybe the lack of real food caused your body to pump out some glucose?

I use my waking rise.
It's normal.
I can happily stay in bed, and dumb it down.
But, I can also focus on my "wake up" and use the rise from the BG dump from my liver to wake me up.

 

[grovesy]

Mine start to rise when I get up and just go to the bathroom.