GP says this is fine. Is it?

Hi
I’ve posted a few times about my concerns with my toddler daughter having a few elevated sugars. (150s) immediately after eating - always back down after two hours.
I spoke with the GP about my concerns and the GP advised to take a day with several readings and if it looked like there was a problem they would run an hbA1C. However the GP also says there is no problem until the FBG is 130 or more and PP are consistently into the 200s.
This is my results. The GP says fine. I don’t know if they still look a bit high for someone of not quite two years olds. I’m not sure what the hbA1C would be because she rarely seems to drop below 90. Also because she quite often eats again before the end of the two hour period it is difficult…she is a grazer. She doesn’t have huge meals.

Fasting blood glucose, 8am - 85

Breakfast (doesn’t really eat breakfast) some fruit, a weetabix and some milk. Approx 25g carbs.
1hr: 102
1 and a half hrs: 90
Snack: approx 15g carbs
Milk: approx 15g carbs.
2 hrs after milk - 87
Didn’t really have much lunch, just had half an apple and a quarter of a sandwich.
Evening meal: ate quite a bit, approx 40g carbs, including small ice cream
1 hr: 120
2 hrs: 86
Snack - half a piece of wholemeal toast and some milk, approx 25g carbs
2 hrs - 90

Do they seem a little high? Overall? Total daily carbs were around 130g I think but she doesn’t eat much all in one go.
Is it worth me paying privately for an hbA1C or is the dr correct? I don’t have huge faith in GPS for diabetes. I know of so many people who are told it’s nothing and then it is…

The fbg is usually on the very cusp of normal too. 85 - 89. Rarely any lower. 90 is the real cut off for normal I think.

Her numbers look pretty normal, and no reason for concern at this time.

Maybe you can relax about this for now and check again in say 3 - 6 months.

If you are doing a blood test for other reasons, it may be useful to get a hba1c as a baseline. However this does not need to be done specifically.

I really think, sorry to say, that your anxiety is projecting on your daughter. Can you take up some physical activity or hobby, to help divert your attention and anxiety.

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I suppose I just think if 40g sent her to 120 what would 80g do? 40g isn’t much carb and she went quite high.
I don’t know. Maybe you are right. I am just super anxious about it.

Yes an hbA1c would be a useful baseline really. Since she seems to be around 90 a lot of the time and more after eating I feel like the hbA1c would be quite high.

I find the data you provided 100% reassuring, not at all concerning.

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I guess because I’m getting readings of up
Round 110 without her eating much I find it a concern.

Like if she ate 75g of carbs as in the OGTT I strongly suspect she would fail.
A banana sends her to around 100 for example.

Why do you have any reason to believe that isn’t normal? Have you conducted research on non-diabetics and seen what their numbers are? Do you have any medical, scientific or research qualifications? I’m not trying to be mean, but I don’t think it’s good to enable you and there seems to be no getting through to you. Please stop testing her and get yourself some help!

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Only the cgms of non diabetics online. But I suspect they are eating more carbs than my daughter.

Why does it matter though? Those numbers are good. As well-controlled type 1 I still have lots of numbers in the 7s, 8s, 9s and sometimes higher. It hasn’t hurt me yet. If she unfortunately develops type 1 one day she is going to have high numbers sometimes even with treatment. Right now her numbers are excellent with no treatment. Her health is not at risk, and there is nothing you can do, so what is the point of all this?

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I know. I feel very guilty I suppose. I didn’t realise that having type 1 already in two generations gives my children a massive risk of developing type 1. I thought their risk was around 1/100 as I had them in my 30s, was diagnosed after my 11th birthday and obviously am the mother not the father.

However apparently it’s a major major risk factor already being present in two generations. I was selfish to have them and risk them developing type 1. It might not be a death sentence anymore but it’s still a life sentence. It’s stopped me doing all sorts of stuff and I have to go to bed every night - as I’m sure we all do - just hoping to wake up in the morning.

I worry about your anxiety about this potentially negatively impacting your daughter, who at this point doesn’t have diabetes and in no way needs this level of monitoring that you seem to be doing very regularly and continually seeking a different response from the one you keep getting (that she doesn’t currently seem to have a problem). Even if she is going to develop T1, you could check her much more sporadically (like one fasting glucose and one 2 hour postprandial once a month, say) to keep an eye on it and that would be sufficient—there’s really nothing else to do at this point, and that aspect of the future is simply out of your control. I might suggest considering seeking counseling for yourself to help with anxiety/guilt management if backing off this does not feel doable—health anxiety is a very real thing and it’s certainly understandable to perhaps need some help managing that. It seems like this might be more about you than about her, at least right now.

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@Bethshine82, I have a kid with T1, and we don’t have any T1s in the family. While it is true that there is more likelihood to develop T1 with 2 generations of ancestors with T1, 9 kids out of 10 get T1D without T1 relatives. This is NOT something you should feel guilty about. My kid wears a Dexcom CGM to bed every day, and we have no fear that he won’t wake up – I am sure that, in a small number of years, GB will make CGMs a routine treatment as well.

I am not saying by any means that having T1D is a blessing. But, had we known my boy was going to have T1D, we would still have him. And he would have asked to be born as well :slight_smile:

I know you feel very guilty. But your concerns, at this stage, appear unproductive. Please don’t take this negatively, this is not meant like that at all: it seems to me that this is more a psychological thing with you right now than a medical thing with your daughter. Would it be helpful to talk to a psychologist to decrease your anxiety about it?

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To be honest, those look pretty great! Seems like a fairly high carb diet (which is “normal” for one of that age in Western culture), and her pancreas is clearly handling the load. So, if you’ve had really high BG after meals (what does that mean? 140 mg/dL, 180 mg/dL, 200+?), then you might consider what kind of meals she’s eating.

I’m a 180lb male (admittedly with diabetes), but 40g of digestible carb is more than I’ve eaten in a single meal in quite a while. Apple, bread, ice cream, toast, milk, weetabix… these are all filled with sugars and starches. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but that might explain a few high BGs. My wife is not diabetic, and no one in her family is diabetic (i.e., she doesn’t appear to have any genetic susceptibility). We’ve tested her BG after a carb-intensive meal (rice and bread with dinner and ice cream after), and it will occasionally be 150-160 mg/dL 75 minutes after eating. Then again, she just ate 150g of carbs. So why wouldn’t it be? The difference in her response and mine (even with medication), is that my BG would be at 250 mg/dL after such a meal, and would still be in the 140-180mg/dL two and three hours after supper.

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Yes I have found it hard to find the exact statistical risk - some things say as high as 50%. In which case as I’ve two children I suppose one was statistically likely to be T1.

Personally I would rather not have been born than develop type 1 but maybe that’s because I’m an anxious person anyway. It means we can’t go abroad any more for example because I can’t cope with going through security with an insulin pump although pre pump I used to go. It ruined university for me as everyone else used to drink a lot and I never could. That was basically what the social side of university was, being drunk. I worry when I’m home overnight with the children that they will get up to find me dead in the morning. I’ve had two difficult pregnancies with severe morning (ha ha ha) sickness, which was made even worse with trying to manage diabetes too.
Every single thing I do. Every single minute of my life. Night and day. It makes thing difficult. It never ever ever lets up, it takes about 50% of my energy. I would say it has - for me - ruined my life.

I can see if someone had 150g of carbs that would push their sugars up even if bot diabetic. But my daughter isn’t having 150g of carbs, she doesn’t have that in a day! She just generally seems to run between 90 and 110 much of the time and it just overall seems high. Then if she eats very carby foods we can see high 120s and into 130s.

I have been flying, internationally and domestically, with an insulin pump for nearly 40 years. There is no need to be anxious about it.

It may “overall seem high” to you, but it is not, especially not, as @David49 points out, after a breakfast of quick-acting carbs like cereal and fruit. These are perfectly normal numbers.

Please, as others have urged you, seek counselling for the anxiety you are projecting onto your daughter. Your daughter does not yet have diabetes, and may never have diabetes, and even if she does develop it, it is far from limiting in this day and age. We’re all different, of course, but diabetes has never, ever prevented me from doing anything. Well, maybe entering a pie-eating contest …

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We travel all the time with our T1D boy. In fact, he just spent 2 weeks in Costa Rica with my wife, on a beach, surfing every day! What we do, however, is that we arrive a little bit early and tell security that he cannot go through the scanner for medical reasons, and needs to be patted and frisked. We never have a problem.

I went to college where a lot of people drank. I am not a T1D but I never drink more than 1 beer or wine glass per evening (I don’t like people who lose control socially, and I don’t). I still had the greatest time in college! I have no idea why people feel that getting unconscious with alcohol is the greatest thing in the world – we all go to sleep every day and nobody makes a big deal out of it :slight_smile: So I don’t think you lost anything at uni.

I am truly sorry that you feel so bad. Really, I think you should talk to someone about your anxiety – there is a good chance it would also make life easier for you, and lighten your own burden.

I hope you find a way to deal with your concerns. At this stage, while I am no doctor, I don’t see anything medical in your daughter to justify them. All the more reason to have a few good discussions with a professional to see if you can improve your emotional health. All the best to you and your family.

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This is perhaps the most informative post I’ve read of yours. I’ve had a hard time relating to the concerns you’ve expressed over your daughter’s blood sugars as at no point did I interpret any of the information you posted about her as alarming or any way an indicator of a problem. Given that you have lived with type 1, I know you are informed, so I have attributed your concerns to hyperawareness - whereas I’m a person without diabetes, I was completely unaware of my son’s symptoms when they developed.

I read these above comments of yours as the real issue. You have had a hard time with diabetes and it has impacted your life in a significantly negative way, keeping you from doing things you may have otherwise done. I encourage you to speak more about these thoughts and worries of yours here on this forum. If indeed you have anxiety, as others have suggested I think you could benefit from professional help. But I also think we here can help encourage you with your worries. Not only can we relate, but we might be able to reassure you that some of the things you fear are actually possible.

Everyone is different, of course. I can only say that for me, when I hear of another person doing something with diabetes - like traveling abroad - it empowers me, which in turn empowers my son. Perhaps you could find some comfort from addressing some of these issues directly.

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Like others have said, I think you’re seeing this through a lens of your own anxiety. And that is perfectly normal, and quite understandable. But it doesn’t necessarily lead to an accurate view of what is going on with your daughter. 90-110 mg/dL is pretty darn normal. I’m a 180lb man. Your daughter at 2 is probably 30lbs or less. She doesn’t need to eat 150g of carbs in a meal to be eating a high carb diet. Intake, like almost everything else, is proportional to body weight. Those postprandial numbers (120s-130s) are entirely, completely normal for a non-diabetic. Although there is some debate, many non-diabetics probably experience occasional BGs higher than 140 after a carby meal.

So, you asked us what we thought about the numbers, and that’s what I think: your daughter likely has a normal response for a 2 year old on a fairly “normal” diet. Hopefully that remains the case. I also worry about my son, being a T1 diabetic from a family full of T1 diabetics. But there isn’t much I can do about it unless he develops diabetes. He hasn’t so far, and I’m grateful for that!

But please seek help. You seem to be panicking over your daughter’s blood sugars, and not only is that not good for you, it’s also not good for your daughter. Our children pick up on our moods, our worries, and our fears, and if you have this much fear about your daughter’s health when most indications are she is “fine,” it may contribute to anxiety in her as well. Family and medical counseling (for those with chronic diseases) might benefit you and your family quite a bit.

And, all that being said, I get it, I really do. I worry about my son almost every day: think it’s a normal part of being a parent. I worry about myself as well. It’s normal to worry, but the kind of anxiety you’re describing needs help.

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The blood sugar readings for your daughter that you quote seem fine. If you’re really concerned, you can have her take a glucose tolerance test to get more information, and this might be useful just for reducing your own worries.

The ethical issues in deliberately choosing to have a child at higher than normal risk for type 1 diabetes were discussed in the “I’m Pregnant with Type 1 Diabetes” message thread.

I don’t think they will run an OGTT and I’m not sure my daughter would drink the whole thing anyway…

Where is the thread about the ethical issues relating to having a child when having type 1 yourself?