I am newly diagnosed with LADA, and am not currently on insulin, and I found Adam Brown’s Chia Seed Pudding recipe the other day on DiaTribe.
I made it for breakfast two days ago, and again today, and about an hour after eating I received a low glucose alarm from my Libre3 CGM. It stopped at 68mg/dL before going back up again and hovering in the 70’s and 80’s much of the rest of the day.
I am not sure if this is an issue with the meal or my meter (it was definitely not a compression low as I was sitting upright at the kitchen table, nor is my meter newly placed). I don’t even know if this low reading is an issue that I should be concerned about.
I am still making insulin and my C-Peptide was normal. I did test positive for autoantibodies, and my A1c was 5.7% (hence the antibody testing). I’m not sure if it matters, but I am a vegetarian and have always had a fairly good diet, although I have never had chia seed pudding prior to this week.
This question may be off topic in one sense. Does anyone have any idea when the Libre 3 will be released in Canada? It has been cleared for use in Canada but I can’t get it on n Ontario. Any information would be good.
Thank you
Did you feel any hypo symptoms? (shakiness, sweating, irritability) A low of 68 is not that low. From what I’ve read about the blood glucose range of metabolically healthy people, it is not unusual to see blood glucose in the 60s. Plus, your Libre could easily be reading lower than actual glucose. In these cases, you could do a finger-stick to verify the CGM reading.
Your post caught my eye because I just restarted eating chia seed pudding after several years off. It is a high fiber meal in that it shows 9 grams of fiber for 9 grams of carbohydrates in a 30 gram serving. That means that post meal blood sugars tend to be flat and steady. You still enjoy a healthy natural insulin function and this meal is not taxing your glucose metabolism much.
I don’t think post-meal glucose excursion for chia pudding and the performance of the Libre 3 is an issue to be worried about. Good for you for being aware of your glucose metabolism with a positive on an autoantibody test. Your monitoring of glucose with a CGM is smart and definitely not being too cautious!
This made me feel a lot better, thank you so much. I have only had the CGM under fifty days, so I’m learning all the vagaries of this device- and my own BG readings.
While my endo has been great about my surprising A1c “prediabetes” findings, prescribing Metformin and a CGM, and even more surprising LADA finding, he has a tendency to be a bit hands-off.
Consequently, I don’t really know what’s normal until the Libre alerts me (of course in big red alarms haha).
Having neurogenic POTS, I frequently feel the way some hypoglycemic patients describe their symptoms: dizziness, brain-fog, intense fatigue, etc.
Now I am left to wonder if it’s potentially been these lower glucose episodes all along, or if the POTS is exacerbating this somehow.
At least now I know this number isn’t too low, and the chia pudding appears to keep my glucose levels down a lot during the day- even after eating 1/2C of rice at lunchtime [with eggs, butter, sesame oil, and nori (NYT Gyeran Bap recipe)]- which spiked my levels a bit, but less than I’ve historically seen over the past few weeks.
My BG also went back down to the 80’s a couple hours after lunch.
I’ll mention my findings to him and verify, but I’ll continue to eat the pudding for now. Thank you so much, again, for taking the time to respond!
Also some people have said they get hypoglycemic events before they “get” type 1. As type 1’s our system goes out of whack.
Doctors don’t like us to go below 70, even though "normals’ do. I would suggest you do some fingersticks to document it for the doctor in case you are “too low” too much. The medical field likes us to be under 4% lows and preferably stay under 3%.
I try to verify via fingerstick whenever this happens, but usually find my values higher than the Libre’s. This is true for almost all measurements it takes, so I’m not sure what to think. The FS shows the low, but not usually as low. I don’t know if that means there’s something wrong with all four Libre’s I’ve worn (which seems a bit unlikely), or if they are time delayed, or if they are simply not as accurate of FS- or a combination of any of these reasons.
This really is the most perplexing and condition, I feel overwhelmed, and I’m not even at the insulin stage yet.
The CGM will be behind a bloodstick by about 10 minutes. It reads interstitial fluid versus blood. And the CGM’s are “allowed” a 20% error rate. That’s one reason a Dexcom is preferred because you can calibrate it to be within points of accuracy. But CGM’s function, and vary differently on different people. I don’t know that anyone has ever figured out the why of that.
Do a blood stick test wait 10-15 minutes then look at your CGM. That will give you the clearest picture of how close or how much off the LIbre is.
Even if not closely accurate they are invaluable because they tell us the trend we are headed. Less fingersticks to know to stop exercising without crashing, Better eat something before you go out the door because our BG level is on a trend of continually dropping. All that becomes more pertinent with insulin of course but if you are dropping low, pertinent to you too.
You are actually very lucky it was obviously caught early. It can be a huge learning curve at the beginning and you have time. You are doing fine! Type 1 is not a disease that can be perfectly controlled. And some do better than others. Sometimes it’s the effort we put into it, but a lot of the time it is things beyond our control. Stress, sleep, exercise, weather, foods, anxiety, pain, sickness, injuries or my favorite, the wrong color socks for the day.
Just focus on learning as you go, even if we’ve been type 1’s for a while that’s something we all do continually. There is going to be constant variables along the way. You just learn to adapt. That is the most invaluable lesson to be learned!
PS Carb counting and guestimating carbs, it’s never too early to learn and memorize!
I am very grateful to you for taking such time to respond. Having just been officially diagnosed with Lada eight days ago, the enormity of this impact hasn’t truly hit me yet.
I feel rather lucky that I appear to have time to learn the vagaries before I get tossed into the deep end. I’ve gotten apps that count carbs (and other macros), as well as a great journaling app that records time, weather, location, etc with each entry.
I’m great at gathering and wading through data… I am just not entirely sure what I should be looking “at”- although I’m learning (I’ll add sock color to one column haha).
