Is it your goal to have a normal blood sugar reading two hours after eating or to maintain a normal blood sugar reading before, during and right after eating?
It would be nice to have a normal blood sugar reading 24/7. There are some people that can manage that but I'm definitely not one of them. Mainly my goal is to be in target two hours after eating.(under 140 for me) But if when I check before my meal I am say 125 or higher I'll add in a correction. Actually anytime I check and I'm over 140 I'll correct, but no, I don't routinely check during or right after eating.
It's *always* my goal to have normal blood sugar. I like to keep it to 120 after meals,particularly breakfast/ lunch as I don't eat that much then. I think that a lot of times I like to overbolus a bit in the evening and have some beer/ junk food while I'm chillaxing. I watch my CGM too to see how it goes from there. If it's like 115-118-120-122 I am very happy but if I see 115-121-127 I might sort of evaluate where I'm at with IOB/ FOB and sit tight or correct depending on what all is going on.
This is a goal too, I probably act like that's easy a lot but I run into times where, for whatever reason, probably "oopsing" carb counts or whatever, it doesn't work that smoothly but my goal is to put it back to normal, not to just do ok at it. If it takes all day, I still keep slogging away at it, aiming for normal.
My goal is both ! It all depends on other demands and my food choices, but when I get the timing and content of my meal matched up with my insulin and activity level, then I can often stay under 130-140 the whole time, and <120 at 2 hours. But many times I don't, and I'm ok with that too.
This is only possible for me by keeping an eye on my CGMS, and I might postpone finishing part of my meal until the insulin catches up. For example, my breakfast is usually a smoothie (fruit/protein powder/yogurt/almond milk, etc), and it can take 20-30 minutes to consume, based on how the CGMS looks.
Before CGMS, my goals were more like <180 2 hours post meals, and <120 before the next meal, and I rarely checked my BG prior to 2 hours post meal.
I am constantly testing my blood sugar but results are never the same even though I eat the same breakfast every day. Do you guys shoot up at the same time you begin eating, 15 min prior or 30 min prior?
Breakfast is *extremely* challenging. I see spikes at a wide variety of times in the AM. I aggravate DP by doing a lot of pushups and chinups in the AM, which provides another boost. With the CGM, I try to suss out what's going on. If I start low and it starts going up, I redline my basal at 200% for an hour and maybe anticipate the anaerobic bump with a small bolus to cover it. Like 1/2 the time it covers it and half the time it doesn't. I think that there's "connectivity" to nighttime patterns stretching back into the previous day. I really should start writing down what goes on but I am way to lazy/ self-indulgent in the evenings. Last night, I was cooking soup until about 8:00 when junior got home, dinner, cleaning the pots because I sure as hell knew I didn't want to do it this AM!, getting the coffee ready to go for the AM, weighing veggies for lunch, etc.
Today for whatever reason it's running low so I'm tossing some milk in my coffee and ate two Pringles that we happened to have lying around. Then I'll shower and check again before I eat (there goes 3x test strips, 5:00 AM, 6:00 AM, 7:00 AM, when I'm down to the bottom of the barrel...eeek...) and just really try to stay on top of it. I get a lot of days where the 7:00 AM ends up at 120-130 and just blow off toast with breakfast. It's hard for me to say what I do because it really changes every day and I guess there's patterns and combos but I really play it by ear. I know that once I've eaten, I have little likelihood of running low so I blow off testing before I drive to work a lot, to make up for the extra strip(s) in the AM.
It's my goal before, during and after, and I don't always make my goal, much as I'd like to.
I actually am surprised folks here concentrate so much on the numbers at some time after the meal (or even argue about how many hours after the meal).
I struggle a lot with just keeping my bg before the meal in line with my goals. Sure, it's nice to know what it is after the meal and I'd like to keep that in check too, but what's the purpose of putting all my effort on staying below 120 after the meal, if I'm sometimes starting out at 40, 180, or 240 before the meal?
(Bonus points to anyone who recognizes what kind of vial the numbers 40, 180, and 240 come from ! I was always aiming for "80" or "120" or something in that ballpark. Before those I was aiming for "None" or "Trace" and despised the all too frequent "3+".)
I personally feel that both before meal and after meal numbers are important. Studies show that the more time spent high the more likely to accumulate damage. So if I spike from my meal and am hanging out at 200/180/160 for hours it's not a good thing. I would rather test post prandial and then correct the high promptly. It also is useful for seeing the results of certain foods or servings of foods, especially when you are still new.
I usually wait about 20 minutes before bolusing. I agree that breakfast is hard. You might want to re-think your breakfast choice if it is high carb. And if you are very frequently high after breakfast you might want to tweak your I:C for that meal.
I used to cut those strips in half !
The picture came from here.
history BG testing/meters
Even non-diabetics can have a postmeal BG spike. If your goal is to keep a flat BG even through a meal, that's admirable but goes beyond what is "normal".
Yet again, I'm with Zoe. I try to limit my post-meal spike but if I had to pick one overriding concern it would be to limit the amount of time spent at elevated BGs. Regardless of the peak BG reached, non-diabetics return to normal BG between 1 and 2 hours post-meal, so that's what I try to achieve as well.
Gotta side with Zoe on this one. The goal of BG management is to achieve the flattest line you can. Wide excursions are bad, whether before or after. Both need to be controlled to avoid long term damage. Sorry, but there are no easy shortcuts here.
Very good, thank you! They also had a picture of Tes-Tape color scale! I haven't seen a Tes-Tape roll dispenser in ages and ages! What I recall keeping in my logs as a "3+" seems to have actually been "+++" on the color scale.
Truly flat is obviously impossible. What I said was, the flattest you can. Which is what a non-diabetic body always tries to do. It isn't about perfection, it's about doing the best that is reasonably achievable.
Sure, "truly" or not, perfection or not, if that's your goal, have it. Many diabetics, in fact, seem to be very good at achieving flat lines post meal.
I'm not taking offense to the idea that diabetics are, in fact, making it a goal to maintain flat BG profiles so I hope you're not taking offense to what I said about flat lines, truly or otherwise, being outside of the "norm" for non-diabetics.
No offense taken, not in the least. Just wanted to correct the misunderstanding that I was pushing "perfectly flat" as a realistic goal.
Cool, didn't think so, but you never know with the internets. Also, I posted 10 minutes before yours, but I do happen to be exceptional at reading minds. =)
My goal is to keep my BG between 75-135 all the time. It is a truly difficult feet that I may only achieve 1-2 times a month (when things are going good), but I think you need to challenge yourself to do the best you can and this challenge helps me achieve that.
That's the problem with communicating in writing. No body language, no tone of voice, no clues.
:)