Tested Lots Of BG's Last Nite
 

I had some people over last night to watch the season opener of Survivor. I went to the bathroom to test BG, and others followed....long story...anyway

Got lots of readings ...from 89 (mine) to 145...my best friend's (110 lbs, 5'8", very healthy)...so....is it okay for "normal" people to spike...but not us? Just wonderring!

my hubby's bg was over 135 when he was stressed over exams.if that had been my reading i,d have had a stroke.

(sounds of tumbleweeds blowing in the background..again)

Anyone else have any experiences like this?

think everybodys over at Dr b's.

huh?....Dr B has a site?

do you not know about it?Iplay there when i,m not here.the website is
www.diabetes-normalsugars.com/
just register and go to the forum.you'll recognise everyone.

Hi Sherrielee,

The only time my wife's bgl is less than mine is before breakfast. I remember one time before bed, my wife's bgl was around 128 and she nearly had a heart attack. Now she refuses to let me check her bgl out ;-)



Thanks,

Adam

Hi Adam:
i'm chasing my family with my meter, and only my BG who understand my feelings, let's me poke him with a niddle. everytime he has higher pp BGs than mine, he's is very proudly will claim that i don't have diabetes. then i'll remind him that i didn't eat cookis and ice cream for desert, and that 's how my BGs are lower. only his FBG are always around 110, and his H1C was 5.9 last time he tested.
Thanks,
Dina

Hi Sherrielee--

My wife was a grad student in nursing at UCSF 30 years ago. They took a class of 20 on a "field trip" down to Swenson's Ice Cream Shoppe (simply terrific ice cream!) and encouraged everyone to eat their fill. All were non-diabetics, all between 21-35 years old. Starving grad students didn't need a lot of encouragement!

Then they ran 2 hr. pp BG's on everyone. They were ALL off the map...most between 250 and 300!!! The moral of the story (for them) was that a high BG can be a response to a huge carb/sugar load...and not necessarily a sure diagnostic for diabetes. Everybody has "spikes" in response to the proper stimuli. Shortly after that, most places stopped relying on "Glucose Tolerance Tests" for dx (this is the one where you drank a bottle of super-sweet "Glucola," and got hourly tests for 8 hours to determine "clearance rates.") Lots of people tested as diabetic on those...but most of them cleared "normally" when they ate "normally." The HbA1c provides a much more reliable dx.

Incidently, despite a family history of diabetes and overweight, my wife has never tested high on any other regular BG readings...but I, with no family history (but really high weight) managed to get a T2 dx last April. The good news is that my 300+ numbers went to 85-115 after 6 weeks on Atkins at a <20 carb/day intake.

Still, I'm not contemplating any trips to Swenson's in the near future!:)

Hummm...so...if we aren't dx with Type II....numbers go out the window.

Just retested my friend....99 .. 2 hours pp

Actually, it has more to do with the amount of time we spend with elevated BG's...often referred to as the AUC (Area Under the Curve). The BG graph of a diabetic (T-1 or T-2) will show the same spikes as the BG of a non-diabetic. The difference will be in the plot of how fast these levels return to the "normal" range. If these are on an x-y graph, where the BG numbers are the vertical axis, and the horizontal axis is time, the diabetic plot will cover a lot more area than that of the non-diabetic. As I understand it, this AUC is critical in assessing the amount of exposure the delicate parts of your body (nerves, tissues, retinas, etc.) have to the caustic effects of your BG. The combination of severity and duration of exposure determines the amount of damage your body may sustain.

An additional facet of this is the "Glycemic Index." Although the conventional view has been that one carb is equal to another, it can be demonstrated that some foods with equal carbs are much more "persistant" in elevating and maintaining high BG readings than others. In essence, a food that gives you a BG spike of 200 and clears to 120 pp (2hrs) would be far preferable to one that gives you a spike of 180 and only declines to 170 pp (2hrs). Again, we're looking at the AUC measurement, but this time we're comparing foods, not the response of diabetics vs. non-diabetics.

hi geo53562;:
you've finally confirmed what i've suspected for a while. i do think that even non-diabetics spike if given a good load of carbs, and therefore, it's not good indication of the desease. also, i agree that H1C is a very sensitive indicator of any health risk/damage from diabetes. now, i won't be going crazy anymore when my pp BG is 100.
thanks you,
dina

To muddy the waters a bit more, in "Life without bread" an excellent book which I recommend for general scientific background on lc, Dr Lutz points out that some obese adolescents actually spike LESS than non-obese people, because they are constantly circulating huge amounts of insulin. If anyone can't get the book, I will get it out and quote his figures. Bill

hi Bill:
i've read a good references about this book but dreading buying another on lc, already have more than few. this is totally makes sense but it doesn't make me happier. could you, please, provide the figures.
thank you,
dina

I find it helpful to remember that diabetes is an impairment of the ability to produce insulin. It is not high blood sugar, which may also be very high pp in non-diabetics.

If you think of it this way, it's easier to figure out when to eat, when to test, whether or not you might need to consider injecting insulin, how much weight you need to lose, why you're not losing it, etc. That concept makes it all much more accessible to me.