Hi
Need some help please. Although I’ve said in the past I wasn’t going down the route of self testing I now find myself with a blood glucose monitor! I don’t want to start obsessing and measuring several times a day. In your experience, if I just test once a day would morning fasting be the best time to test?
Also, I think it’s sunshine-girl who suggested a snack before bed helped to stop the liver producing ???? during the night. Can’t find the post. Can you help please?
Hi Verano, I have heard that T2 are not encouraged to test as it makes you all neurotic???? I can see this since my hubby got a BP machine and it is his new best friend but it will wear off. Here in France, because I am on insulin, my doctor encourages me to test once a day, changing the time on alternate days. So day one I test before breakfast, day 2 I test before dinner (so almost on empty stomach). The afternoon test can be higher if I have had a snack but I don’t snack much now on this diet. Whilst I have been on this diet, because I have recognised the shaky feelings as getting too low, I test to make sure I am ok. That was just until I got used to the diet and stabilised my intake, exercise, snack etc. I still test twice a day as this diet is very strict and it helps me decide how much insulin to inject each night. For none insulin users they recommend 1 or 2 times per week.
The ???? was glycogen. If you eat at say 8pm and test your blood at say 8am you have gone 12 hours without food. Your body thinks you need an energy boost so the liver produces a sugar product to see you through until your next meal. Your liver does not know you are on a diet it just detects a lack of nutrients. If you give it a little snack (1 oz of chicken or ham, some yoghurt or a couple of prunes) you fool it into thinking it is being fed and can closed down its auto response. Voila, no spike.
Hi Verano
I have a monitor but generally haven’t been testing however because I’m now following the BSD I’ve decided to test every morning as it will give me the most consistent readings and also indicate whether the diet is working.
I wasn’t testing regularly but started to yesterday. I think it’s worth doing as weight loss is only one measure and ultimately getting those blood sugars down is the ultimate goal 🙂
I think it’s worth doing as well because it may help you to see if your blood sugars spike when you eat certain types of food. Hope that helps.
Blood sugar testers – please do take sunshine-girl’s advice about testing, timing etc – one of the most frequent posts on this forum is about fasting blood sugars and there are some really helpful threads about people’s experience of these. Search for Bill1954’s ‘this has to work for me’ thread to find why he eventually gave up testing fasting bloods and worked with other timings for tests of insulin response.
So much experience here already, do explore to find it. 🙂
Thank you. Will check that out. All comments gratefully accepted !