Dr Giles Yeo researches obesity and related topics at Cambridge. He has a good way of explaining the science.
Iâve been wearing a blood glucose sensor for just over a week now. I donât have diabetes. But wearing this has given me some good insight into what keep my blood sugar stable and what causes it to spike.
Most food containing refined sugar caused a sharp spike. But not if I had a cup of coffee with it or was active after eating it. Iâm not certain of the coffee effect - I drink plain black coffee. I donât know of any physiological effect that causes it to dampen a blood sugar spike. Maybe I need to read a bit more.
Mild to moderate exercise (brisk walk, moderately difficult yoga session) keeps my blood sugar level very steady.
Meals high in whole grains and vegetables result in a gentle rise or no rise while something with more refined ingredients like white rice or non wholemeal pasta cause a sharp spike. The worst spike was when I ate a piece of toasted white bread with butter.
My next experiment is going to be with McDonaldâs
What kind of numbers are you seeing when it spikes and when itâs "normalâ, if you donât mind sharing?
Thatâs today, with a moderately hard yoga class late morning followed by a tiramisu Danish pastry and arepa (was walking all around the neighbourhood for these).
Several of my colleagues wear a sensor for medical reasons and one of them is on insulin and one is on Ozempic and their numbers and trends look very different.
I try to follow an intermittent fasting regime with two main meals of the day around midday and 6pm.
Wow, very impressive numbers, I have type 2 DB and Iâm on Metformin, my numbers range from 5.5(when Iâm being good)- 6.8(after way too many treats). I gotta get back on track with the walking and less refined sugar/bad carbs, but my Doctors are pleased with my numbers, my endocrinologist has suggested Ozempic but Iâm not interested.
Is the UK using 6.0 or a lower number for the line between normal and prediabetes?
Canada is still using 6.0 and under as normal and 6.1-6.9 A1C range as the prediabetes range.
The US lowered their prediabetes range to 5.7-6.5.
Prediabetes in Canada is set to be 6.1-6.9.
https://guidelines.diabetes.ca/cpg/chapter3
Found the UK Guidelines, which include the conversion of mmol/ to A1C . Britain also considers prediabetes to start with an A1C of 6.0.
Thanks. Iâm not diabetic but have a very strong family history of Type 2 diabetes on my motherâs side, with all my aunts and uncles and cousins on Metformin from their early 40s. So I am determined to do what I can to avoid it.
I must admit, I got the glucose sensor on a free trial and am using it to experiment with different things. Yesterday (a Saturday) I had something ridiculous in the early afternoon - 2 glasses of Prosecco followed by wonton soup and then fried rice with sweet and sour chicken (please donât judge!) but my blood sugar remained weirdly stable. This might have been because about 40 min after all that my husband dragged me out on a 10 kilometer walk.
I am tempted to see if I can try out a monitor, too.
I donât judge! (Pete doesnât judge you, but he judges me because I donât consider hamburgers to be a supper or dinner food, and because I donât like French toast)
No judgement here, that sounds right up my ally!
Best to get ahead of pre-diabetes if you can, especially with your family history.
The organisation Diabetes UK says in the âdiagnosing prediabetesâ section of its website: âIf your HbA1c level is between 42mmol/mol (6%) â 47mmol/mol (6.4%) this means it is higher than normal and you are at risk of developing type 2 diabetes.â
One NHS source says prediabetes is present when either: fasting blood glucose is 6.1 mmol/l (impaired fasting glycaemia), or. the two hour blood glucose level during an oral glucose tolerance test is between 7.8 and 11.1 (impaired glucose tolerance), or. the average glucose reading (called HbA1c) is between 42-48 mmol/mol (6-6.5%).
The numbers above in the green bar chart were my average blood glucose readings for those time periods.
The app gives an estimated HbA1c reading after it has collected several days of data. This is my estimated value:
Thank you! I have only had my A1C number for the past 11 years. I guess my mmol/l has been somewhere between 3.8 and 4.5 mmol/l.
That estimated A1C of 4.5 is excellent. I unfortunately have closer to an A1C hovering between 6 and 6.2. Small frame and too much body.
How can I not judge you?
Whoops, I completely missed the Diabetes UK in your reply above.
Maybe weâre glycaemic twins!?!
Youâre doing better than me right now, so youâre my inspiration!
Iâll DM you.
Our dotter wears one to keep an eye on her glucose levels as a pre-diabetic. She does not eat any carbs of the grain or fruit variety, sticking to just proteins and vegetables. Her ânormalâ line is almost flat at below 100.
Last nightâs dinner, tomato beef curry, causing a spike to 140. She was very upset (with me) with that spike, something sheâs not experienced since starting the monitor almost 5 months ago. The dish was beef, green bell pep, tomatoes, rehydrated shitake mushrooms and yellow onion in a sauce containing low sodium soysauce, cornstarch, curry powder, sherry, ketchup, rehydrated mushroom water, oyster sauce and a pinch of brown sugar splenda. She opted not to eat the accompanying ramen noodles. I can see when the kechup + oyster sauce + cornstarch + Splenda +caused the spike.
She follows the âGlucose Revolutionâ regimen religiously. Iâve been reading the book and it has just about everything Iâve read about dieting and food consumption out there. How you eat your food and in which order appears to be the main point. I can see where some people might get a bit OCD on monitoring.
In the future, I will let her make her own meals when she visits.
Thanks for sharing the experience of your daughter. Individual physiology is so varied and the sensor helps people find out what keeps their sugars stable or not. A colleague who is much younger than me became diabetic during her third pregnancy. Her sugars spiralled out of control even though she restricted her diet so much she actually lost significant weight during pregnancy (which had us all worried about her and her babyâs health). Now that baby is 5 years old and the mother has been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and is on insulin. Before her diagnosis, she was nearly driven crazy trying to find foods which didnât cause her blood sugars to spike and crash like crazy. Even a simple lunch of tomatoes and mozzarella with a bit of EVOO and no balsamic would cause her sugars to jump to 15 mmol/L.
Thatâs frustrating when youâre doing your best to cater to a special diet.
One of my dining companions thinks certain things are salty, when they arenât high salt.
If the DCâs weight goes up on the scale the next day, rather than considering the other foods, how much other food is in the digestive system that has not left the system yet, but will be leaving the system within 48 h, the fibre amount eaten over the past 2 days, whether one meal might have weighed more because of the water weight, etc, the food I prepared or served the night before the weight gain usually gets the blame, whether it was genuinely salty or not.
The DC wonât eat take-out fried fish (which is typically fairly salty, we donât get chips to limit the salt and fat), frozen battered fish, hot chocolate, most curries, most sauces, most restaurant food, hence me cooking 5 nights a week and before I leave town for 2 nights, because of a correlation in the weight gain, and not always a causation.