Saturday, February 21, 2009

How often should someone test their blood sugar?

Here is how I answered this question on another forum today.

Regarding your question on how often to test your blood sugar, here are some suggestions..

Test first thing in the morning. This is your fasting blood glucose reading and should be below 100. Occasionally if it is in the low 100s its acceptable, but for 90% of the time, it should be below 100.

Test after meals. To determine the peak sugar level after the meal, measure at roughly the 90 minute mark after the first bite of food. For some people, the peak appears a little later, closer to 2 hours after the first bite. Once you know your peak, you need to test for the post-meal sugar level going back to baseline, i.e. your pre-meal level. Generally, this point comes at 3 to 3 and a half hours after the first bite. In a non-diabetic, the peak never goes above 140. You must aim for no more than 160 as your absolute highest peak. Return to baseline means the blood sugar is below 100 ideally.

Breakfast post-meal sugar is the hardest to control, followed by dinner. Lunch is the easiest of the three. Knowing this is helpful because then you can consume higher number of carbohydrates at lunchtime and the least number of carbs at breakfast.

How much you test depends on how data-driven you are. From personal experience, I can tell you that the more you test, the more you will know about your tolerance for carbohydrates in your meals. That will enable you to plan your meals for better control of post-meal spikes.

Dante

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