Tips For Avoiding Glucose Spikes From Food
Someone with diabetes should eat meals at;regular times of the day;and should not vary their portion sizes. It is a great idea to eat one more serving of vegetables in a week. Drinking more water is also helps glucose levels. When drinking caffeine or alcohol, make sure you test your blood glucose often to be wary of your levels.
Medication
The medication comes in the form of pills or insulin injections. Dosage is incredibly important because it directly impacts blood glucose.
Moreover, medication timing can also be critical. You can take some medications at any time of day, while others have an optimum time to be taken, like at meals. For instance, taking insulin either before or after a meal is critical for many. Taking medications at the correct time every day, and checking personal blood sugar levels regularly will help ensure that diabetes is being regulated properly.
Remember to consult with your doctor on non-diabetes medications, as these can interfere with your diabetes medications and blood glucose levels.
Activity
A regular amount of light activity has been found to lower glucose. Walking, yoga, and pilates all aid in lowering blood glucose levels. Oppositely, high-intensity exercise like sprinting, running, or weight lifting has been known to raise blood glucose levels. A racing heart, hunger, trembling, headache, and dizziness are all symptoms of a spike in levels.
How Can I Treat High Blood Sugar
Talk to your doctor about how to keep your blood sugar levels within your target range. Your doctor may suggest the following:
- Be more active. Regular exercise can help keep your blood sugar levels on track. Important: dont exercise if ketones are present in your urine. This can make your blood sugar go even higher.
- Take medicine as instructed. If your blood sugar is often high, your doctor may change how much medicine you take or when you take it.
- Follow your diabetes meal plan. Ask your doctor or dietitian for help if youre having trouble sticking to it.
- Check your blood sugar as directed by your doctor. Check more often if youre sick or if youre concerned about high or low blood sugar.
- Talk to your doctor about adjusting how much insulin you take and what types of insulin to use.
How To Treat Someone Who’s Having A Seizure Or Fit
Follow these steps if someone has a seizure or fit caused by a low blood sugar level:
Tell your diabetes care team if you ever have a severe hypo that caused you to have a seizure or fit.
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Surprising Things That Can Spike Your Blood Sugar
When you first found out you had diabetes, you tested your blood sugar often to understand how food, activity, stress, and illness could affect your blood sugar levels. By now, youve got it figured out for the most part. But thenbam! Something makes your blood sugar zoom up. You try to adjust it with food or activity or insulin, and it dips really low. Youre on a rollercoaster no one with diabetes wants to ride.
Do you know all of these blood sugar triggers?
Knowledge is power! Look out for these surprising triggers that can send your blood sugar soaring:
Whats A Spike And Why Do They Happen
After-meal, or postprandial, spikes are temporary high blood glucose levels that occur soon after eating. It is normal for the level of glucose in the blood to rise a small amount after eating, even in people who do not have diabetes. However, if the rise is too high, it can affect your quality of life today and contribute to serious health problems down the road.
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How To Stabilize Your Blood Sugar Overnight
The most important thing you can do to stabilize your blood sugar is monitor your glucose levels at bedtime, during the night, and when you wake up to look for patterns. This will help you determine whats going on in your body and how you can fix it. While there are many strategies people use to stabilize blood sugar at night, every person is different youll have to look for trends in your body, experiment with ways to lower glucose levels over a period of time, and learn what works best for your body.
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Check your blood sugar before bed. If its already high, your blood sugar levels may remain high throughout the night. To address this, youll want to start by adjusting when you eat your evening meal and what it consists of, and how much mealtime insulin you take to cover it.
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Avoid eating lots of food close to bedtime. For diaTribe writer Adam Brown, the key to staying in range overnight is low-carb, early dinners, with no snacking after dinner.
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Consider eating less food at night and taking more basal insulin to cover your evening meal.
Check your blood sugar during the night, between midnight and 3am. If you were in range before bed but have high glucose levels between midnight and 3am, you may need to adjust your basal insulin dosage and timing. If you are low during that time, you may experience a rebound high blood sugar later on this is usually associated with overcorrecting the low.
How To Prevent Hyperglycaemia And Lower Your Blood Sugar Levels
Testing your blood sugar levels regularly can help you spot the signs of hyperglycaemia. But there are some steps you can take to either prevent a hyper from happening or to bring down your blood sugar levels.
You can start by making;sure you are aware of your carbohydrate portions and how they may be affecting your blood sugar levels after eating. Carb countingis one of the ways you can manage this. Avoid foods that have a high glycemic index and choose;low GI foods that can help manage your blood sugar levels more effectively. Increase the fibre in your diet. This;can help slow down carbohydrate digestion, which can help limit the rise in your blood sugars.
Try to maintain a healthy weight as this promotes regular blood sugar levels in the body. Be;as active as possible, regular exercise can help your body process more of the sugar.
Remember to take your insulin and other diabetes medication, and always take them correctly.;Continue to take your diabetes medication even if you are ill and not eating.
Concentrate on your emotional wellbeing, get a quality nights sleep;and find ways to manage your stress. Stress can cause hormones to be released, which keep your blood sugar levels high.
If your blood sugar levels continue to be high, or youre unsure of what to do, contact your doctor for further guidance.
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Symptoms Treatments And Prevention
Hyperglycemia means;high glucose in the blood . Your body needs glucose to properly function. Your cells rely on glucose for energy. Hyperglycemia is a defining characteristic of diabeteswhen the blood glucose level is too high because the body isn’t properly using or doesn’t make the hormone insulin.
Eating too many processed foods may cause your blood sugar to rise.
Why Is It Important To Reduce The Size And Duration Of These Spikes
Reducing these spikes may help you to increase the amount of time you spend in your target blood sugar range , which will have a positive impact on your future health. You should consult your healthcare team to understand the best target range for you, as this will differ from person to person. However, the International Society for Paediatric and Adolescent Diabetes recommends a target of 5.0-10.0 mmol/L .
Symptoms of a high blood sugar level also vary in individuals, but they may cause you to feel thirsty, tired, stressed and need to go to the toilet a lot. In the short term, by avoiding prolonged high blood sugar readings after eating, you should also reduce the occurrence of these symptoms and improve your energy, cognitive and athletic ability and overall mood.
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Glucose Meters Can Give False Readings
While physiologic reasons cause higher glucose readings, technical reasons can cause them, too. The US Federal Drug Administration allows home glucose monitors to have a variance of 15% in results. That means a reading of 100 mg/dl might actually be as low as 85 mg/dl or as high as 115, a huge variation!9
Dave Feldman, the software engineer who has cracked the Cholesterol Code, has blogged about his glucose meter variance, charting and taking pictures of his two glucose meters, measuring the same drop of blood. While he was expecting his blood glucose set point to be higher because of his long-term low-carb keto eating, he was surprised by the sometimes huge variation in results. He notes that whenever he gets an unexpected result, he takes three readings, all within a few minutes of each other, and then averages the result.
Other researchers have noted that false readings can be caused by pricking a finger for blood with hands that have minute traces of sugar or food Dehydration raises results, too. You should always wash your hands before testing, but some soaps have additives like honey or a fragrance that can linger on fingers and distort readings. As well, strips that are too hot or too cold, or other environmental conditions like high altitudes, can produce higher or lower readings. Even different lots of strips can produce different results on the same meter.
Blood Sugar Measurement & Goals
The exact timing of blood sugar spikes can vary from person to person and meal to meal.; However, on average, the post-meal peaks tend to be about one hour and 15 minutes after starting a meal.; But the best way to measure post-meal patterns is by using a continuous glucose monitor .; These systems, available from Medtronic, Dexcom, Abbott and Senseonics, provide glucose readings every couple of minutes so you wont miss the peak, whenever it happens to occur.
So exactly how high is TOO High? ;There is no universal answer.; The American Diabetes Association recommends keeping blood sugar below 180 mg/dl 1-2 hours after eating.; However, no specific guidelines are provided for type-1 vs. type-2 diabetes, insulin users vs. non-insulin users, or children vs. adults.
Based on my experience, I usually recommend the following:
Post-meal readings that are consistently above these levels should be addressed by you and your healthcare team .
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Upswing: Steroids And Water Pills
People take corticosteroids, such as prednisone, to treat rashes, arthritis, asthma, and many other conditions. But they can boost your blood sugar, and may even trigger diabetes in some people. Diuretics that help high blood pressure, also called water pills, can do the same. Some antidepressants also raise or lower blood sugar.
How The Body Reacts To Water And Heat
The normal reaction of the body after exposure to a warm or hot bath or shower is to lower blood sugar levels. This same effect may be seen when someone has a sauna treatment.
During a hot bath, body temperature will rise as does growth hormone, adrenaline, glucagon, and cortisol. There was a slightly elevated insulin level as well in the healthy patients of this study at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in the United Kingdom. They noted that blood sugar levels stayed constant.
Another study found that the heat of a Finnish sauna affected the absorption of insulin from an injection in 8 patients with Type 1 diabetes. The sauna session was 85 degrees C for 25 minutes and it failed to stimulate insulin absorption significantly or to lower blood glucose levels. The body didnt absorb the insulin and the patients blood sugar levels stayed the same.
Bathing in Dead Sea mineral water can cause physiological changes in the endocrine system. At the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheba, doctors found that those who immersed themselves in a Dead Sea water bath reduced their blood sugar levels of diabetic patients from 163 mg/dl to 151 mg/dl and then to 141 mg/dl an hour later. Those who immersed in non-Dead Sea water baths did not have as much of a change in blood sugar levels.
;All these types of situations can be considered for your blood sugar levels rising after a shower.;;
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What Should Your Blood Sugar Be When You Wake Up
The goal of diabetes management is to keep your blood sugar levels as stable as possible. This means that when you wake up, you want your glucose to be in range and to stay in range throughout the day.
For many people with diabetes, the overall target glucose range is between 70 mg/dL to 180 mg/dL . To start the day strong, the American Diabetes Association recommends that you aim to wake up with glucose levels between 80 to 130 mg/dL. Talk with your healthcare team about your glucose targets.
How Steroids Affect Your Blood Sugar
Corticosteroids, or steroids for short, are a common medication prescribed for a multitude of ailments, but can often cause blood sugar issues for people living with diabetes.
If youve ever been prescribed a steroid, you may know that they spike blood sugars easily and quickly, and can lead to stubborn hyperglycemia for days on end.;
In this article, I will describe exactly how steroids affect blood sugar and what you can do about it.;
At the end of the article, I will also describe the rare situation where steroid therapy may actually cause type 2 diabetes by triggering a complication called steroid-induced diabetes.
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How Can I Treat Low Blood Sugar
If youve had low blood sugar without feeling or noticing symptoms , you may need to check your blood sugar more often to see if its low and treat it. Driving with low blood sugar can be dangerous, so be sure to check your blood sugar before you get behind the wheel.
Carry supplies for treating low blood sugar with you. If you feel shaky, sweaty, or very hungry or have other symptoms, check your blood sugar. Even if you dont have symptoms but think you may have low blood sugar, check it. If your blood sugar is lower than 70 mg/dL, do one of the following immediately:
- Take four glucose tablets.
- Drink four ounces of fruit juice.
- Drink four ounces of regular soda, not diet soda.
- Eat four pieces of hard candy.
Wait for 15 minutes and then check your blood sugar again. Do one of the above treatments again until your blood sugar is 70 mg/dL or above and eat a snack if your next meal is an hour or more away. If you have problems with low blood sugar, ask your doctor if your treatment plan needs to be changed.
Why Does My Insulin Make My Blood Sugar Rise/do Nothing Sometimes
coravh said:Aaah, I get it. You figure out your own ISF . Most of us find it’s best to work this out for ourselves, rather than simply take one-size-fits-all amounts from our docs. Through testing, you will be able to determine by how much, one unit of insulin will drop you. Mine was typically about 4 mmol . If I was over about 250 or 300 I would add a bit of a fudge factor due to increased insulin resistance. My suggestion to you is to continue to take the amount of insulin your doc advises, and then check at 20 or 30 minute intervals afterwards and see what your bg does. You will get a better idea of how the insulin works for you.Hope you didn’t crash too badly.Cora
furball64801 said:What the others said, I tend to do that at times. At times it can take insulin hours to catch up, I get you do not like being over 200 and neither do I but it can happen. I said to my wife yesterday the VA is not going to like my next a1c because its been a bit rough lately. I have had good and bad D times it just averages out.
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