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Why did my blood glucose level spike?

Stinsok

Stinsok

Dec 16, 2002
7,464
3,487
62
Central Alabama
#1
I've been managing my diabetes for over a month and my numbers are always good. Yesterday, same routine as always, checked my blood before dinner and it was 233. I had not eaten anything that would affect it like that, and it was at least 2 hours since I had eaten anything at all,
 
#3
Sometimes when I'm sick my numbers run a little high. With my basal dose, I usually hover around 100-110 before eating. That said, two hours is close enough to a meal that your numbers could still be high from what you ate previously. I'm guessing that maybe the carbs you ate were greater than you estimated / or slower releasing. I find that some meals require me to space my bolus - some before, some mid-meal or shortly after. Were your numbers higher before you ate? Sometimes you can undercorrect.
At one month, you're really new to this stuff. Spikes happen. Sometimes, you never figure out why. Sometimes, if you are on a tight control regimen, you might not caculate carb intake or correctives accurately.
At this stage of the game, better to spike a bit, than have scary lows. That can get you in trouble.
I've been doing this for a dozen years, and my 6.2 A1C rivals that of most pump users, but without a pump!
Talk to your doc if you need help getting things stabilized, and good luck!
 
#4
My uncle has had juvenile diabetes for decades and this happens to him sometimes as well. Look at anything that has fat/ oils in the food, cheese, fried chicken, peanut butter/nuts, avacodo, ice cream, creamy salad dressing, etc. your body will process and break that down hours after you consumed it. Fats don't get processed the same as simple sugars, they stay in you body longer and break down later in the day day resulting in blood sugar spikes. Also, he went to a nutritionist and he said its all about carbs. Make sure your eating enough grams of carbs for the amount of units of insulin you take. It's all about balancing food, exercise, and insulin... Hope this helps you.
 
#5
Also -

If you exercise after a meal, your numbers go down quite a bit...enough that if you are planning on activity, you might have to lower a bolus. And, if you nap after a meal...you'll find that you get a spike, even if you bolus accurately.
 
#8
It is worth reminding that even the best glucose monitors are only about 70-80% reliable, so while most error is small and unimportant, on occasion you can get a value that is not representative of your true blood glucose level by a very large deviation.

If the number doesn't make sense to you, test yourself in another location (other hand, for example) a few minutes later and see if the readout is the same. If so, then something is up. If not, then it just happened to be a large value error that can happen from time to time with any glucose sensor.
 

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