Blood Glucose Check

Checking your blood glucose is extremely important. Blood glucose abnormalities are the first sign of impending metabolic conditions. These abnormalities in blood glucose occur before weight gain begins. We use to have to wait for metabolic issues to become diabetes before treatments could be given. By that stage, treatments are ineffective in stopping the progression of the disease. We would also wait until weight gain began and then treat that with ineffective protocols as well. Now we can see, in real time using blood glucose meters, how metabolic function begins to deteriorate by monitoring blood glucose dysregulation. It is this dysregulation that sets everything else in motion. 

Blood glucose meters and supplies are readily available, over the counter, at most pharmacies, in the United States, without the requirement of a prescription. They are generally low cost depending on the pharmacy you choose. If you would like for your insurance to pay for your meter and supplies, then you would have to obtain the proper diagnosis from your doctor to justify a prescription. 

On this blog, we recommend checking your blood glucose often but for different reasons than you might have heard elsewhere. Here, we are trying to monitor blood glucose regulation, not individual ups and downs. This means that you must check your blood glucose, as described below, over a ten day period. You should not be using your meter to check your blood glucose after eating a carbohydrate in order to see how much further you should restrict it. That is asinine and will not help you one bit with impending diabetes. Blood glucose that rises abnormally after meals is the first stage of diabetes. By that time, the food eaten doesn't matter much as the body is releasing this enormous amount of glucose from within due to insulin/glucagon dysfunction. So trying to keep blood glucose from rising by avoiding tomatoes will be the least of your worries. This is why we see so many low carbers end up diabetic on 0 carb and/or "keto" diets. You can avoid this outcome by not missing the forest for the trees.  

The proper way of determining your blood glucose regulation is to:

• Check your fasting blood glucose, first thing in the morning. The current consensus states that "normal" fasting blood glucose is between 70 - 99 mg/dL*.
• Check your blood glucose again, two hours after your largest meal. The rule of thumb is that the two hour mark begins at your first bite of food. The current consensus states that "normal" postprandial blood glucose, at the 2 hour mark, should be less than 140 mg/dL*.

*When following these standard recommendations, keep in mind that healthy individuals have a steady blood glucose of around 84 mg/dL, at all times. 

What you should be looking for, during these ten days, are large disparities in blood glucose of more than 40 points, at any given time. This is because healthy individuals, with proper blood glucose regulation, rarely see these large disparities and can keep their blood glucose steady, throughout the day and night, whether fasted or not.  

Performing these checks for ten days allows you to see the trend in your blood glucose and how different foods effect it. It is not enough to check individual readings after eating certain foods. Many foods do not effect your blood glucose right away. Just because you might not see a significant rise in your blood glucose after a particular food, does not mean that it didn't rise enough to cause large dips overnight, which only cause high blood glucose in the mornings. If you are not diabetic, your blood glucose might not rise at all, after a particular food, because your body is still able to control hyperglycemia through the release of large amounts of insulin, masking your blood glucose dysregulation. You can usually tell this is occurring by having after meal dips in blood glucose rather than highs. Dips in blood glucose means your insulin is being affected due to blood glucose dysregulation. Effects in insulin function only cause for your body to be less able to regulate its blood glucose properly. 

Each person has individual variations in their blood glucose dysregulation. Problems with blood glucose regulation are not only seen as after meal highs so do not get lulled to sleep by only one metric. Many things affect blood glucose regulation, not just the foods you eat. Certain medications, chronic conditions and lack of exercise cause abnormalities in blood glucose as well. For this reason, you need to take an overall approach in order to properly address any abnormalities with you blood glucose regulation.