Glucose Rise - What is Considered a Spike? And a Test

(Cancer Fighting Ketovore :)) #1

So, in the interest of science I decided to eat a chocolate (non-keto) covered esspresso bean.
I know that sugar causes our glucose to go up, but I also know that glucose levels can fluctuate during the day. I’ve seen this with my FreeStyle Libre.

So here are the results of eating the chocolate covered espresso bean:
** ISF is interstatial fluid (I was not testing actual blood levels)

Time ISF
T0 75
T6 77
T12 77
T15 78
T22 83
T30 84
T43 81
T49 85
T55 84
T60 82

This was a small rise in glucose, which could just be from normal bodily changes. So how much rise is considred a spike, and how much is normal fluctuation?

Note: I don’t plan to have these often, but was curious as to my response to them.

#2

Very interesting. I’m stunned that you were up 10 points 49 minutes later after eating ONE bean.

(bulkbiker) #3

I"m guessing that one would be irrelevant…an espresso bean is pretty small so the choc and carbs should be pretty minimal.

In T2 diabetes world a spike is thought to be a rise of more than 36 mg/dl or 2 mmol/l .
If those are minutes on the scale I’d say your bean had zero effect as anything else you did in the hour after could just as likely caused the minor fluctuations.

(Bob M) #4

She’s likely highly physiologically insulin resistant, which could explain it.

Also, you have to be careful interpreting these. When did you (KetoCancerMom) eat the bean? If you ate it in the morning, it might be natural blood sugar rise. Or if you were more active, it could be that and not the bean.

This is why I stopped testing. :wink: It’s too difficult to find cause and effect or just correlation.

#5

Good point. Dawn effect. Didn’t think of that.

(bulkbiker) #6

Also the Libre is notoriously variable in its readings so your 10 mg/dl readings could be the same blood glucose level all the time.

(Cancer Fighting Ketovore :)) #7

I had posted shortly after the last test (so, around 11:30am)
By then I had been up for about 4.5 hours, and had not eaten anything else. I did have some unsweetened green tea at 7:30am.

(Bob M) #8

These are tough to interpret. Here’s one from me (the graph data is at home, this happens to be at work, this from a Free Style Libre):

TypicalDay
TypicalDay.JPG949×198 38.1 KB

I’m sure I ate dinner, but didn’t write it down. And I don’t eat breakfast. If I did not workout (BBS = lifting to failure, HIIT = high intensity interval training on a treadmill), my blood sugar would go up anyway until about noon and then goes down, and this is the same if I fast.

How much did my blood sugar change due to eggs, ham (probably a lot of it), 2 slices of cheese, and the anchovies? It’s hard to tell. Even worse if you use strips, which seem to have higher error from strip to strip.

(Bob M) #9

Here’s another one with a lot of meat for lunch:

ALotofMeat
ALotofMeat.JPG1150×309 61.1 KB

167 grams of protein in one meal (only includes the meat), but after 36 hours fasting. Left column is data from CGM, right column is data from pin prick meter.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #10

If the margin of error on the readings from your meter is 10% or greater, these readings are essentially all the same.

(Cancer Fighting Ketovore :)) #11

Yeah, I figured as much.
It seems that an occasional chocolate covered espresso bean won’t be a problem.