Testing your blood sugar (glucose) levels after a meal will give you important information on how a given meal affects your blood sugar. It will also give you information on whether an insulin dose or other oral medication used to take care of mealtime blood sugar was adequate or perhaps too much. According to the American Diabetes Association, a good post-meal blood sugar target is 180 mg/dL (10.0 mmol/L) or below1. You may not always have the same post-meal values; your health care provider may give you personalized goals that may be a bit different.
If your post-meal blood sugars are higher than your target; this can happen because:
- Your insulin dose was not enough to cover your meal (if you use mealtime insulin)
- Your meal was too heavy in carbohydrates or protein
- Your current medication regime may not be adequate to keep blood sugars in your target range
- Health conditions such as stress, illness, etc., can influence your blood sugar levels
Glucose levels reach a peak around 1-2 hours after the beginning of the meal which is why the timing of your test to see how well your meal worked for you is so important. The information you get from this blood sugar value is important to assess your overall diabetes management.
Oftentimes people with diabetes test only fasting blood sugars. If these fasting values are in range however, you can still end up with a high HbA1c and may not understand why. The reason could be “hidden” in those pesky post-meal blood sugars where spikes have been associated with a potential increase in the risk of diabetes complications along with an increased HbA1c.2
We hope this gives you a better understanding of why those post-meal blood sugars can be of great value.
Keep tagging those meals in your Dario so we can support you!
1 https://care.diabetes journals.org/content/ 42/Supplement_1/S61
2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pubmed/12189909
Units of measurement, which are shown in some of the photos and videos, represent US standard units.
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