Christine,

Low on most meters for a person who is not on insulin is 70mg/dl or less
and trust me, if you're low, you'll know it.  You'll feel shaky or
sleepy or wacky or like you're going to pass out.

If you have decent blood sugar control (which you still do) you should
stay somewhere around 85 with a low carb meal. Meters vary, so that 5
mg/dl isn't anything to worry about.

I hope you are getting the blood from the side of your fingers, not the
tip.  The area on the side next to the your fingernail where it kind of
puffs out is the easiest to stick. Most people's pinky's are the most
productive.

Lacitol is EVIL. I'm much rather have a nice serving of Ex-lax. Much
easier on the system.

It could be that you're not diabetic, and the meal was sufficiently low
carb not to spike you.  Or that you were low before you ate.  Or that
you're hyperinsulinemic and had a strong insulin response that dropped
your glucose low.

You might try testing right before your first bite, then maybe half an
hour after, then one and two hours to see if you get a spike then a big
drop.

Or you could just eat low GL from now on and get on with it.  :-)

Nope.

(I feel

If you feel fine, you're not hypo.  You may be hyperinsulinemic, or not.

If you take Alan's wise advice and wash your hands or just run warm
water over the fingers and rub them dry first, you'll find it really
easy to get the blood you need with no discomfort or extra effort.

HTH,

Susan

SNIP

HI! I just want to ask if you remembered to change the "Code" in the
meter to match the new batch of test strips you'd bought?

And yeah, this IS confusing. If diabetes were more straightforward it'd
be the "disease of the week" on the medical dramas a LOT more often.

Robert Leone rleone@hotmail.com

Hi Christine

I've read Jenny's and Susan's replies - they're right and
said it better than I would have anyway.

I've copied my standard advice on painless testing below -
maybe it can help:

Wash your hands in warm water first, and shake them to get
the circulation going. Check your lancet - it should be
adjustable. Mine is Soft-clix, made by Roche and is usually
painless. I get an occasional tiny sting, and it lets me
know if it's getting blunt sometimes, but I've tested close
to 4000 times in the past 3 years without any trauma. That's
from a guy who was, and is, needle-phobic.

Start with the second lowest setting (1 or 1.5), hold it
firmly against your skin on the side of a finger near the
tip. Don't flinch when you release the button. The button
releases a spring-loaded tiny needle which makes a tiny hole
in your skin and instantly retracts. Incidentally, using the
sides has two advantages - there are less nerve-ends than on
the pads, and it doubles the number of test-points so you
can rotate through the positions.

Massage gently (milking a cow) until a drop of blood forms
sufficient to put on the test strip. If this setting doesn't
provide an adequate quantity, move the lancet setting up one
notch for the next one. If you got a large sample and it
hurt a little, go to the lower setting.

And that's all there is to it. Sometimes it helps to shake
your hands a little more, or warm them up if it's cold. The
manufacturers advise changing the lancet needle every time;
I change mine when I remember or if it gets a bit blunt -
that's about once a month or every 150 tests :-) You do what
you are comfortable with.

Cheers Alan, T2, Australia.

Christine wrote in message
<1123198251.137448.262350@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>...

  The normal blood sugar of a non-diabetic tends to oscillate between 80
and 90 mg/dL.

In a non-diabetic,  the beta cells start releasing insulin at 90 mg/dL,
the liver starts releasing glucose at 80 mg/dL.    A normal person can get
as low at 70 mg/dL following that cycle and not be considered "low".

"Pre-diabetic" means that your glucose metabolism is a lot closer to
"non-diabetic" than most of ours.    Your ability to stay in the
non-diabetic range after a low carb meal isn't too surprising

FWIW,  there is an opinion among some of the specialists that "below 70"  is
low but you aren't really hypo until you drop below 55.    Some perfectly
normal folks drop as low as 60 after a fast.

    Pre-diabetic almost always means that you are in the Standard Type 2
Diabetic Progression and will become full-blown diabetic sooner or later.
"Later" is better than "sooner".     You've figured out one way to
accomplish "later" ,  i.e.  ". . . .the meal was low-carb . . ."    Another
is daily exercise.  A third is "lose abdominal fat".

Sounds like you have the right ideas so far.

Regards
 Old Al

Christine, I've been experimenting with a Walgreens meter and though
my results may be an anomaly, it looks to me like the meter is
inconsistent. Have you tried a control solution test?

80 is not technically low,  But if you have had numbers in the high 100s
the drop to 80 would be a low for you.

If you had any fat with your meal, there could be a delay to a rise at
the two hour mark.  If not, and you really had very low carb.  It could
be,  I hope you tested at two hours just in case you went low and needed
to cover it.

Loretta

--
In tribute to the United States of America and the State
of Israel, two bastions of strength in a world filled with strife and
terrorism.