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Ask the Expert: What are the basic guidelines for blood sugar testing?
By Jessica Gibbons, Certified Diabetes Educator and Registered Dietitian
May 13, 2009
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Generally speaking, the best time to test blood sugars to determine what food is doing to your sugar is right before the meal and then two hours after the completion of the meal. By the time two hours have passed, the sugar should have made it in and back out of your blood stream. This is a great way to determine if your body can handle the carbs you are eating. Blood sugar targets pre-meal can range anywhere from 70-120 mg/dL and post meal 90-140 mg/dL. Please be aware that depending on the source, blood glucose targets are a bit variable, and you should use the guidelines your physician has set out, but generally, the tighter your blood sugars are controlled, the less likely you are to develop complications in the future.
Just in case no one has ever mentioned it to you, diabetes is NOT an exact science! We are using blood glucose meters that are accurate to within plus or minus 10% and we dose off of those blood sugars. Testing blood is far better than nothing, but there are too many factors in our lives that affect our blood sugars to make us able to have perfect levels all the time. An occasional high blood sugar is normal. Look at the level, think about what may have happened to lead to it, and try and avoid that particular mistake in the future, and then move on!
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Comments (9 comments)
Add your commentIf 2 hours after meals 140 is good then why do you suppose the ADA still has below 180.Although my levels after meals is way below 140,they sometimes are higher depending on certain situations and of course eating something that I should'nt have.Even then they are below 180.I know for sure that stress makes my sugars spike.There seems to be so many different opinions as to what sugars should be makes it difficult to know what guidelins to follow… =)
thanks for that information very helpful.
Just wanted to put this out there…for the rednecks lol which I am…know that #1chewing tobacco use not only is a risk for oral cancer…if you use it to curb the appetite…it too can raise your glucose level learned a few years ago…would think i was doing good by not eating (using the tobacco for a crutch)only to find my sugar level would be elevated anyway…duh took me a while to realize the amount of sugar in that little pinch between my cheek and gum…suggest some sugar free chewing gum
Thank you - very simply and concisely put and easy to understand.
All of these articles have been so helpful! I am making copies too, and putting them into a folder for references! My daughter-in-law (47yrs)is now Diabetic and her Dr is referring her to classes, but she lives in a bigger city. Even then she is finding ,that by testing, she does better with more protein than larger selections of veggies as she had read somewhere on the internet. They are savy folks but are floundering too, and it was reasurring to me to read and to reinforce, that diabetis is NOT an exact science, but the numbers guidlines helps me to put it into a better perspective and most we can do is to follow the sensible guidelines found here. Thanks again! Our son is OK but is helping his wife and is also losing weight with her healthier lifestyle of eating! Pat Roth
Thanks for the information. Very helpful for me.
I use my Outlook at the office to set up a reminder for two hours after I eat. Two hours is a looong time and we are all busy. Weekends are tough, like this one because I am ill and after two hours my number was 188. =\ Having not eaten from 7 PM Sat to 1 PM Sunday was apparently bad for my system but when you're ill nothing looks good.
Thank you for this useful information.
Is it true that if you have ice cream or chocolate ( slab of diabetic friendly chocolate) that your sugar levels will only be affected 4 hours later?
Two hours after meals huh? hmmmm okay didn't realize it was such a large time frame afterwards, thanks for this. Sheila