EATING TO YOUR METER

•  Rhonda L Richardson Strange (certified diabetes educator) Eating to your meter lets you check out a new food to see if it spikes you high. Any time your blood sugar is not back to pre-meal status about 2 hours after a meal then you have eaten too many carbs in that meal. If you have a fasting morning blood sugar over 100, it also means you have eaten too many carbs the day before. A fasting AM sugar is called your Basal Insulin level and will be the closest average to your A1c. It is also the number your doctor will look at the most to adjust your medication. Barbie Briley almost every type 2 Diabetic over produces insulin, this is the result of having insulin resistance which is the hallmark of being a type 2. The pancreas will produce insulin when we have eaten any carbohydrate. The insulin can not do it's job (to transport the glucose from blood stream to cells to be used as energy), due to insulin resistance. Our cells will not let the glucose in. When the glucose can't get in, it builds up in blood stream causing high nlood sugar. The pancreas gets signaled that the blood stream still contains sugar, so it cranks out more insulin trying to do the job. This happens over and over and is hard on the pancreas. Insulin is also our fat storage hormone. It takes the excess sugar from our blood stream and stores it in the form of fat in our fat cells thinking it can be used later when energy is needed. To stop the cycle and rest pancreas we have to go very low carb. Without carbs our pancreas is not stimulated to make insulin. No one will go low unless you are taking a medication that forces your pancreas to make insulin when it is not needed. If this is the case with anyone, they need to have medication lowered. Never eat carbs such as breads , cereals, grains, fruit or other carbs to just feed your medication. You are hurting yourself and even developing more insulin resistance if you do. If you are on no medication, you will never get too low, as the liver will dump it's stores into blood stream. If liver stores get depleted such as in starvation, the body will start burning fat and muscle tissue until it gets food. All blood sugars over 140 are doing damage to the body and needs to be avoided at all times. High numbers for a long time can burn out the pancreatic Beta cells that produce Insulin. These cells are limited and can not not be replaced.