Diabetes Management

I often get asked, “Why does the same meal affect my blood sugar differently each time?” The answer to that question is multifaceted. Food, of course, significantly affects blood sugar after a meal or snack. However, other things “at play” impact your post-meal results. The American Diabetes Association’s post-meal blood sugar goal is no more than 180. The College of Endocrinologist’s goal is tighter at 140. I always recommend that you establish a baseline for your average post-meal response. Then, identify the foods and combinations that increase blood sugar readings. Once you identify those meals, food items, or snacks, you can work on portion control, frequency of consuming those foods, what other foods are combined with your “trigger” foods, and eliminating certain foods from your diet. If you want to move from average control (under 180) to tighter control (140 or less), how you reshape your diet and lifestyle contributors can get you there!

Insulin made by your body or injected opens the door to your cells to allow sugar to enter and be used for energy. How well your cells respond to insulin is often one of the answers to why your blood sugar readings differ from meal to meal. Insulin resistance means your cells do not respond to insulin, keep your blood sugar circulating, and are not used for energy. Your degree of insulin resistance changes throughout the day. Here are some factors at play with post-meal readings that affect your degree of insulin resistance.

• Stress:  Stress plays a significant role in blood sugar. Did you know your liver stores sugar? When you are stressed, your body produces adrenaline that causes your liver to dump sugar. On a stressful day, you can have mealtime sugar and dumped liver sugar, affecting your post-meal reading. This makes a meal with which you usually have good results seem ineffective, making you feel that “nothing works.”  Those higher results were the combination of two sugar sources.
• Inactivity:   Changes in activity level can have a fairly rapid result on your post-meal readings. Just skipping routine exercise for 2-3 days can have an impact. Daily exercise improves how fast you can pull sugar into your cells, using it as energy.
• Lack of Sleep:  Consistently sleeping less than 7-8 hours a night or tossing and turning can significantly impact your sugar levels during the day. Hormone production during sleep helps regulate blood sugar. Poor sleep quality can make you start the day with higher fasting blood sugar, affecting your blood sugar all day.
• Weight Gain: Just gaining 5-10 pounds can affect your post-meal readings. A meal that once resulted in post-meal readings within the goal could now be less effective.
• Portion Control: Larger portions of food that usually work well in your diet can be easily overlooked when figuring out what caused your blood sugar to go higher than expected.
• Skipping Meals:  For many people with diabetes, skipping meals can lead to a higher post-meal reading after the next meal. While you may not feel hungry, your body still needs energy to work with. Your liver will be signaled to dump sugar out to cover your energy needs. You could go into your next meal with a higher blood sugar due to liver dumping, causing your post-meal reading of a trusted meal to be higher.

 

So, if you are seeing meals or snacks that used to be your go-to combinations that worked well with your blood sugar results start to change, think about the “affecters” listed above. It could be that it is not just the food you eat that is changing your testing results.

Joy Galloway, MS, RD, LD, CDCES
Diabetes Educator