Huge jump in FBG this morning.

[Nancy LC]

My FBG was 112 this morning! Normal for me is 70-90, usually 80ish.

I feel rather off today and my FBG seems to reflect that. First of all, I just started my period so that could account for feeling exhausted and blah.

The other thought about it is that I ate a LOT last night. I really overate although everything was low carb and pretty high in fat.

What could cause such huge spike in FBG?

[NorthPeace]

Mine has been high lately too. Usually around 85-88, the past week or so it has been 90-122. It hasn't been 122 since last May. Same food and exercise regime as usual. Some possibilities for me are:

Defective strips - this only happened since I opened a new canister, and they don't wick as nicely as any of the others in the past year. I end up scraping blood off my skin to get a sample, so maybe it is contaminated.

Disrupted sleep - I haven't slept well lately due to hip and back pain. My previous experience has been that with disrupted sleep or with illness, I will have elevated FG.

Well I am just going to continue to behave, maybe take some painkillers before bed, and hope that it was a bad batch of test strips.

[CarolynC]

It could be that your body is fighting off something. I had food poisoning last week and my fbg had a huge jump during the days that I wasn't feeling well and was fighting the bad bacteria. In fact, seeing my fbg drop was an indicator that I was finally OK again.

[Rose1942]

This sort of thing is discussed in Dr. Bernstein's book. He says that sometimes it isn't the actual food, it's the quantity of food eaten at one time because your digestive system is overloaded and your pancreas has a hard time of it trying to produce the extra insulin you need to process it. Your Phase 2 response is going haywire! The example he uses is a patient that would always have super high readings whenever she ate 'a lot of lettuce'. He found that hard to believe so he asked her how much lettuce she ate to cause the rise - she said 'a head'!!!!! So even overstuffing on lettuce can do it, it's the volume, and not the poor innocent lettuce!

Why not wait it out and see if your fasting sugars come down after ordinary dinners & routines. Could have been it was a fluke due to the fact that you indulged a bit too much, even on the safe stuff. Not to mention that it was overnight, when you were not burning any of it off, y'know?

[Lisa N]

it's the quantity of food eaten at one time because your digestive system is overloaded and your pancreas has a hard time of it trying to produce the extra insulin you need to process it

This may be a minor point, but it's actually the opposite; your body produces too much insulin based on the quantity of food eaten and the amount of stretching that results in the stomach and small intestine and because of that, blood sugars start dropping rapidly. In response to that rapid drop, the body produces more glucagon which triggers glucose production in the liver and overcompensates by making too much. This results in blood sugars too high; sort of a Somogyi effect caused by eating, even if what you ate was low carb.

Nancy, I don't know if you've ever tested right at the beginning of TOM before, but I always run about 10 points higher right before my period starts and the first couple of days and then it goes back down again.
Lack of sleep, pain, viral or bacterial infections and stress can all cause elevations in blood glucose readings.

[Daryl]

[QUOTE=NorthPeace]
Defective strips - this only happened since I opened a new canister, and they don't wick as nicely as any of the others in the past year. I end up scraping blood off my skin to get a sample, so maybe it is contaminated.
I bet that's exactly what it is, Joe. Any time I "bump" my strip with my flesh, it reads "funny", also, so that may be part of it, too.

[Nancy LC]

Ok, I was thinking perhaps TOM could account for it. I always feel so tired and dragged out then too. It's still pretty high for me even now that it should be almost over, it was 95 this morning. Hopefully it'll settle down once that's over with!

The only other thing I can think of was the over-eating kind late at night and also I've been having some unsweetened raspberries for dessert.

[Shami]

for me high FBG reading other factors beside food factor (how much and when I ate supper) are not enough sleeping or not having a restful night, TOM, and stress. The stress level can bump my reading as much as 30-40 points. We just started new computer system at work and for the whole week my blood sugar has been way up.