Experiment of One Post #2

Yesterday I gave you a brief introduction of what was going on, and what I am hoping to see by monitoring my progress through this Experiment of One.

Last night was a little bit rough on Nicole,  she woke up with a headache, which is not the norm.  At that point, she had been fasting for about 32 hours, give or take a little.  I was still 90% asleep when this happened, so my recollection of the time when this occurred is bound to be a little fuzzy…

I do know she got up to take some headache medication, and I can tell from the Peanut Butter jar on the counter that she had a bit of a snack.  The super important lesson to take from this is to LISTEN TO YOUR BODY!  The only real change for Nicole was that she hadn’t eaten for over 30 hours, which is probably what triggered her headache.

I happened to be sleeping like a baby… Sorry!

Waking Up

When waking up this morning, I experienced something that I can only describe as… strange…

I woke up 20 minutes before my alarm went off.

I wasn’t groggy like I usually am when waking up, 

Lastly, I was ready to go with energy, which is NOT normal.

So I woke up, grabbed my Libre and scanned.  Here is the picture of what happened last night to my blood sugar.  This was my second scan of the day…  Maybe I was a little groggy because I didn’t take a picture of my first scan, I’ll try better tomorrow.

The graph of my results from last might can best be described as “Flat as a slightly bumpy pancake.”  I’ll take it!

A couple things about that picture…  7:01AM is when I scanned.  The 122 with the arrow is what my blood sugar reading is at that very moment, and the arrow means that I’m going up.  The magnifying glass with the blood drop means that I should verify my reading with a real finger stick.  The ends in 14 days means that I had to put on a new sensor last night, which is why the magnifying glass with the blood drop is there.  For the first 24 hours of a new sensor, the readings might be a little weird, so Abbot suggests verifying with a finger stick before treating. 

That is super important for Type 1 Diabetics who might be adjusting their insulin dosage based on their reading.  If the reading is falsely high, and a T1 Diabetic bases their insulin dosage on that reading, they could go low without warning.  I’m Type 2 Diabetic, in remission, so that isn’t as important to me.

Wait a second!?!

I wasn’t that groggy when waking up…  something is weird!  

I could have sworn that I saw a much lower number on my first scan!

Luckily, the Libre has a logbook function which shows a record of your last scans.  I was 109 when going to bed last night…  Well, I was mostly asleep, I hardly remember doing that scan.

I was right!  At 6:44 when I woke up before my alarm, I scanned and was 105!  You mean to tell me that in 15 minutes, my blood sugar went up 15 points?  Yep, it sure did.

That dang Dawn Effect!

I hadn’t eaten in over 36 hours, and my blood sugar was going up.  I’m sitting here shaking my head as I write this, so I decided to scan and see where I’m at right now.

Mid-day… Before Eating.

I still haven’t eaten yet.  11:35AM.  I’m at 120, which is in my desired range, but I can tell from looking at my graph that I had continued to climb up a bit.  I would estimate that I topped out at 128-130 at about 9:00AM.  

Ok, that’s good, when compared to yesterday, see Experiment of One plus One, I had popped up to about 150 before trending back down.  Yesterday was the day after eating, so I would almost expect that to happen, but the pop up today likely means that my Liver still has “stuff” to get rid of.

“Stuff” in this case means FAT.

Experiment of One… Time to Eat

So, it’s just about 12:00 Noon as I’m typing this, so I’m going to venture into the Kitchen to rustle up some grub…  Nicole is at work, and won’t be home until later, so I’m on my own.

I’ll be back….

Ok, the time lapse thing in text is weird, but just pretend we flashed forward about 20 minutes.  Breakfast is done!

“Break Fast” in the literal sense.  I have broken my fast.  I thought of having eggs, or an omelette, but I decided on something I know I’ll like even more….  Burgers and Boocha!

Yes, I made a smiley face out of the mustard on my burgers!  I’m happy to be eating, so why not?

The Boocha… aka Kombucha,  is homemade, and I’m glad I figured out the trick to getting it carbonated to my liking.  I didn’t have enough patience before, and would only let it secondary ferment in the bottle for a few days…  I need to give it a week to get the right amount of fizz.  Just an FYI for any other Kombucha brewers out there.  

Burgers cooked on the Foreman Grill  (yes, that’s an Amazon link to a foreman grill to make it easy for you to get your own 🙂 ) a couple slices of muenster cheese and my ketchup and mustard smiley face.  The Break Fast of champions!

Now to see what happens to my blood sugar…  the only real thing which contains sugar is the Kombucha, a smidge in the ketchup, but not much…  we use the Heinz Organic Ketchup so no High Fructose Corn Syrup here! 

I’m going to do a few things for a couple hours, then resume with what happens after eating the Burgers and Boocha!

And We Wait….

So, it’s now about 4:13, why would I be super exact?  Well, look at this picture, and you can see that the time clearly says 4:13pm, so there is no sense in not being super accurate 🙂 

As you can see, about 30 minutes after eating, at about 1:00PM, my blood sugar turned decidedly upwards.  About the only thing I ate that had carbohydrates in it was the Kombucha, and there shouldn’t be that much…  The recipe says I should use 1 cup per gallon, and I cut that back to about 2/3 of a cup, any less, and the scoby doesn’t stay very healthy.  Additionally, most of the sugar is fermented by the yeast and bacteria in the brew…  Maybe I need to cut back some more?

Anyway, you can clearly see what happens when food is consumed.  We get a little spike in blood sugar reading, which after about 2 hours comes back to baseline, or does it?  If you look at the “bump” closely, you can see that the upswing is quite a bit more steep than the downside.  One positive is that I was at 120 just before eating, but at 4:13 have come down to 108.  What I get from that is that my body had a pretty good response to the insulin released.

I’m going to close out today so I can get to making dinner for Nicole and I…  I’ll keep scanning tonight so I can recap what happens tonight into tomorrow.

Until Tomorrow!

-Todd

Here is a link to yesterday’s post so you can catch-up if you are just joining today…

Experiment of one Plus One