I have diabetes that is under great control with only diet and exercise. My last a1c was 5.5. I check my sugar after most meals and it is almost always in the normal range. I really restrict my carb intake, especially simple sugars. I can almost convince myself that I don’t have diebetes.
But when I splurge I can get some high readings.
So I was thinking, how high can a non-diabetic get their sugar if they binged on a meal of honeybuns, pixie stix, and Jolt Cola?
Would their body make the necessary adjustments to keep blood sugar in the normal range or would it go high for a while?
What, you don’t stab the non-diabetic people around you and check their sugars? It’s the only fun part of being diabetic!
My husband checks his from time to time. 99% of the time, it’s between 95 and 105, even after lots of sugar. Once, though, after a huge donut or big piece of cake or something, we saw 160. It was back down around 100 within a few minutes.
My aunt was 139 when I checked her after eating M&Ms.
Other than that, almost always right around 100, give or take 10 points.
My husband’s also checked after strenuous bike rides, when he gets the feeling that non-diabetics always describe as “low blood sugar.” I know, I used to say the same thing. He’s been convinced he’d be in the 60s, but no, he’s always right around 100.
Congrats on the diabetes control. Mine isn’t so (Type I).
Empirical story here:
On my last visit home after I got diabetes, my sister was worried about her blood sugar. They all had had some sort of desert, and my sister had had coffee w/ cream and sugar. I volunteered my meter for her to test. Her level was 119 (very good). But me, without any natural insulin production, shoot up 50 points each just 1 hotdog (they have 3-5 g of sugar in them).
Sometimes before people are diagnosed as diabetic they can have a high level for a while and still not realize it. In my case I knew something was wrong since I was always thirsty for a week and when I went to the Dr. my level was 350. I knew a lot of thirst was a diabetes symptom so I was not surprised at my diagnosis.
My doctor says he has seen readings over 15 mmoles/l which corresponds to around 275 mg/dl (the latter being the way it is measured in the US. (You make the conversion by multiplying by 18.)
By definition, if your sugar goes over 200 mg/dl (11 mmol/L) and you have symptoms such as thirst and frequent urination, you have diabetes. In other words, any “non-diabetic” whose sugar ever exceeds 200 may well already have diabetes.
The Diagnostic Criteria for Diabetes are as follows:
A. If your random serum glucose is over 200 mg/dl and you have symptoms such as polyuria, nocturia, or polydipsia, you have diabetes.
B. If your fasting serum glucose exceeds 126 mg/dl on 2 different days, you have diabetes.
C. If your postprandial glucose (2 hours post meal) is over 200 mg/dl, you have diabetes.
D. If your oral glucose tolerance test (ingesting 75 grams of glucose and getting your glucose checked 2 hours later) results in a serum glucose over 200 mg/dl, you have diabetes.
One- a guy who came to the clinic thinking he had a urinary tract infection because he couldn’t ride the bus home without having to get off to pee, and another- a diabetic pregnant woman who was non compliant with diet/meds.
Sent this from my phone - then realised I’d not explained myself. My point is that (as is now said later in the thread) if you’re talking about levels of around 15, that would suggest you are not non-diabetic!
I don’t know if it works on non-diabetics, but I took my blood sugar after getting a cortisone shot in my knee and it spiked at 457! This is why my Dr. won’t give me shots in both knees on the same day, he makes me wait 30 days.
Have you ever, just for shits ‘n’ giggles, taken someone’s BS just after the glucose load? I’m wondering what we could get it to spike to before that 2 hour wait is over (as, if I’m reading it correctly is the OP). Surely there’s some small span of time when the glucose is in the blood and the insulin hasn’t whisked it away to the intracellular space yet.
Wow! How long was the reading in that neighborhood and did you feel any different while it was that high?
I’ve had a high (130+) reading when on oral steroids… so much for local ones not having the same effect! That 130+ was long before I was in the same time zone as diabetic. Anyway, steroids do affect blood sugar even for non-diabetics.
Not sure whether I qualify as diabetic now, actually… I had one glucose reading 150+ while quite ill last winder, followed a few weeks later by an A1C of 6.1, which has since normalized (and the glucose that day was 107); I’m not being treated by anything other than a little weight loss.
Nobody yet has answered the OP’s question though - say you set Jamie and Adam to chow down on a big bowlful of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs washed down with a big swig of Karo syrup: you’d expect their blood sugar to spike once that hits the stomach and bloodstream, then as the pancreas does its job, you’d expect it to start dropping reasonably fast, right?
So how high would you expect it to go over what time frame, and what sort of curve would you expect it to follow as it decreases?
All this assumes someone who does not have the other symptoms (thirst, etc.).
I’m not Lanzy, but I can put in my 2 cents on this one. My highest recorded reading was in the 450s, and I have reason to believe pre-diagnosis that I was often that high or higher (my first A1c was 11.5, which roughly equates to an average of 283. Given that, and the amount of sugar & carbs I was eating pre-diagnosis, I’d be highly surprised if I wasn’t hitting 450 or higher quite often.)
How’d I feel? Fine. I had no symptoms, other than some weight loss, and an extreme craving for sugary food.
That said, I think that was because I was used to being that high all the time. Nowadays, with my A1c around 5.1 (which equates to an average blood sugar of about 100) if I get over about 200, I start to feel weird. My eyes and head start to feel “tight”, if that makes sense, and I get a little headache-y.
I don’t know about the curve, but my (non-diabetic) hubby has tried to “catch” himself with high blood sugar a lot by doing things like you describe - he’ll eat something really sugary and test right away. Other than that one 160 I mentioned above, his blood sugar stays right around 100.
That is another way to diagnose diabetes, advocated by the American Diabetes Association and the International Diabetes Federation. They say a HgbA1C of 6.5% or higher also would establish the diagnosis of diabetes.
Note that this does not supercede the other ways to diagnose diabetes, nor is there yet general acceptance in the medical community overall to use this standard to replace other, less expensive ways of diagnosising it.