frustrated with blood sugar readings....

Hi mirabella! I understand your frustration. I'm not sure what's going on. It could be a few things. First is that your pancreas might be compromised because of the surgery, meaning it's not producing a lot of insulin. Next would be food and exercise but I do think you're pretty informed enough about that since you've been reading that link in my signature.

I myself recently found that artificial sweeteners like stevia and sucralose (Splenda) raises my blood sugar. I was puzzled about why my blood sugar was high after drinking coffee with half and half and those two sweeteners and through process of elimination, I found it was the artificial sweeteners. ugh

The good news for you is that your blood sugar is not that high even though it's higher than you want and higher than a non-diabetic's. So, what to do? I think to find out you should keep a food and drink journal
with times that you ingest any food and drink and keep testing right before you eat/drink and then about two hours later. That will tell you how your blood sugar is reacting to what you had.

Surprising results might occur, like my stupid artificial sweeteners in my coffee.

And, yes, a doctor would tell you the A1c of 5.9 is great! It is but it's not the whole story.

The coffee itself should not raise blood sugar but if you add milk or other creamer, that's a different story. Whole milk has fewer carbs than skim milk. Those flavored creamers or artificial creamers have lots of ingredients including regular sugar and those will definitely raise blood sugar. However, I had always used the liquid drops of stevia and Splenda together in my coffee with half and half. Half and half is not the problem as it has 1 g carb per 2 tablespoons so it's the stevia and Splenda. When I tested with just coffee and those sweeteners, my blood sugar spiked up about 20 points, but with just coffee and half and half, I tested just a couple of points up.

I would also suggest getting Dr. Bernstein's book Diabetes Solution. He is a type 1 and is now in his 70's. Of course type 1s and type 2s are not the same but we do react the same to carbs in food. He suggests a very very strict low carb way of eating. I don't restrict myself as low as he does for carbs a day but I am still doing very well. I am on metformin.

Keeping a journal will tell you what food and drink are causing blood sugar to rise and - or course - it's all about the amount of carbs. There's no getting around that.

I test on my eight finger tips and on the sides of the tips, not my thumbs because I just don't , and I always use a different finger, other hand. I don't test everyday now unless I'm going to eat something totally new but years ago when I was just learning about all this, I would sometimes test all day long. I was a serial tester and I make no apologies about that because I had to know what made my blood sugar rise and what didn't.

So, I let the test results be my guide. If you read the studies in the link in my signature, you'll learn about what happens when we live with high blood sugar over a period of time.

Good Luck!

Diabetes is on my mom's side of the family; both my grandmother and mother died because of diabetes. I'm now 69 and was diagnosed 12 years ago but when I look back over the lab work that I have from about 20 years ago, I now see that my fasting blood sugar was hovering at 100 to 120 back then. Unfortunately my doctor at that time followed the guidelines of the ADA and that's only "pre" diabetic. What the heck does that mean? I had no idea and following the eating plans of the ADA will absolutely keep that pre-diabetic person not only with high blood sugar but make sure the person will be dealing with health complications later on because of their guidelines.

So, when I discovered how high blood sugar/diabetes will kill me, I learned all I could about blood sugar and food, and if I can help anyone understand this, then that makes me happy.

I have found staying hungry for longer periods of time also increases numbers.

For me stevia is no good as it makes you crave more sugar and my numbers are awful.

I hate splenda ,as causes renal failure but only in very emergency situation put one in my cofffee which is rare.

Splenda needs to be banned by FDA.

AGAVE SYRUP GIVES ME HIVES AND ALLERGY ,so I am stuck with stevia and need to use it moderately.

Well, a few things here.

Not too many years ago I had three Bayer Contour meters provided by insurance over the years and they hardly ever tested out with the same results, sometimes within points and sometimes wildly apart. Because they are products for consumers to use at home, we should not expect them to be exactly the same or even 100% accurate! The organization that oversees these home health testers say that any meter may be in error by 10%, so there you are.

Artificial sweeteners actually can raise our blood sugar and it might be an individual reaction or not, I don't know. It might depend on which one you're using and how much you're putting in your coffee. Or, if you're drinking diet drinks, how many cans or bottles are you drinking? I found that a couple of squirts of generic sucralose and stevia in my morning coffee raised my blood sugar about 20 points. This was drinking the coffee with some half and half, alone not with a meal. Maybe it would be different if I drank that same cup along with breakfast?

The reason I opted for the liquid form is that the powdered forms of these artificial sweeteners normally have dextrose, too, and this form of sugar will absolutely raise blood sugar. However, even the liquid did with me.

Many articles have been written about the safety and health effects of these artificial sweeteners. My feeling is that overdoing anything is not good. You will find many articles about aspartame (Equal) being very dangerous to our health. I don't know but please be careful of off the mainstream websites that fear monger with little factual back up. As I wrote, if a person eats and drinks food with all different kinds of artificial sweeteners all day, everyday, it can't be healthy because it seems to me that person is not eating fresh vegetables and greens with a nice portion of protein. Besides drinks, where do we find artificial sweeteners? Processed food, desserts, food we should not be over indulging in anyway.

Yeah, I'm sure there will be a lot of odd results sometimes. One member wrote awhile ago that he jogged from his home to his doctor's office for his appointment which included lab work. He was fasting for the blood tests, yet instead of a very good fasting result, his test was higher than normal. Much higher than he had at home. The only thing I can figure out is that our blood sugar rises with exercise to give us energy and since he jogged all the way to the doctor's office he actually skewed the result. Sabotaging himself not realizing what would happen.