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Last month, because of my curiosity, I had a fasting and postprandial (2 hours after eating) glucose tests. The fasting level was 72 mg/dL and the postprandial level was 59 mg/dL. I had expected the postprandial level to be higher (90 or 100 perhaps?) and am curious why it might be lower.

After they took the fasting glucose, I was given a choice of drinking 75 ml of sugar water or going home and eat my normal breakfast. I chose to go home and eat my normal breakfast. It is a mixture of Bob's Red Mill High Fiber cereal plus additional oat bran and wheat bran and some Bob's Red Mill muesli mix. It has lots of fiber. Altogether it is about 800 calories and it is my meal with the most calories each day.

So I am wondering if my body for some reason released more insulin than necessary after I ate breakfast?

I am very happy with the 72 mg/dL fasting glucose. As I have followed the McDougall program closely for the last several years, my fasting glucose has been dropping (three or four years ago it used to be about 99 mg/dL). My mother is diabetic and I used to be very obese so I watch my glucose levels.

Any ideas?

I don't know why it happens but I have had the same experience of postprandial bs being lower than fasting bs. My postprandial bs is generally around 85, and my fasting bs tends to be anywhere from 83-96 (I have type II diabetes). I haven't worried about it because 85 is not low. At 59 I might be a little concerned -- were you having any symptoms of low bs? If not, great. If so, you might want to try changing your breakfast up a bit.

No symptoms of low blood sugar --- I felt fine.

Thanks for the reply.

Interesting; I've never had that happen, and I follow my blood sugars pretty closely. Do you know about how many grams of fiber were/are in your breakfast?

I know fiber can really lower the sugar response to what we eat.

My breakfast is usually 1/2 c rolled oats plus 1/3 c oat bran, for a total of about 11 gms of fiber.

Maer

I eat a big breakfast --- fiber is about 50 grams. For lunch and dinner, loads of vegetables and 1 cup of cooked brown rice (at dinner only).

High fiber cereal 2/3 cup ---- 20 grams
Oat bran 1/2 cup ------------ 10 grams
wheat bran 1/2 cup --------- 12 grams
Muesli 1/2 cup ------------- 8 grams

Wow, that's an impressive fiber intake. Must have something to do with it, but it occurs to me, are you very physically active after breakfast? Maybe a combination of exercise and the fiber can account for it.

Given your family history of diabetes, that's really wonderful. I'm fighting "mild" diabetes (on no meds and trying to keep it that way, but will spike too high if don't stay active after eating). Maybe I'll trying upping my fiber intake further.

Maer

On the day of the lab test, I wasn't that active.

I ride my 25 year old mountain bike for 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week. I try to push as hard as a 60 year old can. And I work in our vegetable gardens (we have a 25 earthboxes garden behind the house and a 17 foot by about 85 feet plot in a community garden) 2 or 3 hours a day on average. And since we live in central Florida, I can garden most of the year.

In my 30's, I weighed as much as 310 pounds --- down to 175 lbs today which is a 42 year low.

I was reading more today about the effects of very high fiber diets, and one thing I read was that a very high fiber diet reduces the absorption of some the ingested calores (I guess by increasing transit time, or else binding some of the useable calories in the fiber so that it's not as accessible to the body), thereby aiding weight loss (and probably post prandial blood sugars, too, I'd guess).

For me, nice to know you didn't achieve this by exercising like a maniac after breakfast!

But, even so, I think it's impressive that you have such wonderful numbers. I'm adding more fiber to my diet.

I read your success story...also very encouraging. Thanks so much for posting!

Maer

Maer

Whenever I get an odd number I retest. Even labs can make mistakes and there could be a fifteen or twenty percent variation with your home meter. I don't quite get what happened. Did the doctor or hospital do the postprandial? Did you do it? If the doc or hospital did it did you check your own at the same time with your own meter to see if the results were the same?

Didi

The blood for the postprandial was drawn at a Labcorp office. I ordered the test online through Life Extension Foundation so there was no doctor involved.

I don't have a meter (I have never been diabetic so I have never purchased one). Thank you for the reminder that a given test result may be "bad".