[health] Blood glucose testing for nondiabetics

A lot of our efforts to be healthier suffer from the problem of lack of feedback. While people can track changes in strength and endurance quantitatively as they exercise, effects of dietary choices are much harder to track. You can monitor weight, but weight is far from the complete picture of health.

Enter the glucose meter. Diabetics are constantly poking themselves to determine their blood glucose levels. However, there are many good reasons for nondiabetics to use them as well.

People who are trying to eat healthier are constantly talking about the glycemic index of foods -- food with high glycemic index such as sodas full of corn syrup tend to cause big spikes in blood sugar, which put stress on the body and can lead to numerous health issues.

It turns out that for around $30 or so, you can test your blood sugar numerous times and get a sense for how different types of meals affect your blood sugar levels. This basically gives you feedback about how much you´re stressing your body. I think this is one of the things that people who are interested in maintaining their health should do. It´s a lot better than making dieting decisions in the dark. Even if you know what you *should* eat, seeing the consequences of your actual diet will help motivate you to change. Psychologists have found that this sort of real-time feedback greatly aids self-improvement.

You can also do a full-on glucose tolerance test, which gives an indication of whether you´re likely to develop diabetes. The glucose tolerance test involves consuming 100g of glucose (around three cans of soda) and then watching what happens to your blood glucose levels over the next six hours.

You can read more and interpret results here:
http://hypoglykemie.nl/gtt.htm

Also, this blogger talks a lot about his experience using a glucose meter as a dietary tool:
http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/to-get-low-carb-right-you-need-to-check.html

Given how common diabetes is, it´s probably worth doing a glucose tolerance test even if you have no family history of diabetes.

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Here was my experience:

I´m usually very grumpy in the morning, and the grumpiness is partially mitigated by a nice protein-rich breakfast. Not today. Instead, I drank three bottles of the only soda I find palatable -- Reed´s Ginger Brew. Drinking that much soda in one sitting was horrendous, like something out of a college dare. It probably doesn´t help that I don´t drink sugary drinks on a normal basis. Even after the 100g of glucose was happily absorbed by my intestines, I still felt hungry. The hunger and grumpiness got worse over the next six hours. Meanwhile I made my way through the test strips, watching my blood levels fluctuate.

My fasting level was 74, and my glucose never got above 116. Apparently I´m in good shape.

I´ve been testing myself after other meals. I saw a significant bump was after deliberately trying to see what would happen if I consumed a large high-carb meal that was more to my liking. Turkey + pesto sauce + cheese + 180g of carbs from a huge pile of pasta managed to put me up to around 118, and that meal was chosen to really test the limits of my system.

I was curious to see if I am prone to hypoglycemia. The results say no. However, I found the following on wikipedia:

Hypoglycemia (common usage) is also a term in popular culture and alternative medicine for a common, often self-diagnosed, condition characterized by shakiness and altered mood and thinking, but without measured low glucose or risk of severe harm. It is treated by changing eating patterns.

That sounds more like it. I seldom go through the day without frequent snacks.