This topic contains 2 replies, has 2 voices, and was last updated by Kirsty 4 months, 1 week ago.
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I had GD (diet controlled) for both my pregnancies but didn’t seem to have any issues before or after… or so I thought. I just had a follow up 2 hour GTT six weeks after the birth of my second child and am a bit confused by the results. I tested at home before going in and got 4.6 – and I was home within 20 minutes after the two hours and tested 5.5. But when I saw my GP she said my fasting was 4.9 and my 2 hour was 8.6! She said it doesn’t matter because it just means I’m glucose impaired, not diabetic – but how can I go from 8.6 to 5.5 in less than 20 minutes? All I did was walk across the street, buy a couple of things from the supermarket and drive home. I wasn’t rushing around or doing anything very physical.
I really struggled with GD because I was borderline anyway, but I got super paranoid with everything I put in my mouth and wanted to test after an hour with everything I ate. Does anyone know if the blood test could be wrong? I’ve tested intermittently since having my son and not had a single reading over 6, even when drinking soft drink and eating chocolate (at the same time!).
The doctor said I could still be re-settling after the GD, and when I lose the extra baby weight and start moving around more (I had a c-section so haven’t been able to do much exercise yet) that it will probably get better – but I’m worried about this 8.6 reading!
Kirsty,
Diabetes is always hard work, and is often confusing. Especially when people are using a machine at home, and comparing results to a pathology machine worth 10’s of thousands of dollars.
BGL’s measured on your home meter can very much more than the pathology machinery. Your home meter has an allowable error rate of about 10-15%. This is a great tool for guiding diabetes self-management, but not a useful tool to determine /diagnose diabetes (or impaired glucose tolerance – IGT). And it is generally not recommended to measure your BGL at home if you have IGT.
It is also normal for a human beings BGL to vary between 4-8 over the day.
The evidence we have for women who have had gestational diabetes is that 50% will develop diabetes in the following 10 years.
So, your test indicates Impaired Glucose Tolerance (IGT) which is sometimes referred to as pre-diabetes. http://www.diabetesvic.org.au/about-diabetes/pre-diabetes
Your fasting BGL is normal, but your 2 hour level indicates your body is not making enough insulin. At the moment in this situation.
Like most things in life, good news and bad news.
Good news is, you know you have a problem. Other good news is it is possible to go back to normal glucose tolerance. You now have the opportunity to do something about it. By eating a healthy diet, taking a daily dose of exercise, not only can you enable a possible delay in getting diabetes (maybe even prevent it) you can also reduce your health risks of other things like heart disease.
Some studies http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9096977 show us good evidence of this.
Bad news is, you have it. If this is causing you distress on some level, then it may be helpful to plug into our counseling team here.
You write: “She (the doctor) said it doesn’t matter because it just means I’m glucose impaired, not diabetic”
It obviously does matter, on many levels.
The GTT was done at the right time. It is a good marker. The diagnosis of IGT is serious, and needs things like blood pressure, cholesterol, and of course regular (yearly) GTT or at least fasting BGL’s measured (pathology test, NOT home test) to exclude diabetes (or show normality has been achieved)
I hope this helps somewhat. Of course not all good news.
But the BIG positive is, you know what you can start to do to manage a health issue that may of otherwise not been found until it had caused some other health issues.
Kind Regards,
David
Diabetes Educator and Midwife
Thanks David. Maybe I’m just in denial… but my readings are much lower than when I was pregnant… I had pasta for dinner and was only 4.7 after an hour and a half. I know the meter can vary a lot but all my other readings have been very close to what the blood tests have said.
I may try and get tested again in a few months. I have been eating more low carb in general anyway (obviously not for dinner last night though!) and doing lots of walking (heaps during pregnancy and just started up again in the last few days) and other activity. I’m normally only a size 10 and lead a healthy lifestyle (being a vegetarian and having studied nutrition). I just didn’t think I was in a risk category… I had a lot of blood tests last year to check my health after turning 100% vegetarian and everything was perfect in terms of cholesterol and other potential problems. It’s just confusing when people I know who don’t have diabetes test higher than me after meals!
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