Understanding and Managing Erratic Blood Sugar
As a diabetes educator counseling patients, the single concern I hear most often is the frustrating unpredictability of blood glucose levels. You do the exact same thing from one day to the next, yet get markedly different results on your meter.
Most people describe this experience as doing everything “right” only to get “bad” results. It is my job to talk my patients off the ledge when they feel overwhelmed by fluctuating blood sugar. Chances are, you find yourself upset by these same inconsistencies. I completely understand.
How to handle fluctuating blood sugar
I experience these same frustrations—certainly weekly, and probably daily if I really think about it. There are frequent times when my blood glucose levels simply make no sense. As a certified diabetes educator with decades of experience, I even have advanced tools to manage blood glucose, like dialing up insulin doses at the press of a button on my pump controller.
So, how can I help you get more consistent and logical results from your meter? Well, I can’t change how your body processes blood sugar. What I can do, however, is help you look at this issue differently.
Shift your attitude toward blood glucose readings
While we could explore many physiological reasons, it helps to start by accepting that our bodies are not machines. Stress, illness, hormones, food combinations, and even weather affect metabolism and digestion. Yet, knowing these facts intellectually does not always blunt the emotional reaction to an unexpectedly high reading. What does help is reframing our thinking.
Do you call checking your glucose “testing” blood sugar? If so, you might view an unexpected result as a “failure” or a poor grade. Try substituting the word “checking”—gathering information without judgment. This is data, not a test.
Consider how golfers react: they focus on the shot that nicked a tree branch and fell into the rough, while forgetting the shot that ricocheted off four trees and landed in the middle of the fairway. We likely have just as many unexpected “in-range” readings. We tend to forget those wins, but we should celebrate them.
Remember your A1C: it offers a reliable picture of your average blood glucose levels over time. Managing diabetes effectively is about long-term trends and averages, not a single snapshot.
Shifting your attitude toward fluctuating blood sugar will make a meaningful difference. You will likely need to remind yourself of this perspective from time to time—just like I do.
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