What is Post-Prandial Blood Sugar, and Why Does it Matter?
To be more specific, sugar or glucose is an essential component of all the content that flows through your bloodstream. These glucose molecules fuel your body and generate energy as and when needed. Keeping a check on the blood sugar levels helps you know more about your body’s internal health. But, it also guides you toward opting for healthy life choices. For example, if you are consistently aware of your blood glucose levels, you know which things you should be avoiding.
This simple yet effective idea to monitor your glucose levels at frequent durations helps you channel your energy and mind toward a better lifestyle. So, how do you keep a track report of your blood glucose levels? The most effective way would be to get a continuous glucose monitor.
This device allows you to simultaneously check your sugar levels while you are eating or exercising. The cumbersome task of measuring your sugar levels gets done quickly hassle free. Taking a step forward, you must know the different times when you should be checking your glucose levels.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a diabetic patient or not. However, you must know the correct time to measure the glucose in your bloodstream. These times include fasting sugar (on an empty stomach) and post-prandial sugar (post-meal). Here’s a quick overview of what post-prandial sugar means:
What is Post-Prandial Blood Sugar?
In medical terminology, post-prandial means after eating a meal. Therefore, post-prandial blood sugar refers to the blood glucose levels after eating a meal. You might be wondering why is it important to measure your post-prandial blood sugar levels?
The answer is that the post-prandial blood sugar levels allow you to examine the insulin activity in your body. Your blood sugar levels surge high every time you eat your meals. However, this happens because the glucose from the food particles gets rapidly absorbed into the blood flow.
The increase in this blood glucose level triggers insulin hormone to show up. Insulin then starts metabolising glucose molecules into energy molecules. Therefore, this is the reason why you should be interested in your post-prandial blood glucose levels. However, this basic mechanism gets altered in people with type 1 or type 2 diabetes. For example, suppose you are hypoglycemic (type 1 diabetic). In that case, your body is producing insulin in insufficient amounts, which leads to an upsurge in the blood glucose levels as counter hormone insulin is absent.
Similarly, if you are hyperglycemic (type 2 diabetic), your body has an inherent resistance toward insulin, making the glucose metabolism process slower. Again, this results in spiked blood sugar levels, which may be a cause of concern.
Factors Affecting Post-Prandial Blood Sugar
Several factors affect post-prandial blood sugar levels. These factors include:
Increased Carbohydrate Intake
Bad eating choices are a leading cause of high post-prandial blood sugar levels. When you eat junk food or foods rich in calories and carbohydrates, you invite an extra amount of glucose molecules into your system. In addition, consuming such foods throughout the day makes the blood glucose levels in your body rise up.
Lack of Sleep
Insomnia or lack of sleep leads to increased chances of hypertension, anxiety, depression, and obesity. These disorders collectively lead to conditions of hyperglycemia and, thus, an increase in blood sugar levels post having a meal.
Lack of Exercise
You know that your body needs constant movement throughout the day to feel exuberant and healthy. If you can’t work out every day, you should at least work out for 3 to 4 days every week. This constant movement of the body requires energy and thus, utilises the excess glucose in your body. Therefore, to avoid conditions like obesity and diabetes, you must always incorporate some movement daily.
Mental Health
A depressed or anxious person unknowingly eats more or less than an average person. This depressed mental state leads to obesity conditions which makes your body insulin-resistant. Once you develop resistance toward insulin, you are more inclined toward higher post-prandial blood glucose levels.
Measuring Post-Prandial Blood Sugar
There are two ways to calculate your post-prandial blood sugar. One is a traditional testing method, and the second option is an advanced and efficacious method. Let’s take a look at each of them.
The traditional method of testing post-prandial blood sugar
In this method, you will eat your meal and then visit your nearest pathology lab after 2 hours of eating. They will draw your blood sample and work on it to determine your blood sugar levels. Another way includes drinking an extremely sweet potion of 75 ml given by the doctor. Again you will have to wait for 2 hours for your blood sample testing. After the blood sample collection, your sample is analysed, and your reports are generated.
Do you think the process is too long? Here’s a quicker, safer, and more convenient method of testing your blood glucose level customised just for you.
Estimating your PPBG levels by a continuous blood glucose monitor
There’s so much that a continuous glucose monitor does for you! Most importantly, you don’t need to be pricked by needles!
Fix your HealthifyPro CGM around your arm, connect with your device, and you are all set! This continuous glucose monitor from Pro tracks your blood glucose levels throughout the day. You don’t need to wait for hours to get your reports. You get them instantly on your device with a dynamic metabolic panel that guides you through.
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With a CGM, you can easily measure your blood sugar levels and notice the change in your sugar levels across the day. Plus, no mess of blood pricking needles or other stuff. Instead, fix your CGM to your arm and sit back and observe. Also, the amazing part is you do not need to wear it continuously. Even periodic wear allows the PRO technology to establish your food intake, activity levels, metabolic health and blood sugar levels.
Normal Post-Prandial Blood Sugar
Post-prandial blood sugar or post-meal blood sugar is the sugar level after a meal. There’s a range in which your post-prandial sugar must stay. Below are different ranges of post-prandial blood sugar.
- Normal post-prandial blood sugar level (for diabetic patients): <180 mg/dL
- Normal post-prandial blood sugar level (for non-diabetics): <140 mg/dL
- Elevated post-prandial blood sugar level: >200 mg/dL
The above numbers are the range of sugar levels that occur in your body under different conditions. For example, if you have post-prandial blood sugar above 200 mg/dL, you are at serious risk of hyperglycemia. However, a PPBG value of less than 55 mg/dL indicates an alarming hypoglycemic situation. Both cases are bad for your overall health. Therefore, one must always aim to achieve post-prandial blood sugar levels within 140 mg/dL to 180 mg/dL.
How Can CGM Help Understand Your Post-Prandial Blood Sugar?
Getting yourself a HealthifyPro continuous glucose monitor can drastically change your diabetes and weight loss journey. Putting it directly, the HealthifyPro continuous glucose monitor is a revolution in the world of health, obesity and glucose monitoring.
This continuous glucose monitor provides you with the flexibility and ability to switch, change, and take action against your disorder. Also, the HealthifyPro continuous glucose monitor provides you with the best results with minimum errors in terms of accuracy. You get an AI-driven system as your backup or support pillar for results tracking. It provides cool graphs and dynamic visuals that make understanding your glucose levels more fun than tedious.
The HealthifyPro continuous glucose monitor can track the number of calories or carbs you gain from every food you eat or wish to eat. This way, you can choose to change and evolve your eating habits.
Optimise Post-Prandial Blood Sugar with Insights from CGM
Once you control everything you are eating, you are at the best place to manage your glucose levels. The HealthifyPro continuous glucose monitor allows you to change your diet plans and other strategies as per your goals.
A tool with such astonishing features is a game-changer in your journey to tackle diabetes and manage your weight. Therefore, getting a HealthifyPro continuous glucose monitor is the best decision you can make toward a healthy lifestyle. In addition, you can easily keep your PPBG levels under control with your CGM buddy.
Health Benefits of Maintaining Optimal Post-Prandial Blood Sugar
Maintaining optimal PPBG levels is the best gift you can give yourself. Once you master the ways to maintain optimal levels of PPBG, you can get the following benefits:
- No risk of heart or other cardiovascular diseases.
- Kidneys function more effectively.
- Reduced risk of renal failures.
- Reduced chances of obesity.
- Healthy mental conditions.
- No risk of brain disorders arising from high blood sugar levels.
- Improved eyesight.
- Lesser risk of contracting disorders like cataracts
Conclusion
If you feel sleepy after a meal or put on weight or feel sluggish throughout the day, you may be doing something wrong with your diet and lifestyle. Therefore, we urge you to talk to a health specialist and get your glucose levels checked. However, please do not wait for it to snowball into a severe condition.
Technology, data-driven AI and interactivity with health coaches make it relatively easy for you to monitor your glucose levels in the comfort of your home. Looking at generic healthy diet plans and standard interventions like restrictive diets are passe. With glucose monitoring at the centre of an intervention, you do not compromise on food. What you learn is a new and healthy way to eat.
