What is Postprandial Blood Sugar?

The term “postprandial blood sugar” describes your blood sugar level after a meal. This is the opposite of “preprandial blood sugar,” or your blood sugar before eating.

Though everyone has postprandial blood sugar increases, this usually isn’t dangerous for people without diabetes. But if you’ve just received a diabetes or prediabetes diagnosis, you might have questions like:

• What causes blood sugar spikes after eating?
• How long does blood sugar stay elevated after eating?
• How can I check my blood sugar at home?
• How soon after eating should I check my blood sugar?

If you need advice on controlling blood glucose after meals, US MED can help. Keep reading for our answers to common questions about postprandial blood glucose management (and advice on where to buy blood glucose meters and more).

Why Blood Sugar Increases After Meals

When you consume carbohydrates, these sugars and starches break down into simple sugars before entering your bloodstream. Insulin from the pancreas usually helps these sugars reach their final destination, but that isn’t always possible for people with diabetes. These people have insulin resistance—a condition where cells do not respond well to insulin.

As a result, people living with diabetes often experience elevated blood sugar levels after meals. Factors that can affect blood sugar spikes include:

Diet

When you find the right diet for you and stick to it, you may have less trouble dealing with postprandial blood sugar spikes.

Tracking Carbohydrate Intake

Setting a carbohydrate target for each day and carefully tracking your carb intake can lower your risk of blood sugar spikes.

Exercise

Inactivity and reduced movement can increase postprandial blood sugar. However, you can regain control of your blood glucose by making exercise a daily habit.

Insulin Dosage

Your insulin dose must align with the carbs you consume. If you need help finding your insulin dosage requirements, your healthcare team can provide assistance.

Injection-Meal Interval

If you have diabetes, you need to know your ideal IVI. This is the time between your pre-meal bolus and meals, and getting it right is a crucial part of successful insulin treatment.

Consequences of Postprandial Hyperglycemia

Unmanaged postprandial blood sugar spikes can cause significant health problems in diabetes patients. To minimize this risk, people with diabetes should always look out for signs of high blood sugar after a meal.

Common symptoms of postprandial hyperglycemia include:

• Frequent urination
• Blurry vision
• Excessive thirst
• Fatigue
• Headaches

When people with diabetes ignore high blood sugar for long enough, they may develop more severe complications. Extended periods of high blood glucose can cause slow healing, nerve damage, stomach and intestinal problems, and other health issues. Eventually, this situation could result in a life-threatening condition called diabetic ketoacidosis.

Managing Postprandial Blood Sugar

If you want to avoid these complications, you’ll need a strategy for postprandial blood sugar management, and this strategy must start with regular blood glucose checks. According to the American Diabetes Association, you should check your blood sugar immediately before meals and again after eating. If you follow this testing schedule for roughly a week, you’ll understand how eating affects your blood glucose.

Once you have this information, you can take a few common-sense steps to manage blood glucose spikes after meals—such as eating breakfast. When people with diabetes skip this meal, they may experience higher blood glucose levels later in the day. By eating three meals a day and making an effort to control your blood sugar outside of meals, you’ll find it easier to deal with blood glucose spikes.

Diabetes Diets and Blood Sugar Spikes: What You Need to Know

A well-designed diabetes diet can improve postprandial blood sugar and provide other health benefits. If you’re creating one of these diets with help from your healthcare team, here are a few tips to note.

Carbohydrates

While building a diabetes diet, you’ll want to focus on “nutrient-dense” or “complex” carbohydrates. These carbs are high in vitamins, fiber, and minerals and low in added sugars, sodium, and unhealthy fats.

But while complex carbohydrates should have a relatively minor impact on your blood glucose, simple carbs and refined grains often contribute to postprandial blood sugar spikes. With that in mind, people with diabetes should eat:

• Whole, unprocessed, non-starchy vegetables (such as leafy green lettuce, broccoli, and tomatoes)
• Fresh fruits
• Whole grains
• Legumes (including beans and peas)

Proteins & Fats

Proteins and fats don’t affect blood glucose as much as carbohydrates, but they can still increase your blood sugar. That said, they also slow the rate at which glucose enters the bloodstream, potentially stabilizing blood sugar levels.

This doesn’t mean people with diabetes should make proteins and fats the center of their diet. The best protein and fat sources are heart-healthy, not processed, low in saturated fats, and high in good fats like omega-3 fatty acids. Choose lean meats, low-fat dairy products, beans, nuts, seeds, fatty fish, and seafood.

Why Postprandial Blood Sugar Matters for People Without Diabetes

Occasional blood sugar spikes aren’t an immediate health risk for people without diabetes. Even so, anyone can benefit from knowing how meals affect their blood glucose levels.

For example, high blood sugar an hour or two after eating may point to insulin resistance in people without diabetes. Thus, if you notice postprandial hyperglycemia symptoms, you should ask your healthcare provider about blood sugar testing right away.

Higher-than-normal postprandial blood sugar can also raise your risk of:

• Type 2 diabetes. Frequent high blood sugar events could impact your body’s ability to regulate blood glucose—making you more likely to develop diabetes.
• Heart disease. Even if you don’t have diabetes, postprandial blood sugar spikes could negatively affect your heart health.
• Excess weight. Unhealthy diets high in processed foods can lead to both high postprandial blood sugar and obesity.
• Chronic inflammation. Conditions like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and obesity all have links to chronic inflammation.

How to Check Your Blood Sugar at Home

If you have a standard glucose meter, you can easily check your postprandial blood sugar at home. CGM systems are another popular option for checking your blood sugar levels, thanks to their high level of convenience.

Find Blood Sugar Testing Supplies at US MED

No matter what equipment you use to check your blood sugar, you should order it from a supplier you can trust. When you buy diabetes supplies from US MED, you’ll benefit from our automatic reorder reminders, free priority shipping, and 100% satisfaction guarantee. Contact us today to take your first step toward better postprandial blood glucose control!

FAQs

As a person with diabetes, why is it important to test your blood sugar after you eat?

If you have diabetes, uncontrolled blood sugar spikes could negatively affect your HbA1c and cause other problems. Thus, people living with diabetes should keep a close eye on their blood sugar. To do that, they can measure blood samples with a traditional glucose meter or get fingerstick-free* readings from a continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) system.

*Fingersticks may still be required for diabetes treatment decisions, or if your readings do not match symptoms or alarms.

How long does blood sugar stay elevated after eating?

Blood sugar spikes hit their peak roughly 90 minutes after a meal. In people without diabetes (and people successfully managing this condition), blood sugar starts decreasing a few hours after that point. Meanwhile, people with untreated diabetes may still have elevated blood glucose levels two hours after a meal.

How soon after eating should I check my blood sugar?

If you use rapid-acting analog insulin, it’s best to wait about 90 minutes after meals to check your blood sugar. On the other hand, people using regular insulin should make an effort to find their own ideal blood sugar testing schedule.

What is a good postprandial blood sugar level?

The American Diabetes Association encourages people with diabetes to keep their blood sugar levels below 180 mg/dL after a meal. While this is a “normal” postprandial blood sugar level for many diabetes patients, your needs may differ. Your healthcare team can help you find the target blood sugar level that’s right for you.

What are acceptable postprandial levels for a person living with prediabetes?

If you take the two-hour postprandial glucose (PPG) test and get a result between 140 and 199 mg/dL, you may have prediabetes. People taking this test start by fasting for at least eight hours in advance. After that, they:

• Get a blood test to measure their fasting blood glucose
• Drink a sugary solution
• Take a second blood test two hours later

What brings down blood sugar immediately?

Fast-acting insulin is the single fastest way to lower your blood sugar. Though exercise doesn’t work as quickly as fast-acting insulin, it can also rapidly reduce your blood glucose. Meanwhile, a diabetes diet and other lifestyle changes can help you reduce postprandial blood sugar levels over the long term.