A question for people with diabetes / blood glucose experience

[BlackAmericanoNoSugar]

Can you think of any reason why cream cheese might spike my blood glucose? Kerrygold do a really delicious cream cheese, ingredients CREAM Cheese (CREAM (MILK), MILK, Water, MILK Protein, Cultures (MILK)), Salt. Every time I eat it (not often and not very much as I'm lactose intolerant) it gives me a spike and I can't work out why.

Today I had approx 25g on four of these crackers https://sheridanscheesemongers.com/product/sheridans-brown-bread-crackers-140g/ and a bit of cucumber. The crackers are fairly carby but also have a lot of fibre and I have them frequently with protein and they give a low, slow rise, even if I have them with just a bit of butter it's not a spike. According to my CGM I went from just under 8 to just under 12 in an almost vertical line, so maybe 20 minutes. I don't know if it would have gone higher as I did a few minutes on my rowing machine, it was probably near the top of the curve already as it didn't go back up after exercise which it would if I was still digesting. The shape of the spike is quite white bread/sugar/cake shaped and the kind of thing I sometimes get when I haven't read the ingredients properly eg when my chicken liver pate turned out to have dextrose in it.

I don't have the same problem with Philadelphia cream cheese (which I don't much like the taste of so very rarely eat) or any other type of cheese.

I am T2 and find my levels are inconsistent with food intake. Taking a sugar reading so quickly after food is bound to produce a spike - it's your body's way of reflecting the food intake. Try leaving it a bit longer after food, or taking it to monitor only but not to worry too much about it. Read up on Glycemic index to find out about Low and Hi Glycemic Levels. Some interesting facts about how we cook food i.e. toast made from frozen bread has lower GL, as do foods such as potatoes/pasta cooked twice. Our bodies work in mysterious ways!!

Milk contains carbs, what’s important isn’t the immediate effect it’s whether your readings were back to normal 2 hrs after eating.

whole milk has 4.8g carbs for every 100g (lactose is a form of sugar)

I'm baffled. Could it be anything to do with the time you're eating it and i.e after a fasting window?

I'm not taking readings @Iloveanicegarden, I wear a continuous glucose monitor so I'm looking at a continuous chart. (I also love a nice garden, provided someone else does the gardening. ) The cgm is about 10 minutes behind my actual blood glucose because it's monitoring the interstitial fluid rather than blood, but otherwise it's pretty accurate. I've had it for around 8 months and have been paying a lot of attention mostly because my diabetes has become increasingly tricky over the years but also because I'm a total data geek, I love a graph. So I've become used to what curves look like for various types of food, and this one doesn't really match what I would expect. Also weirdly, it doesn't match other cream cheese like Philadelphia. I do always go up after lunch, because food does that and it's supposed to happen, but this is a weird curve, much steeper than for eg the same crackers with mature cheddar.

@InfoSecInTheCity I don't digest lactose, it travels through my digestive system and other bacteria eats it and makes me fart. Little bit of lactose - little bit of farting, lots of lactose - lots of farting and possible rushed trips to the loo. I've been lactose intolerant since I was a teenager, I don't know if it's possible that I have spontaneously started to produce the correct enzymes again. I'm sure stranger things have happened. I might try Philadelphia in a few days time and see if it now spikes me when it didn't before, the ingredients are similar although Philadelphia has added guar gum, I don't know if guar gum might slow digestion.

@Badatmostthings I had it for lunch, at my normal lunchtime. I'm always sort of fasting at lunch because I get dawn phenomenon, so my glucose tends to be between 7.5 and 9.5 all morning and eating breakfast just pushes it higher. I have black coffee and if I feel hungry, which I usually don't, I'll have some almonds.

It's not a massive drama, I can just not have it anymore but I like it and there are so many foods that I like that I can't have anymore, and it should be fine for me now and then (only now and then because my family object to the farting).

I have done a screen shot of the curve so you can see the steepness. It doesn't go worryingly high, but then I didn't eat a large portion, it's just steep the way that a chocolate digestive would be.