Coffee makes my blood sugar high. I was reading someone else's blog about a month ago and it mentioned that coffee raised their blood sugar. When I read that, it immediately rang true to me. I usually have a cup or two each morning to get the day started off right. Lately though, after some "experimenting" of my own, I have found that this is absolutely the case for me. I'll drink a few cups over the course of a couple hours and then I test high each time. Coffee seems to be the "only" explanation for that.
I don't really pride myself on being a coffee drinker though. I started "using" about a year back even though I had always been against it. I am too much of a worry-wart. I always pictured myself with coffee stained teeth and bad breath because of it. Plus, I don't take part in too many "unhealthy" things and nobody seems to know if it's healthy for you or not. Every once in a while I'll see a report from some "research team" at some college in another country that says, "Experts from the University of Coffee say a cup each morning is healthy for your libido" or something off-beat like that. I DON'T KNOW!? I just don't want to be "addicted" to anything that is going to raise my blood sugar, even if the stuff is REALLY AWESOME! And the most discouraging thing to me is that even decaf makes me hyperglycemic! It's bad enough not being able to "get my fix" each morning, now I am even scared to drink "unleaded".
PLEASE someone tell me, who is a real expert that I am only imagining this! If you have never heard of "hyperglycemic coffee" then I might suggest that you look into if for yourself.
I've seen a lot of these studies, and most are too small to be statistically reliable. My own experience is that coffee, by itself, does nothing to my blood glucose levels, but even a teaspoon of skim milk in it will push my numbers up much higher than a comparable amount of carbs that are NOT consumed with my coffee would.
Perhaps it is the combination with caffeine that does it, (or maybe its the fact that I have a cup of coffee for breakfast), but the key is to understand its impact, and identify patterns to it so you can take appropriate action when you choose to have a cup of joe.
I drink several cups of black decaf coffee in the morning with Splenda and a dash of cinnamon. I also notice that my fasting blood sugar starts to go up. I attribute it to the coffee and the morning dawn phenomena. I handle the increase with a 1 or 2 unit combo bolus 70%/30% over 2 hours. With a 2 unit combo 1.4 units is delivered right away and 0.6 units is delivered over the set 2 hr time period. I can usually drink 2 or 3 cups of coffee in the AM during those 2 hours while reading the newspaper, checking email, and other morning stuff. When I am ready to have breakfast my bs is generally in the 80 to 120 range. I am using an Animas 2020 pump with Apidra.
Florian
Thank you guys very much for the comments. Andy
yeah I've noticed the exact same problem. Even when I drink regular coffee with no milk, it tends to elevate my sugars. Maybe it has to do with caffeine activating your sympathetic nervous system(the flight or flight response) so it leads to your glycogen stores getting broken down and your sugar going up... I guess we'd have to test this by drinking decaf coffee, but I don't want to run that experiment on myself lol