Protein shakes and blood sugar - Diabetes Message Board

uma_anne · 09-11-2009, 08:38 AM

I was wondering if people can share any experiences they may have taking protein shakes?

I bought a whey protein powder that has no added sweetener at all.

The other morning I added a scoop to a cup of plain (unsweetened) lowfat kefir, and added a tablespoon of strawberry flax syrup sweetened with Xylitol.

I checked and after an hour and a half my bg was 135 which seemed kind of high.

Has anyone else gotten high bg's after consuming protein shakes?

I figured the other possibility is that the Xylitol may be driving up my sugar. However, I have mixed it with full fat yogurt previously and my bg remained stable. So I don't think the Xylitol is doing it.

SamQKitty · 09-11-2009, 09:42 AM

Uma Anne,
135 an hour after a shake like that is NOT high! Your shake did have some carbs in it, and even a non-diabetic's blood sugar rises after ingesting carbs. Your rise wasn't very high. You should actually be testing at the two hour mark, not one hour, because at one hour you're probably catching your bg peak...you want to see if it goes higher at 2 hours or comes back closer to "normal" at 2 hours.

Ruth

uma_anne · 09-11-2009, 11:59 AM

Thanks Ruth. I've been trying to keep my blood sugar as low as possible (I really don't want to peak above 125) with a low carb diet, so I guess 135 seemed high for me, considering i thought it was a low carb beverage. Also, I deliberately checked at 1.5 hours because I do want to see how high I peak (though I forgot to check at 2 hours this time).

The other thing I just noticed is that the plain, low fat Kefir actually has 12g of carbs in a cup 8g of which are sugar! So now I wonder if the Kefir, not the protein powder that did it.

Anyways, thanks for your response!