[CGM] what the postprandial curve actually looks like before and after

what the postprandial curve actually looks like before and after. Searched first, found three threads that contradict each other, hence the post.

Continuous monitoring shows the shape: postprandial excursions, overnight behaviour and time in range. Two people with identical A1c can have very different distributions.

The order things move in, since nobody explains it and it worries people.

Postprandial excursions generally respond earliest. Variability tends to narrow before the average does, which is visible on a sensor and invisible on a lab result. Fasting glucose is often the laggard, and A1c — being a three-month average — is the last thing to reflect anything.

So a month in which the sensor looks better and the fasting number has not moved is the ordinary sequence, not a contradiction. Knowing that in advance would have saved me a quarter of unnecessary worry, which is why it is worth writing down.

On hypoglycaemia, because the risk gets attributed to the wrong thing constantly.

Incretin-based agents stimulate insulin secretion in a glucose-dependent way: the effect scales with glycaemia rather than acting unconditionally. That is why monotherapy risk is low. Where risk rises substantially is in combination with agents that lower glucose independently of the current level.

Which means the question "does this cause hypos" is not answerable without knowing the rest of the regimen — and that the person who can answer it is the one who wrote the regimen. Nothing on this board is a substitute for that conversation, and the good threads here end by saying so.

If two or three other people have done the same thing we might actually learn something. Alone it is an anecdote.