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Like a locomotive speeding up, slowing down, refueling and starting again, you go through your daily routines of working, relaxaing, exercising, eating and sleeping. Corresponding with your activities, your blood glucose fluctuates.
Definition
Blood glucose fluctuates especially with eating and fasting. The National Institutes of Health define "fasting" as going at least six hours without food or drink.
Effect of Fasting
For about four hours after a meal, glucose from digested food raises your blood glucose. As you begin to fast, blood glucose drops toward its pre-meal level.
Maintenance
During fasting, your blood glucose eventually stops dropping. Your body maintains it at a steady level by breaking down stored forms of energy.
Normal Range
In their 2001 text "Medical-Surgical Nursing," Joyce M. Black, Jane Hokanson Hawks and Annabelle M. Keene note that normal lab values for blood glucose can vary between 70 and 115 mg of glucose per dl of blood. Just after meals, however, blood glucose can briefly rise above normal limits.
Conclusion
Confining the blood glucose test to after fasting makes it more reliable in revealing whether your blood glucose lies within the normal range.
Source:
U.S. National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health: Glucose Test--Blood
"Physiology, 8th edition"; Arthur Vander, James Sherman, and Dorothy Luciano; 2001, p.594-95
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