The Basics of Blood Glucose Monitoring
As a diabetic, blood glucose monitoring is the most important way you can prevent your disease from getting worse. If you have type 1 or type 2 diabetes and you’re taking insulin, you might have to monitor your blood glucose three or more times a day. If you’re prediabetic or a type 2 diabetic who is taking medication or controlling the disease through diet, you might have to monitor your blood sugar once a day or less.
Benefits of Blood Glucose Monitoring
Blood glucose monitoring lets you see how your everyday activities—such as the food you eat, your daily exercise routine, the medicines you’re taking, and the stress you’re undergoing—can affect your blood glucose level. If you notice that your blood sugar is out of target range, you can identify the reason and get your blood glucose back into range again. Monitoring your blood glucose can also help you detect the early warning signs that can lead to serious complications in the future such as blindness, heart attack and kidney failure.
How Blood Glucose Monitoring Works
Diabetics use some sort of blood glucose monitoring system to check their blood sugar. A typical system consists of:
- Monitor — a small computerized device that analyzes your glucose level and displays the information on a screen. Some monitors can store the results.
- Lancet — a sharp instrument you use to prick your finger or other sites to obtain a small drop of blood for the monitor to analyze.
- Test strip — a disposable strip on which you deposit the drop of blood. Then you feed the strip to the monitor so it can analyze the blood sample.
- Daily journal — a notebook in which you record the results of each monitoring session. The information for each entry should include the time, day and date you took the sample and the blood glucose level the monitor displayed. It’s also helpful to include information such as what you ate or any physical exercise you did before you took the blood sample.
The steps in blood glucose monitoring are simple, painless and don’t take much time:
- Wash and thoroughly dry your hands.
- Sterilize the tip or blade of the lancet.
- Prick the side of your finger (or other sites, depending on the blood glucose monitoring system you’re using).
- Deposit the small drop of blood on the test strip.
- Feed the test strip to the monitor.
- Read the results on the monitor’s display screen.
Things to Remember in Blood Glucose Monitoring
When you get the results from your blood glucose monitor, you should keep certain things in mind. First, before you can monitor your blood glucose, you need to have identified a target range that is good for you. Otherwise, blood glucose monitoring will give you no useful information. Second, don’t expect consistent readings. Your blood glucose fluctuates from hour to hour and from day to day. That’s why your doctor gave you a target range to monitor. Any result within that range is okay. Third, if you get an extremely high or low reading that is out of range, don’t panic; it could be an aberration. If subsequent readings are within your target range, that reading is nothing to worry about. If the subsequent readings remain out of range, that is the point of blood glucose monitoring—it lets you know when you should make adjustments or see your physician.
Tags: blood glucose levels, blood glucose monitoring, blood glucose monitoring system, diabetes, prediabetic, Type 1 diabetes, Type 2 diabetes
