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Frequency of testing, advice needed please.

CliveUK

CliveUK

Active Member
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About three weeks ago I was diagnosed as pre-diabetic, I just tipped into the scale at 42. I have changed my diet and I am doing my utmost to bring my figures back into the normal range before I have to go back to my doctors mid January to be re-tested.

To try and keep track of my progress I have purchased a Contour Next One meter, I am now wondering how often I should test myself in order to build up some sort of picture of how I am doing. I am currently thinking of testing myself three times during a day, one day a week, Is that a good plan or should I be doing it more often?

Any help or advice much appreciated, I am a total newbie to all this :)
 
Last edited:
CliveUK said:
About three weeks ago I was diagnosed as pre-diabetic, I just tipped into the scale at 42. I have changed my diet and I am doing my utmost to bring my figures back into the normal range before I have to go back to my doctors mid January to be re-tested.

To try and keep track of my progress I have purchased a Contour Next One meter, I am now wondering how often I should test myself in order to build up some sort of picture of how I am doing. I am currently thinking of testing myself three times during a day, one day a week, Is that a good plan or should I be doing it more often?

Any help or advice much appreciated, I am a total newbie to all this :)
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Far more often than that Clive .... every day is a must and with all meals minimum

What is your current diet?
 
The reason for testing is to find out how meals affect your blood sugar and adjust them accordingly. Test before eating and 2 hours later and you should have a rise of less than 2mmol/L, if not reduce the carbs in the meal. After a while if you have similar meals with similar results you can ease off the testing. If you are only going to test once a day as a general guide to how you are doing, I would test before your evening meal, first thing in the morning can have confusing results.
 
I test as soon as I wake up for a fgbl, then before and two hours after meals.

Works for me.
 
BG Graph 2 early.jpg When I had to do finger prick tests I worked on a rota of pre and post test for just one meal a day and also before bed and only tested every second day. I recorded the results on a spreadsheet that calculated the running averages for each meal and an overall average. I found it gave me all the information I needed to help manage my levels.
 
miahara said:
View attachment 36597 When I had to do finger prick tests I worked on a rota of pre and post test for just one meal a day and also before bed and only tested every second day. I recorded the results on a spreadsheet that calculated the running averages for each meal and an overall average. I found it gave me all the information I needed to help manage my levels.
Click to expand...
I used a spreadsheet somewhat like that but with a column describing the meal.
 
I started of testing before and after meals, but soon dropped the before, about the time my after levels reached 8mmol/l. By then I did not need to test breakfasts as I was sure that sticking to the foods I have already found to work for me I'd be fine.
I kept on testing for a while, when I tried out something new, but found that my post meal numbers were drifting down to below 7, so I thought I had it sorted. Now I might only check once a month or less, just to see if I should eat some berries or not.
 
Mr_Pot said:
I used a spreadsheet somewhat like that but with a column describing the meal.
Click to expand...
Yes I did too later when a DSN suggested I did that. Prior to that I just added a note 'behind'' a cell but that wasn't visible unless the cell was clicked on so no use for taking a printed copy of the sheet when seeing the DSN.
 
Thank you everybody, its really appreciated. I think based upon what everybody here has said next week I am going to try the following: test every other day, once pre evening meal and then again two hours after eating. We will see how that goes and go from there I think.
 
Just a quick update . . . I have now finally got the hang of testing with the monitor (previously wasted a few test strips!) and I am now testing every other day before and after my evening meal. So far this week every test has been within the "normal non diabetic" range. I thought I would throw in a once a week fasting test also which I did this morning, it was 4.8, so happy days so far. I have ordered more strips for the Contour Next One monitor and I plan to keep up this testing schedule for at least a month maybe two and see what the results are. I have to go back to the docs mid January for another HbA1c test but this should at least tell me if I'm heading in the right direction.

Thanks again to everybody here who has given me advice, I think I'm slowly beginning to get a bit of a handle on what I'm doing now :)
 
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