Whilst I realise that this isn't what people think the Libre Is for, I've recently had conversations with a number of T2s who have found the insight that Libre gives to be completely new and as a result they've drastically changed how they approach their diabetes.
As a result, I have no qualms about suggesting that anyone who is type 2 and looking to understand what happens in their body purchases Libre and uses it. I think most would be surprised at the results. You don't need it for more than a month to understand what your body is doing, but I think with that month's worth of data you are likely to make some big changes.
I'm not going to make anyone do it, but I think the insight you'd get far exceeds buy a Codefree, much as it falls me to push Abbott's product like this and admit they are right.
I'm an off/on Libre user, having first applied a sensor last June-time. I have learned an immense amount with it, but I can't say it has driven any material or significant changes in my diet, lifestyle or behaviour. Of course, that may be because I had already achieve serial non-diabetic Hba1c and declared reversed/in remission/cured/deluded* (* select your adjective of choice) by the time I gained access.
What it has given me an insight to is my long held belief that I sometimes go rather low in the night (I used to sometimes have a shadowy headache on waking, although rarely these days), and it confirmed, in from of my eyes, the impacts of fat and protein, and certain food combinations on my personal bell curve. I also learned, that like so many of us, my ability to process carbs improves during the day. With my bigger picture hat on, and reviewing my HbA1c scores, that hasn't driven change at the moment, but it things did start to drift, I would consider a no-carb breakfast becoming more routine. What it didn't show to me, was a blood profile reason why my finger prick testing and HbA1cs never closely match. Of course, I appreciate I was certainly almost always missing my peaks, with finger prick testing, but the peaks experienced with the Libre and its average HbA1cs (even using shorter term calculations with accurate sensors) don't match my lab results. It doesn't keep me awake, because by now, I know where I need to be with finger prick testing to achieve my desired lab results.
Further things I learned were that I do have a little bit of dawn phenomenon. I'd have bet my pocket money I didn't, but I have seen it with my own eyes. It's materially insignificant and doesn't drive any change, but nevertheless its there.
And finally, it showed me the impact of stress. I'm extremely fortunate in that my day-to-day life is pretty low stress, but I did have a period of months when things were more stressful. Initially the stress was low grade mental stress, the latterly I had surgery and a period of recovery which demonstrated some physical stress. There were definitely times when I could look at the graphs and pick out the trickier times.
My only gripe with the Libre is, for me, some of its reliability. I seem to have had a decent proportion of my sensors have to be replaced and I'd love to better understand why. My thoughts are possibly my existing knowledge that I routinely run between fairly tight blood sugar rails. My personal and natural variances are very modest, but comparison to many. My bell curves are smooth and shallow, and I don't know if that means than to track me, personally, the item has to be super accurate. Furthermore, as my numbers rarely reach 7, even at a peak, the legal tolerances, whilst the same percentage as anyone else, in reality are very small, because of the starting small number. That's sort of where my thinking has taken me.
My only other consideration is I have very low body fat, and that's also the case on my upper arms, where we are instructed to place the Libre sensor. I have posed the question to those who have also used "alternative sites", such as the thigh, tummy or hip with some success as to whether their site selection criteria was based upon ease of scanning location, discretion beneath clothing or sensor accuracy. As you would expect the responses were predictably widespread and varied.
Finally, I have become a little more relaxed about day-to -day finger prick testing, as the various Libre iterations reinforce what I already knew and how many times do I need the same story before I believe it? If I can't test, for whatever reason, I no longer invest headspace working out how I could. I just get on with things.
I love my Libre. I couldn't justify using it full time, but when it expires, I do miss that button on my arm and the ability to just download all that lovely data in a trice. It truly does feed the data monster in me. I have, thus far, resisted tasking MrB (who has a scarily immense gift with Excell and Access) with custom designing reports and graphs for me, but I have seen him sketching a few ideas on his desk pad, so the subliminal thing is working.
. I'm sure there could be better graphs, and data pictures, using tighter matrices for those of us who have been fortunate enough to achieve decent control.
I agree the Libre gives far more than the Codefree alone ever could, but I think for those starting out, the Codefree is perfect for picking off the low hanging fruit (pardon the pun), and then once a decent fundamental grasp is achieved, the Libre could fill in the gaps. But, like most things, it depends how far folks really want to go in managing their condition. Many just want decent numbers to allow life to rub along. Who is to say they're misguided?
