Hypo alarm watches?!?!

[Fallenstar]

Hi
I have always had trouble with night time hypo's ,erratic BS's on a night. Great during the day when I can control them but due to hormone changes ect being a woman :roll: nighttimes can go through phases of being a right pain in the neck....literally ,if I have had a fit

Anyway I bought one of them Hypo alarm watches :? To be honest I have had it for 3 weeks now and the jury is still out as far as I am concerned. I started out with high hopes and to be honest it did have a placebo effect in that I slept a lot more soundly in that I thought I had a chance of waking up if the hypo fairy came to visit.
Well I had a number of alarms going off, and sprung enthusiastically into action ,thinking my saviour had arrived.....only to find when I tested they were 8.2 or 6.9 :shock:
I know I have turned it off a few times in my sleep without testing :roll: just with being knackered.
I have had two conscious hypo's ,well lows of 3.2 when I have woken up and not a muff out of it.
So this morning I lay there a while with a BS of 3.4 to see when it would kick into life. I got more and more panicky waves... still no buzz...in the end I thought stuff this for a game of soldiers wet my finger and stuck it onto the sensors and the swine sang like a bird :evil: No blooming good when you are asleep.
It works on the principal that the sensors pick up a subtle drop in temperature, yeh, when you take it off and leave it in a cold room for five :lol: :roll: and also it picks up on sweat, I was sweating like a sow on heat this morning, still no buzz. I might try it around my ankle but thought that might be too warm and clammy at times under the covers.
Phew sorry for ramble.....Has anyone else tried one of these with any success????
Is it me thats done something wrong?? Or the fact I'm a tight wad and bought the cheapest on the market! :lol:
Mine is the n SA3 Biosensor for what it's worth, anyone else had one of these? Don't tell me it's in the bin now :lol:

 

[Osidge]

Hi Fallenstar

I feel for you - a tight wad buying something that appears not to work!!

Seriously, I hope there is someone that can share experiences with you.

Regards

Doug

 

[Vikki2]

Wow, I didn't even know that such a thing existed! I hope someone who's used one can offer you some advice - like you said, maybe even changing where you wear it might make a difference. However much or little you have paid for it shouldn't make a difference, surely if you buy something that doesn't work you should get your money back?
My 6 yr old daughter is hypo-unaware at night and so we ended up going down the expensive route of paying for a CGM. It's been worth every penny though and will warn us when she is about to drop into hypo. I can now sleep peacefully at night. I don't see why we should be paying for this though & I defintely plan to hassle the NHS soon with a case to get them to fund it. We had to save really hard for the device and for a years worth of sensors. I don't know what we'll do after a year if the NHS won't take over funding but we can't live without it...
Could you talk to your diabetic team? I think in some areas they are loaning them out for short periods of time so that you can at least have a shot at working out what's going wrong and when. The data it gives you is incredible - a BG reading every 5mins.
Otherwise what about the hypo alert dogs? I haven't looked into these so don't quote me on this but I thought I'd heard that if you live in England (we live in Scotland) you can put your name on the waiting list for one. Might be worth looking into.
Take care
Vikki
x

 

[Fallenstar]

Aawww Doug thanks for your sympathy, what a sweety :lol:

Vikki thanks for such a lovely reply and you have been very helpful to me there. I have been type 1 for 20 years now and sometimes we do tend to fall out of the loop with a lot of the new things that come out even when we keep our regular appointments.
I have never heard of a CGM ,could you please give me some details on what this is and how you use it, my heart goes out to you for having such a young child with this disease I can imagine from the perspective of being a Mum with Diabetes what an absolute worry it must be for you, so I am glad you have found something to give you some piece of mind when your precious daughter is asleep...and yes it should be funded, especially for children :evil: Please let me know how you get on in your fight and I wish you all the luck.

If you could give me details of cost and where you got it from that would be great. I will ask my team about a temporary loan of one . I'm only just getting a Ketone testing machine :lol: Thats how far I'm out of the loop :shock:

Thanks again Vikki

 

[Vikki2]

Hi
Aah, thanks for your kind words.
Have you had any luck with the watch?
A CGM is a Continuous Glucose Monitor. You have a sensor which is attached to you. A very thin wire is inserted into you and then the rest of the sensor stays in place with a heavy duty plaster. The sensor is meant to last 7 days. We have mostly managed to get 10-12 days out of each sensor but if it fails before 3 days then you get a replacement free of charge. The sensor communicates with a receiver. This needs to be near you to pick up the information but is not attached to you. There is a time delay of 5.7mins and you get a BG reading every 5mins. The most valuable piece of information is the directional arrows. It tells you if you are steady, going up/down slowly, or going up/down fast or super fast. So for example, if now you were to test yourself and you were 5, you'd think great, but this isn't so great if you are 5 and plummeting. We find the directional arrows are accurate and that the BG readings are mostly accurate. There are low alarms & high alarms that you can change to suit you. You can download all the data and see it on a graph and get a much better idea of what is happening with your BG levels and how certain foods/exercise affect you. We opted for the Dexcom after gathering opinions on them. Go to the Advanced Therapeutics website (they are also the UK suppliers of the DANA pump). Most people were saying that the Dexcom is the most reliable CGM (they haven't perfected them yet) & that it was the least painful to insert. It costs £1,075 and then each sensor is £62.50, so you can see why we are delighted when a sensor lasts for more than 7 days! We also have to replace the transmitor after...I can't quite remember if it's about a year & a half & that cost will be about £500. You get a 2 week trial before committing to it. Yes, it's expensive! I have definitely heard of some hospitals loaning them out so definitely worth your while asking.
Please ask away if you need to know anything else about it
I'm really sorry to hear about your night time lows, it must be very frightening.
I wish you all the best
Take care
& keep me updated!
Vikki

 

[Debloubed]

Hi, I too bought a 'hypo watch' out or curiosity more than anything and after it was set off by a cool breeze from an open window and from heat when my arm was snuggled into my other half's back I gave up and now it lives in the drawer next to my bed, with my emergency jelly babies ;-) If my body stops wking me when I am hypo, I need more than a watch, lol! I'm sure there must be some science behind it and clearly tests have been done but there are too many other possibilities which could cause a raise/drop in body temp or sweating at night ;-)

CGM's are wicked but expensive. You may get them prescribed though if you are struggling with night time hypo's although the first step would be to set your alarm at 2 hourly intervals over night and conduct some fasting BG tests. If you can spot when your BG is dipping from that, you don't need the CGM

 

[Fallenstar]

Hi Vikki

Thankyou for such a detailed response, which is much appreciated

Well some luck with the alarm. I had three lows the night before last (due to the time of the month) my insulin requirements always take a sudden drop at this time and sometimes it does catch me out from time to time. But it was a good time to put the new acquisition to the test :?

My first low was 3.2 so not that low but it woke me up feeling hungry..so good. The alarm never went off. so not so good. treated it, nodded back off not expecting another.

Second low 3.0 again felt hungry and a little clammy, had a couple of biscuits and a gulp of Lucozade, nodded back off .

Woke up in the morning low again 2.9, still no alarm but I was not really sweating or anything so lay there a while to test it out....started to get very sweaty and panicky so I stood it for as long as I could and got up for breakfast. By this time I tested 1.9, I was downstairs and it did go off :shock: .
At the time I was sweating profusely ,moving about, and I'm sure my temperature had dropped. though not tested it. I looked like I had seen a ghost when I looked in the mirror. Imagine this :shock: white as a sheet with a birds nest on it's head...thats my hair on a morning.

So it did work but it looks like you have to be real low...I will continue but it has filled me with a bit more trust,

I will certainly ask my Diabetic team about the CGM maybe for a loan during my sugar drop times and see what they say. I'm over there today.

I really feel for you Vikki, that is such a massive outlay on a weekly basis to make sure your daughter is safe at sleep. Like you though I would find a way to pay for it for one of my kids no matter what ,as it must be a dreadful worry for you .You should get some help with it ,it is not fair. It should be free for children standard and it disgusts me that it isn't when a child has problems with nighttime hypo's that no regime can help with...and there are a number of us that this is the scary reality for day in day out. Me, well I'm not worth that much each week :lol: but if it was one of my children they would be.
Would it not be worth contacting a Diabetes charity and seeing if they can help with your plight at all? Might be worth a try.

Anyway thanks for all the info and I hope things do get better in time for your daughter, this disease does change with time so hopefully it will change in the right direction for you all.
I truly hope so and wish you all the luck in the world with it.
I will let you know if I do get a loan of a CGM and tell you how I get on.

Vikki ,you can also get these wrist alarms from the US and pay a lot more for them they may be worth you looking into. I will carry on if you like and let you know how I get on with this one in time. Maybe it will turn out to be a winner ,in which case it will work out a lot cheaper for you as a family than continuous outlay for the strips.

 

[noblehead]

Looking at Fallenstat and Debloubed experience the Hypo Alarm Watch don't look that reliable, has anyone got any positive experiences from wearing one?

Nigel

 

[Fallenstar]

No joy for you then Debloubed. I did think it was a shot in the dark but I got a bit desperate. I have tried the testing at intervals during the night but I have other endo problems Hashi's and low Cortisol which I'm sure cause the sudden drops in BS.....bloody hormones eh :roll:
I'm hoping a pump might help in the long run time will tell. I did feel a bit better that it did eventually go off this morning though as I was flailing around the kitchen :lol: So I'm not binning it just yet but know what you mean about there being too many variables for it to be reliable.

 

[Fallenstar]

Just a little update.

Well I'm a happy bunny this week. The Alarm watch picked up two nighttime hypo's last week, a 2.5 and a 3.1. The 2.5 must have been on my drop in temperature as I wasn't sweating or anything and could not believe my result when I tested but it worked, woke me up and I am thankful.

I would always get strong reactions to a 2.5 during the day but it seems at night ,not always :cry:
So even if I get some false alarms with it, I can live with that. I have tightened the strap on the watch so the sensors are right into my skin and this seems to have helped.
So all in all I think it does seem to work...maybe might not pick up every hypo and with some I'm sure I will turn it off in my sleep but on the whole I would deem it a success and I do sleep with much more peace of mind now wearing it