Freestyle Libre 2

[Parm_D]

Hey everyone,

Hope you all had a great Christmas!

Does anyone have libre 2? If so do yous pay or do yous get it free through prescription.

I am just trying to figure out if theres a cost to continue using and if its worth using i mean don’t get me wrong of course anything is better than pricking yourself every now and then.

Any info & advice greatly appreciated

 

[In Response]

Have you used the Search function?
If you type "Libre" into the box in the top right of the page, you will find many threads.

As to whether Libre is worth funding, it depends how you intend to use the data it provides. If just as a replacement for finger pricks, you are missing the point of continuous readings

 

[johnme]

Hi Parm, I’m on my third. Self funding - my nhs gps won’t even supply strips to T2s and their slavishly nhs-corporate-line-loyal diabetes nurse is obsessed with hb1ac, often only tested once a year. Hb1ac is of course an average and won’t give you a full picture. Even strips don’t give a full picture. Libre taught me milk in my tea instantly spiked me, so now I’m on lemon tea. I would never have known it without. Christmas with it has proved definitively that one spud, just one, gives me a spike and that kind of echoes for days afterwards - I discovered this at a Christmas lunch early in December. It taught me I get extremely low bg in the middle of the night. It taught that plain old walking without going very fast is a big influence on bg. Go for a walk after lunch, just like your grandparents used to. There is positive numerical feedback from it too. As my blood sugar improves the shape of spikes changes - I’m more like a non diabetic with sharp rises and then quick sharp falls. The only real alarms I’ve had (it sets off alarms on your phone) is on cycling with no food. My bg tore up to 15 and stayed there - all from activity in my liver of course. As soon as I stopped cycling it fell again. I’ll be interested to see does my bg respond to heavy exercise so violently if (when?) I manage to get my liver back into normal shape. I’m going to buy a couple more and wring every bit of info I can out of it, then stop. At nearly £100 a month you’d need to be pretty well off to keep buying them. But as an information gathering device I would recommend them

 

[finzi1966]

I’d echo everything that Johnme says. I would not be without mine (had one continuously since 7 October, self funded). For me, it’s worth the money because it keeps me on the “straight and narrow” 100% of the time (I won’t slip up or cheat because I couldn’t bear to see a spike on the graph). But of course “worth it” is relative and it depends on whether you can afford it. (For me, I feel it’s the cost of a couple of meals out throughout the month which I’m no longer having because it would make my BG rise).

 

[Lakeslover]

I’ve been self funding since the end of March. It’s the only thing that has ever helped me reduce my blood sugars and HbA1c. You can see the difference in my signature, 9 years of readings in the 60s and 70s, and with the libre I reduced it immediately to 47.

it convinced me that the things the medical profession had been telling me to eat were wrong, with its help I managed Christmas Day with just two small expected spikes from a slice of bread and a small bit of Christmas pudding.

It showed me I can eat a couple of potatoes with no problems, but no more! All normal bread is bad, a single slice of nimble is ok. Rice and pasta are definitely not for me. Pastry sends me sky high. But I can eat a doughnut after my evening meal with no rise at all! I would never have known that without the libre.

 

[KennyA]

Hey everyone,

Hope you all had a great Christmas!

Does anyone have libre 2? If so do yous pay or do yous get it free through prescription.

I am just trying to figure out if theres a cost to continue using and if its worth using i mean don’t get me wrong of course anything is better than pricking yourself every now and then.

Any info & advice greatly appreciated

I tried it via the free trial Abbott is offering. I was interested in whether it might be something I'd be prepared to pay for, and what it could tell me about by BG levels through the night.

On the plus side, it demonstrated clearly that I do have a BG fall into "real hypo" territory in the early hours. This is followed by a liver-driven BG rise which can go on (if I continue fasting) for at least eight hours. It showed other stuff as well - eg that I get a previously unsuspected substantial short-lived spike from milk (hot milk, in a latte) but nothing from cream.

On the down side, the first sensor failed after about two hours. Abbot replaced it. The second sensor worked for about a week. Its readings correlated quite closely with my fingerprick readings, and produced some useful info. Then it failed. Abbot replaced it. The third sensor worked for two weeks, but its readings were really out of sync with fingerprick tests, generally substantially much higher - eg blood reading 4.7, Libre reading 5.9. Unfortunately it wasn't a consistent difference, either.

The information the Libre can provide was and would be useful. But it doesn't work well enough consistently. I wouldn't pay £1300 a year, which is what it would cost me to use one permanently. Fingerpricking is not a problem. I thought it might be the sort of thing I would pay for in a month each year, just as a check: unfortunately my experience has put me off that idea too.

 

[johnme]

On the plus side, it demonstrated clearly that I do have a BG fall into "real hypo" territory in the early hours. This is followed by a liver-driven BG rise which can go on (if I continue fasting) for at least eight hours. It showed other stuff as well - eg that I get a previously unsuspected substantial short-lived spike from milk (hot milk, in a latte) but nothing from cream.

It’s interesting the experience is so similar. I was a tea addict and therefore realised from the Libre I had been dosing myself with something that spiked my BG for 50 years - the milk. Nothing at all from cream. I also get the early hour deep dive in BG. Fasting and modest exercise sends my BG up and up and up with no food taken. I presume this is glucose making its way from my liver to the exit.

(added later) and I forgot - sauerkraut makes it fall quickly. I have no idea why.