Squeezing finger for blood

[maddiemo]

I just wanted to ask why shouldn't you squeeze your fingers to get blood. It's the only way I can get any?

 

[pav]

When you squeeze your finger after pricking it, your body detects that you have a hole in it, and releases a chemical to plug the hole to stop the leak, which can then contaminte the blood sample.

Some thing I had long forgot about until the other day when ordering a new meter and it cropped up in the conversation with the company.

 

[peecee]

If you have trouble getting blood from your finger wash your hands in warm water first, this will encourage more blood to flow to your fingers.

 

[Yorksman]

Blood obtained via skin puncture is a mixture of undetermined proportions of blood from arterioles, venules, capillaries, plus interstitial and intracellular fluids. For BG testing, you want as good a supply of capillary blood as possible. If you look down this page your will see a section entitled Top 10 Keys to Obtaining a High Quality Capillary Blood Specimen

http://www.bd.com/vacutainer/labnotes/Volume20Number1

As Pav states, your blood platelets help clot the blood, sometimes quickly, so this is one problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platelet