Cold, frozen fingers and testing

I ran through an issue today cranking my bike outside in the freezing temps. I know my hands get cold on the bars and the blood flow to them becomes less especially in the cold. If I test them cold, I know they will produce a scary low blood sugar number that most likely isn’t true. I did this today and witnessed this phenomenon again.

Probably better winter cycling gloves would help. But I do like the feel the bar and the shifters when I need them. Bigger thicker gloves are just bigger. But then numb hands can’t feel the shifters either.

So I test them cold, and find a low. If I warm my hands (blowing into them) I can get a higher number. If my hands could work and I could take off my shoes, more than likely will get a blood sugar number closer to reality if I can get a blood sample from a toe. But today I couldn’t get my hands to work well enough to take off my gloves, let alone take off a shoes.

Another solution might have been to just crank on the trainer inside. Which is really boring.

Just looking for thoughts on how to deal with this.

Goonergal said:

Carry those instant hand warming packs with you? The ones that heat up when you press a button inside them - they’re reusable.

Something like this

https://www.cotswoldoutdoor.com/p/lifesystems-reusable-hand-warmers-E7344049.html

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That’s kind of a brilliant idea! I also know there are small disposable ones that heat up when they’re cracked open!

Thank you!

Brunneria said:

You could look up ‘alternate site testing’.
There are different lancets and gadgets available designed for getting blood from other places than the fingers.

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The further you test away from the furthest extremities the readings become different. So I’m not really into this one.

For getting blood out of frozen cold fingers, you just use a lancet. Remove the device’s cap, and stick it into a finger. If I was going to use a different part of me, same technique. But the readings moving up the arm will be different.

Toes are pretty equivalent to finger tip readings. But on New Years Day my hands were too cold so that I couldn’t remove my footwear. But I did think about using a toe.

Scott-C said:

Hi, @Jollymon , I'm wondering whether, as well as hand temperature, the temperature of the strips might be playing a part in this?

Strip chemistry is way beyond me (last did chemistry at secondary school over 30 yrs ago!), but you've basically got something like glucose oxidase in the strip which reacts chemically with glucose in the sample, to produce electrons which gets measured as a current and gives a bg result.

Because it's a chemical reaction, and reactions depend a lot on heat, maybe if the strips are too cold, the reaction is going to be more "muted" than it might otherwise be?

I don't know how or where you store your strips when on the bike, but I wonder whether it's worth having a look at that to make sure they're not getting too cold?

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That’s something that I’d now like to test. That might be interesting to see if a test strip at freezing or below works the same way as one at normal household temps. I’m willing to see to understand.

I did run an event once that after I’d finished my tester said it was too cold to work. I set it up over a cup of hot tea and waited for it to thaw. On that same day I pulled out my pump out on course, but didn’t tuck the tubing back in and froze the insulin in the line. At the finish line a grabbed a bottle of water to drink and headed to the meeting spot after the race- on the way (maybe a 15 minute hike) the water bottle froze in my hand. That was a very cold day.