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Anonymous Question Daily checks or 6 monthly, which is more accurate?

Anonymous Question

Anonymous Question

Well-Known Member
Messages
290
Type of diabetes
Other
Treatment type
Diet only
My diabetic nurse tells me that you get more accurate readings from the six monthly checks than you do by testing daily, is this correct?
 
Well that is like looking at the petrol level in your tank as an average over the last couple of months or looking at it with your current gauge. No brainer for me as I want to know what level I am at every journey and during that journey. The NHS policy is all about cost saving. Yes the HbA1c has its place as a diagnostic tool but it isn't what is happening right now!
 
Anonymous Question said:
My diabetic nurse tells me that you get more accurate readings from the six monthly checks than you do by testing daily, is this correct?
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There is no doubt that the six monthly Hba1c is accurate but if you only check on your progress once every six months then you could miss an awful lot. If you had your own meter and could check on your daily progress and find out what foods adversely affected you and put things right then your six monthly reading would not only be accurate, it would be a lot lower as well.
 
The two tests are quite different things and neither are 100% accurate. The tests which you may (or may not) be doing at home tell you how much sugar there is in one particular finger tip at that precise moment. These tests can be up to 15% out, in either direction, but do give a broad idea for your own day to day, meal to meal management. If you keep good records and understand what the numbers mean, the information can be very valuable.
The tests done at the doctors can be a spot test, using blood drawn from the arm to see how much sugar there is present at that exact moment, but that is all it does. It is probably more accurate than the home one, but far less useful, because it is isolated information.
The other test done at the doctor's is the HbA1c, where blood is taken from the arm. It measures, in simple terms, the proportion of your blood cells which have a sugar attached to them, so are a sort of average over the previous two to three months, which is the typical lifespan of a blood cell. The measurement is accurate, as far as it goes, but as some people's blood cells have a higher turn over than others, it is only a general indication of glycemic control.
To conclude, all tests are useful in their own way, but they also have their own inaccuracies.
Sally
 
the daily measuring gives you somthing to navigate from foodvise the 6 month blood sample tels if you are overall in the right direction or not
 
I prefer to rely on my home tests, as i can see whether my levels are stable or oscillating between highs and lows. Both options can give the same average result, so the HbA1c while it will perhaps give a more accurate average over time, can't give you any information about actual stability or otherwise of your levels over the same period.

Robbity

PS my HBA1c results are always slightly higher than the average that my meter gives, but as they're both consistent, I can usually predict fairly accurately what my six monthly HbA1c will be.
 
So if you don't test at home you can be running extremely high and damaging blood sugar levels for 6 months without knowing. That would be six months worth of damage to eyes, organs, and your nervous system. High blood sugars often have NO symptoms. Then when you get your six month test and they tell you you have been too high, how do you know which foods caused it? How do you know what to do to fix it? The medical professions answer is change nothing and take more pills. I do not accept this for myself.
 
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