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Ten reasons to test blood sugars.

  • Thread starter Thread starter catherinecherub
  • Start Date Start Date
Number eleven for me:

When i can't concentrate, sometimes when i'm reading i find myself reading the same sentence about 4 times and 9 times out of ten i'm low!! once i was staring at a clock because i actually couldnt tell the time!!! so if i cant concentrate i test!
 
Number twelve then:

Needing to go to the loo urgently! :?

Nigel
 
That is crazy... might as well have a continuous bleed into a meter - hardly practical to measure so much. I suppose you draw up a table and check that...
When will some clever type come up with a non-invasive meter that maybe clips on your ear or you stare into it... or uses saliva/wee etc??
8)
 
I honestly thought there was gonna be a picture of 2 feet with 10 ganrenous toes in this thread.
 
Cowboyjim said:
That is crazy... might as well have a continuous bleed into a meter - hardly practical to measure so much. I suppose you draw up a table and check that...
When will some clever type come up with a non-invasive meter that maybe clips on your ear or you stare into it... or uses saliva/wee etc??
8)
Click to expand...
not continuous but clever bods have developed the technology to use reflected light from the eye to measure blood glucose , and (wave flags!) they are British
It's been trialed ...don't know if it's ongoing at the Royal Berkshire hospital.
http://www.showcase.nic.nhs.uk/ShowcaseDetails.aspx?id=2
http://www.lein-ad.com/glucose_monitoring.shtml

Of course it's a long way from a few prototypes to production.

A continuos monitor is really interesting to use , I've been loaned one for a couple of weeks, the only thing is it raises far more questions. (why did my gluose rise one day to 11 mmol one day after breakfast whereas same breakfast, seemingly same every thing else another day the peak was less than 6?)
 
Fascinating Fenix... you maybe won't believe this but I once worked on a journal called Biosensors & Bioelectronics... that was full of papers most of which were trying to perfect meters non-invasive and otherwise. Some of the things they came up with using horseradish did my head in. Little did it ever occur to me back then I might be smitten with DM.... like to think my efforts then added a tiny tiny amount to progress so we can all check our bloods whenever we like.

I am intrigued about your trying out that measurement kit. Is it convenient or fill the room? On a trolley that you drag around perhaps?

It is indeed worrying that levels can fluctuate like that. I strive for control but I suspect it might all be in vein... oops! 8)

Please tell us more!
 
http://www.minimed.com/products/guardian/
definitely invasive!, personally I wouldn't want and don't have the need for it permanently but it has shown me that my glucose levels were too low on some nights .
It is incorporated into an insulin pump but as you have to have insertion sites for both the sensor and the insulin cannula I find it much more cumbersome and intrusive than just the pump.
The sensors are horribly expensive,(35$ in the US and last 6 days). and you still have to do several fingersticks a day In the UK there are some people (mostly children I think) that managed to get funding for them. I live in France and the health service doesn't fund them. The one I have is paid for by a local diabetes charity and is loaned out for 2 weeks at a time.
 
Does a pump system do continuous measurements?

Actually few of the stated reasons, as they are more valid for T1 then T2, & I rarely go outside the range 4.5 - 7.5. If I am thirsty, I drink. I have done enough measurements to know what affects my BG, but occasionally I measure several times throughthe day.

I measure during & after sport, & before driving home. I do test on a long journey. I always measure first thing in the morning, & occasionally at other times. It is very rare that I need to check because I feel "funny."
 
Sounds horrendous being linked up to that... the cost is off putting to most too... and then it doesn't seem to help much.... will you have to report back your results as part of the deal or does it store them automatically for someone to download? Talk about Big Brother and all that.
If you could know with some certainty how you feel or some other parameter correlated with a BG reading then maybe it would be worth it. Sort of self-calibration. But it seems too woolly to me.
Pity you can't have a patch of skin that changes colour depending on the BG level. Maybe like that contact lens tell-tale I read about.
8)
 
no the pump doesnt do continus mesurements. but i wish it did sometimes lol
i test 5 or more times a day.

i wish there was some amazing machine like what your talking about that would be brilliant, they have made the pump maybe they will one dday.
 
While I hope they will I can't help but think there is a disincentive - like making a printer that doesn't need new cartridges etc.... they make all the money from the disposables... cellphones are just a means to sell you a service, Sky box is like this too... a car so you have to buy petrol... well maybe not but... 8)
 
Sounds horrendous being linked up to that.
Not too horendous, though the site did get very itchy in last weeks heat here, I was glad to get my own pump back because it is lighter, the newer version of the cgms/pump are in fact lighter
.. the cost is off putting to most too
unfortunately true
... and then it doesn't seem to help much
I actually got it because I suspected I had hypos at night,( was waking up sweating but when I tested I rarely found them.... it could have been menopausal). It confirmed the hypos but showed that they were very brief and (presumably) my liver kicked in to rectify the situation.. I changed to a much lower ratio of insulin to carbs for my evening meal( 1:11 to 1:15) The Cgm demonstrated that this was fine, avoided the hypos and I didn't, as I feared, end up with higher fasting levels because of it.
It was also useful and instructive to see just how quickly my glucose levels drop after exercise, and that I sometimes spiked far higher after meals than I thought (very briefly and unlikely to be detected by fingersticks) .
I am surprised at how much I miss it and knowing almost exactly where my levels are and where they are going
....will you have to report back your results as part of the deal or does it store them automatically for someone to download? Talk about Big Brother and all that.
Not Big brotherish at all, you can see small graphs on a screen of what has happened over the last 3 and 24 hours. I downloaded at the hospital and discussed it with my doc and the specialist nurse. Being in France at a small friendly hospital this was unhurried and very informal. If you had the system yourself you would be able to download to your own computer.
If you could know with some certainty how you feel or some other parameter correlated with a BG reading then maybe it would be worth it. Sort of self-calibration.
I think most of us can feel the very highs and lows, what we want to do is avoid them. Obviously you have to be able to link variations with the event that caused them. You can then experiment to find ways of avoiding the variations. It's very gratifying when you see an almost flat line on the graph.
Personally as my control is fairly good I don't think I warrant the expense of using one permanently but for people with control problems it could be invaluable. The newest model (Veo)can be particularly reassuring to parents or to people who have lost hypo awareness. It is linked to the the pump and shuts off insulin if there is a hypo alarm and the person doesn't respond to it
I was really interested to hear that resarchers have devised a long term inplanted CGMS, it's been used in a pig so far for almost a year.If it costs less (fewer disposables) this could be a great breakthrough
 
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