Traking glucose levels using a smartphone

frida

Newbie
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Hi, I want to share with you how I manage my diabetes using my smart phone. It works great, It's free, and it really helps me in getting a good control of my glucose levels.
I downloaded a free spreadsheet app (I use Kingsoft Office but almost any spreadsheet app will do) and I prepared a spreadsheet that fits my needs. I added a snapshot of the sheet below.
Say today is Wednesday and it's breakfast time. 15 minutes before I eat I measure my blood glucose level and enter it in the cell located at the "Wed Breakfast" row at the first column ("Before"- meaning "blood glucose before meal"). A little tip- In Kingsoft Office you need to double tap the cell where you want to write. I leave the "After" column empty since I still don't know what my blood glucose level would be 2 hours after injection. Now I enter how much carbs I'm about to eat. (There are many ways to count carbs. What works for me is that I always weigh the bread that I eat and multiply the weight by the carbohydrate percentage written on the cover. When I eat rice or potatoes I measure the amount using a 250 milliliter glass and I know that it's about 30 grams of carbs. I count fruits as 10 to 12 grams of carbs depending on their size and how sweet they are.)
The next column (Ins/carb choice) requires some explanation: This value means the amount of insulin units that I inject for each carb choice that I eat (a "carb choice" is simply 15 grams of carbs- approximately the amount of carbs in a slice of bread or half a glass of rice or potatoes). To decide what Ins/carb choice to use I look at the two last breakfasts, which are easy to identify since all the breakfasts are highlighted in green. Say, for example, that the value in the "After" column was too high at breakfast in the last 2 days, then probably the Ins/carb choice that I use is too low. So I enter for this meal a value that is a little bit higher. I never change the Ins/carb choice based on one day only because everything can happen in a single meal and it doesn't always mean that the Ins/carb choice was inaccurate. I also never change the dose by more than half a unit per carb choice to prevent jumping from a dose that is too low to a dose that is too high or vice versa.
The "Insulin" column is the amount of insulin that I need to cover the carbs that I eat, and it is automatically calculate using the formula: (insulin units) = (carbs)/15*(Ins/carb choice). So I wrote in F2 the formula =D2/15*E2 and copied it to all the column. (Note that 2 is changed automatically to 3 in row 3 and 4 in row 4 etc.)
I use the "Addition" column for all the other factors that should be taken into account. For example, if the blood glucose was too high before the injection I'll enter the amount of Insulin units needed for correction (If the blood glucose is low I prefer to eat something and not count it as a part of the meal). If I'm about to do exercise I'll write minus 1 to 2 units to make sure that I don't get hypoglycemia during the exercise. If there are no "other factors" I just leave this column empty.
The "Total Injection" column is simply the sum of "Insulin" and "Addition" and this is what I inject using my insulin pump (If the meal contains a considerable amount of fat I use a suspended bolus)
I write in the "Notes" column any unusual stuff and once in a while I write the date in the "Date" column.
2 hours after injection I measure my blood glucose and write it in the "After" column.
In the "Bed time" rows I simply write the blood glucose level before I go to sleep and the amount that I inject if a correction is needed.
That’s it! It's really simple.
For those of you that are used to think in "carbs per insulin unit" rather than "insulin units per carb choice" just switch the "Ins/carb choice" title to "Carb/unit" and then the formula in the "Insulin" column should be (insulin units) = (carbs)/ (carbs/insulin unit) so write =D2/E2 in the cell F2 and copy it to all the column. The rest stays the same
 

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