Using a GlucoRx

Mr_Spock said:

Hello
I think this is the first time I've posted on this forum. I've been type 2 for about 12 years. I have an annual blood test and my glucose level has increased greatly over the last year. So I've changed my diet and I'm taking more exercise.
The NHS has given me a GlucoRx device to allow me to monitor my glucose levels. So far my readings have been Lo, 1.7 and 1.2. How do these equate to the figures my GP's surgery obtains from my annual blood test? Are they good or bad?
I rang GlucoRx for advice but they weren't helpful.

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Hi. I've used a Gluco RxQ for over five years. It's not the most modern meter but it works.

I don't think those results can be correct - by which I mean they're not measuring what your blood glucose actually is. The figures are extremely low. I'm assuming you don't feel any differently to normal? Have you changed medication or the amount of carb you're eating?

Did you calibrate the meter using the test solution supplied with the meter - I think the option is four clicks through? If you run a test using the test solution, what figure do you get? Meters can go wrong, have a +/- 15% level of inaccuracy, old, out of date test strips can give strange results, test strips used for the second time tend to read very high, etc.

The thing about fingerprick testing is that it tells you what your blood glucose is (strictly speaking, what your capilliary blood glucose is) at the point of testing. It doesn't tell you where it was 30 minutes ago or where it will be in 30 minutes time. And blood glucose goes up and down all the time, in response to various things, only one of which is carbohydrates in food. This change in BG is perfectly normal and happens to diabetics and non-diabetics alike. The difference for T2s with uncontrolled blood glucose is that levels tend to start higher and stay higher for longer compared to people without diabetes.

So single fingerprick readings will tell you very little about what the HbA1c result might be.

Partly this is because the HbA1c doesn't measure what the fingerprick test measures - the HbA1c measures the number of glycated red blood cells - those are the ones that have had a glucose molecule attached to them. This is not a direct measure of blood glucose at the point of test but does give a pretty good indication of how much glucose there has generally been in your system over the last 10-12 weeks.

On the other hand if you have a structured testing system, and keep records of weeks and months of testing, and you keep you BG under control, particularly after food, you might (depending on the results) be able to make a better-informed guess about where your HbA1c might be.

But you'd have to have a functioning meter to do that.

7.2 for calibration (the solution I have is supposed to give a reading of 7.0) is close enough.

Have you tried your own level again?

Mr_Spock said:

It has given a reading of 9.2 three times running. Is this credible?

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At a guess, probably. It's either around the right value for your BG or you have a broken meter.

So I'd guess it's probably returning useful results. As always, your actual BG is somewhere within +/-15% of this - so your actual BG would be somewhere within a range from 7.8 to 10.6, but probably, given the consistency, around 9ish.

Understanding what it means needs a bit more information, for instance:
-were these tests done fasted in the morning?
-if not, when did you last eat? what did you eat?
-how soon after eating did you test?
-do you test on other occasions?
-what was your last HbA1c test result?


Just to give you some level of comparison, I've had only normal HbA1c results for over five years. However, a small latte will take me from around 5.0mmol/l to 9.6 mmol/l about 40 minutes after drinking - purely from the lactose in the milk. You might also take a look at this bit of research on non-diabetic people's BG response to food - you'll see that their BG goes up and down a lot.


The point of testing is not to look for high points. The point is to work out the things - ie foods - that raise your BG unacceptably and to reduce or remove them from what you eat. Doing that consistently should lead to lowering your blood glucose after food, and in due course, as your liver adjusts to a lower blood glucose "normal", lower blood glucose overall.

I personally wouldn't want to be seeing a 9.2 for either a morning test or a post-meal test.

A fasted morning test will show the level your liver has set you up for. There's not a great deal you can do constructively to alter that in the short term. If your BG levels fall, it will come down eventually. Mine took months to come down after my BGs were normal, and I rarely bother with a morning test these days.

To make sense of a test two hours after food, you need to know where you were before you ate. This is why it's usually recommended that you test just before eating and then at the +2hr point. By that time your insulin response should have brought your BG back down and be reasonably close to where you were when you started. But if you don't know your starting point, you can't judge what the +2 hr result means.

I kept food diaries in the first few years post diagnosis and opening one at random for 14 January 2021 shows a 9am fasted reading (a) of 1.2, and a second one (b) of 5.9, which is believable.

At 6.45 pm my BG reading (c) was 5.2. I ate some chicken, chorizo, mushrooms, in a tomato, chili and onion sauce with a glass of red wine.

At 9pm my BG (d) was 4.9. I had a bourbon at 10pm.

So those tests show (a) being a rogue result (b) being the result of my liver happily making glucose, (c) about where I'd expect after a day and (d) pretty much the same as (c) so that meal was absolutely OK and manageable.

Testing gives you the information that you can use to control the amount of glucose in your system and do something about bringing levels down. It works with a diet and medication approach, not only diet alone. But you've got to do enough of the right sort of testing to get the information in the first place. What you do with it is up to you.