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.
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 Meters can go wrong, have a +/- 15% level of inaccuracy, old, out of date test strips can give strange results, test strips used for the second time tend to read very high, etc.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.
