Your Glucose Meter Can Make Blood-Sugar Control Worse!
How you use your glucose monitor has much to do with developing complications down the road. One of the most common and least effective approaches to blood sugar control can be called the “snapshot” approach.
You pull out the monitor to test your blood sugar from time to time, especially if you “feel funny”. You use your glucose meter to get an immediate reading (a snapshot) of your blood sugar. If the reading is too high, you might inject some insulin (if you use insulin), or drink several glasses of water or try something else to get it down.
If the reading is very low (or even without testing, if you just “feel shaky”), you might eat a piece or two of candy — or often “pig out” on sweets — until you feel better.
Using your meter like this is actually making your blood-sugar control worse. How does this “snapshot” of your present and immediate blood sugar level relate to anything in the long term? How does it help get your diabetes under control and prevent complications? In a word, it doesn’t.
“Complications,” as another writer has said, “is just a pleasant euphemism for terrible things we don’t want to think about.” Heart attack, stroke, blindness, nerve damage, kidney damage, premature death. Inefficient and insufficient diabetes control is the road to very bad things happening.
The only way to make your immediate glucose readings work towards real diabetes control is as part of a series of readings over time and under similar circumstances. But this is just where many people falter. What most diabetics do not have is a system to put it all together and make it work. Without a system you are headed down the road to complications from diabetes.
One of the most important elements of any system to control diabetes is TIME. Not just the present moment in time like a snapshot, but a record of readings over time will give a more true picture of your diabetes health and condition.
A spike of a very high blood sugar reading in the midst of many normal readings will be of nominal effect and should not cause great concern. Several highs in a row, or at the same time of day over several days or more, however, reveals something that needs attention. Something needs to be changed, whether it’s diet, medications, or something else.
The point is, trying to control diabetes on the fly with the immediate snapshot approach, though common to many diabetics, is dangerous and doesn’t work. You need a good time-based system to recognize patterns and irregularities so that you can deal with them.
You pull out the monitor to test your blood sugar from time to time, especially if you “feel funny”. You use your glucose meter to get an immediate reading (a snapshot) of your blood sugar. If the reading is too high, you might inject some insulin (if you use insulin), or drink several glasses of water or try something else to get it down.
If the reading is very low (or even without testing, if you just “feel shaky”), you might eat a piece or two of candy — or often “pig out” on sweets — until you feel better.
Using your meter like this is actually making your blood-sugar control worse. How does this “snapshot” of your present and immediate blood sugar level relate to anything in the long term? How does it help get your diabetes under control and prevent complications? In a word, it doesn’t.
“Complications,” as another writer has said, “is just a pleasant euphemism for terrible things we don’t want to think about.” Heart attack, stroke, blindness, nerve damage, kidney damage, premature death. Inefficient and insufficient diabetes control is the road to very bad things happening.
The only way to make your immediate glucose readings work towards real diabetes control is as part of a series of readings over time and under similar circumstances. But this is just where many people falter. What most diabetics do not have is a system to put it all together and make it work. Without a system you are headed down the road to complications from diabetes.
One of the most important elements of any system to control diabetes is TIME. Not just the present moment in time like a snapshot, but a record of readings over time will give a more true picture of your diabetes health and condition.
A spike of a very high blood sugar reading in the midst of many normal readings will be of nominal effect and should not cause great concern. Several highs in a row, or at the same time of day over several days or more, however, reveals something that needs attention. Something needs to be changed, whether it’s diet, medications, or something else.
The point is, trying to control diabetes on the fly with the immediate snapshot approach, though common to many diabetics, is dangerous and doesn’t work. You need a good time-based system to recognize patterns and irregularities so that you can deal with them.
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