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Remember that you are the most important person to manage your diabetes! Choose one of these ideas or write down 1 or 2 ways to help you take control of your blood sugar.
NOTE: Living with Diabetes: An Everyday Guide for You and Your Family was produced by the ACP Foundation for patients with diabetes. Designed in a magazine format with lots of photos and a conversational style, the guide is an entirely new means of patient education in that the emphasis is on action (what patients need to do every day to manage their diabetes), rather than on an exchange of information. This guide is copyrighted and is available in both English and Spanish versions.
From the ACP Diabetes Care Guide
A checklist to help patients monitor their blood glucose regularly.
Your body turns the food you eat into blood sugar. Blood sugar (or blood glucose) is what gives your body energy.
NOTE: Living with Diabetes: An Everyday Guide for You and Your Family was produced by the ACP Foundation for patients with diabetes. Designed in a magazine format with lots of photos and a conversational style, the guide is an entirely new means of patient education in that the emphasis is on action (what patients need to do every day to manage their diabetes), rather than on an exchange of information. This guide is copyrighted and is available in both English and Spanish versions.
I spent today at an Internal Medicine 2009 precourse on diabetes and picked up a lot of miscellaneous interesting info, particularly during the session by Irl Hirsch, FACP, on monitoring in diabetes. Most common reason that patients' finger-sticks are inaccurate? They don't wash their hands beforehand. If you eat an orange, then test blood from one of your sticky fingers, the glucose from the fruit could make the result inaccurately high. But should your type 2 patients who aren't on insulin even be bothering to self-monitor? Given that there's no proof that home testing affects outcomes and test strips are expensive, Dr. Hirsch sees the main use being special occasions, like when a patient is eating something new and wants to see how her blood sugar responds. A1cs are good, but not perfect. Anemia, in particular, can make their results inaccurate. Also, did you know that half of an A1c result is determined by glucose levels over the previous 30 days? The newest big thing in diabetes monitoring--real-time continuous glucose monitors. They work great (i.e., significantly lower A1cs) if patients wear them all the time and pay attention to them, Dr. Hirsch said. Best used by patients and physicians who are tech-savvy and willing to devote some real time and attention. The next big thing, however, could turn out to be a very old thing--urine glucose testing. If a currently underway study proves that it's as effective as home blood testing, payers could push for a move back to the older, cheaper option. In the afternoon, David Kendall, MD, made a convincing case for incretin-based therapies. In addition to improving insulin secretion and response, the drugs reduce food intake and cause weight loss. So how to decide if exentide and the other on-their-way-to-market options in the class are right for your patients? That was a little fuzzier--"you'll know 'em when you see 'em" was the gist of his message. (Posted by Stacey Butterfield)
From the National Library of Medicine (NLM)
A variety of resources about how to check your blood sugar (called blood glucose monitoring).
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved a device that measures glucose levels continuously for up to seven days in people with diabetes. While a standard fingerstick test records a person's glucose level as a snapshot in time, the STS-7 Continuous Glucose Monitoring System (STS-7 System) measures glucose levels every five minutes throughout a seven-day period. This additional information can be used to detect trends and track patterns in glucose levels throughout the week that wouldn't be captured by fingerstick measurements alone. However, diabetics must still rely on the fingerstick test to decide whether additional insulin is needed.
If you are of African, Mediterranean, or Southeast Asian heritage, you could have a variant form of hemoglobin in your red blood cells that affects your diabetes care. Hemoglobin in red blood cells gives blood its red color and carries oxygen from your lungs to all parts of your body. Some forms of hemoglobin can cause false results for a diabetes blood test called the A1C test. If the A1C test gives a false result, your doctor may think your blood glucose level is higher or lower than it really is.
From The Wall Street Journal (September 9, 2008)
Adults with Type 1 diabetes can gain better control over their disease by using a cellphone-size device that continually monitors blood-sugar levels, according to a new study.
Introduced by various manufacturers in recent years, "continuous glucose monitoring," or CGM, systems provide a steady stream of data that allows patients to adjust their insulin injections as needed. Attached to a small sensor inserted just beneath the skin, they also sound an alarm if blood sugar rises or falls to dangerous levels.
With traditional monitoring, the patient pricks a finger, puts blood onto a small strip of paper and inserts it into a meter for a reading. Researchers say such tests, even done several times a day, can miss sudden and unsafe changes in blood sugar.
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