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.

order the guide | open tool (pdf)

From the ACP Diabetes Care Guide

A checklist to help patients monitor their blood glucose regularly.

open tool (pdf)

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.

order the guide | preview this chapter (pdf)

From the National Library of Medicine (NLM)
A variety of resources about how to check your blood sugar (called blood glucose monitoring).

read more

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.

read more

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.

read more | open document (pdf)