Diabetes Diabetes Treatment

How Sweet It Is: Monitoring Blood Sugar at Home

By Christine Haran

If you've got diabetes and you're leaving your home for the day, you may check your bag for more than your wallet, keys and cell phone. Chances are you also want to bring your glucose meter. Many people with diabetes monitor their own blood sugar (glucose) levels with handy meters that test blood sugar levels using a tiny drop of blood. People with diabetes who do not adequately control high blood sugar levels run the risk of complications such as heart disease, nerve damage and blindness. And blood sugar levels that drop too low due to treatment with insulin can also lead to medical problems.

There are more than 25 types of glucose meters on the market that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Input from your medical team, particularly your diabetes educator, will help you select the right meter for you. Below, Carole Mensing, a clinical diabetes nurse specialist in the Diabetes Education Program at the University of Connecticut in Farmington and the president of health care and education for the American Diabetes Association, discusses how glucose meters vary and how they can help people control their diabetes.

How do glucose meters measure blood sugar?
Generally speaking, you prick your cleaned finger with the lancet provided and place a drop of blood on a test strip that is then inserted into the meter. Some of the newer meters allow for alternative sites, such as the palm of the hand or the forearm. This is helpful for people whose fingertips get irritated, particularly folks who use their hands a lot, such as hairdressers, auto mechanics, typists or guitar players. However, the forearm is not as accurate if the blood glucose is too low, so we're cautious about that.

Test strips can come individually wrapped or in a disk or little cartridge, so you just punch a button on the machine and it automatically gets the strip ready for you. Once you place the blood on the top of the strip, the meter reads the test strip in anywhere from five seconds to 40 seconds and displays the glucose level.

Most of the meters now store the numbers so that patients get an individual number, a summary of numbers over a 14- or 30-day period, and then an average. Many of the meters store up to 1,000 test results. And many of them can have the information downloaded into the computer so that, with the appropriate software, the data can be displayed in different ways and used by patient and their medical team.

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