How often should people with diabetes check their blood glucose?
admin | Mar 09, 2011 | Comments 0
I often hear doctors and nurses saying things like, “All diabetic patients should check their blood glucose level four times a day!” Sometimes they say “five times a day” or “seven times a day,” perhaps “twice a day if you have type 2 diabetes, and four times a day if you have type 1 diabetes.” I think that none of these statements is correct. For me, there is only one correct answer to that question.
You should check your blood glucose as often as you think it is giving you useful information. After all, that is the only reason to test your blood glucose: so that you know what it is and can use that information to help you understand your diabetes better.
You may find that answer to be too vague or think that it puts too much responsibility onto you, so let me add a few things to think about. If you said to yourself, “Great. In that case, since I never get useful information from my blood glucose test, I should never test,” then I think you need help to be able to interpret or understand your test results. And if you are someone who feels the need to test yourself twenty times a day, then I think you need guidance, too.
When you first get diabetes and start testing your blood glucose, it is hard to make sense of the results. Your doctor or nurse may ask you to test a few times a day, record the results, and then bring them back so that you can go over the results together. Your doctor or nurse may be able to help you understand the things that affect your blood glucose numbers and what causes them to go up and down. Some people find it much easier than others to figure out. Once you learn to use your blood glucose test results well, they can act like a very powerful flashlight guiding you through your life with diabetes.
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