Glucose Monitors for Diabetes

I’m Marcia Malone, I'm a nurse practitioner, and I work with patients specifically in diabetes focused care. Today, I was going to just take a time to talk about glucose monitor options and how to maximize using them.

Why are Glucose Monitors Important?

There's so many different things out on the market today for diabetics, and glucose meters are a staple in their care. This is something that tells you what your blood sugar is; it tells you how you're going to make a decision on whether or not you're going to be able to go for a walk and exercise, whether or not you need to eat something, and it impacts everybody's life in the day of a diabetic. So for the person who is taking insulin, or definitely if you have type 1 diabetes, you have multiple needs, maybe multiple conditions that your management needs to be a little bit more concise. Poking your finger 8, 10, 12 times a day is really not convenient, and there's a lot of newer technology that's available with the continuous glucose monitor.

Advantages of Continuous Glucose Monitors

There are several different brands that are available in the market, so I encourage people to talk to their provider about whether or not this might be something that might impact your diabetes care. Some of the reasons why is that this offers you a real-time picture of what's going on with your health from moment to moment; you're able to see a number on a screen with arrows that tell you what direction your blood sugars are traveling, which makes this a game changer as far as how you decide what you're going to do in your day-to-day life. You’ll hear us talk about "time and range." This is a situation where everybody strives to have good numbers. For instance, if your "time and range" is between 80 and 180, we're talking about the amount of time that your blood sugar is in those areas when you're out of range. Maybe you don't feel that you're out of range, maybe you're too high or too low, and wearing a continuous glucose monitor can help identify that with alarms to tell you that your blood sugar is too high, too low and help prevent serious complications that you end up in the emergency room.

Learn More about CHI Health Diabetes Care.