Alarms

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JonathanGi

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Where do people set their GCM alarms?
Mine is mostly set at 3.7 for low and 7.3 for high.
 
Just upped mine from 4.2 to 4.5 and 9.2 at the top end.
 
I don’t have high alarms. (Got multiple at a glance readouts. Including this tablet I’m writing on as a “follower.”) the low is set for 3.9.
 
It varies but at the moment 4.7 for Low and 12 for High. Interestingly @Bruce Stephens my consultant suggested pretty much what you’ve set as your alarms when I first got the Libre 🙂 I change mine occasionally but my Low is always between 4.5 and 5.5. My G7 has an Urgent Low alarm too but to my mind the Low alarm is to warn of an impending low so you can ward it off.
 
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The recommended range for people with T1 is to drift between 4.0 and 9.0 (fingerstick glucose meters) or 3.9-10.0 time-in-range for sensors.

My hypo warning signs took a bit of a battering in my second decade with diabetes, so I aim to limit my time spent below 4.0mmol/L to as little as possible, and significantly lower than the 4% suggested in the International Consensus for Time In Range.

So I have my high alert at 5.2 to catch drops early, and my high at 10. 🙂
 
Inka said:
It varies but at the moment 4.7 for Low and 12 for High. Interestingly @Bruce Stephens my consultant suggested pretty much what you’ve set as your alarms when I first got the Libre 🙂 I change mine occasionally but my Low is always between 4.5 and 5.5. My G7 has an Urgent Low alarm too but to my mind the Low alarm is to warn of an impending low so you can ward it off.
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As much as I like the idea of setting a low alarm in the 4.5 to 5.5 vicinity is that I can on most occasions hit that mark & stay there.

Bruce Stephens said:
I do too. (Well, I have two, but one's my watch so it's really easy and convenient to see. Except at night, but I just have to press a button then, so pretty easy.)
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I light up a widget on my phone Home Screen. (On charge next to the bed.)
The 3.9 alarm will sound giving me ample time to get my head round what’s happening. As opposed to the old days, when I woke low from a weird “trigger dream” feeling the symptoms.
So far. Never needed 3rd party assistance. I was on the porcine stuff as a kid. Didn’t even wake my parents. (The alarm wakes my wife & I. Hit snooze & treat.)
 
Then you just adjust your reaction and/or alarm. If my Low alarm sounds and I’m 4.7 and rising, then that’s just information, not a command to act necessarily. Sometimes it’s ok and nothing needs to be done.
 
Inka said:
Interestingly @Bruce Stephens my consultant suggested pretty much what you’ve set as your alarms when I first got the Libre
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I'm fairly sure I saw a DSN suggesting those alarms (not particularly recommending them, but suggesting why they might be good choices). At the time I had my high at something lower (10.0 or something) and it was annoying rather than useful. Having it higher means the alarm goes off much less often and when it does happen I know something unusual has happened. (Similarly I'm trying not to hit the low alarm, though I hit that one much more often than the high.)
 
I also have the Dexcom G7, which has an Urgent Low at 3.1 and which can't be changed (or permanently switched off).

Otherwise my alarms are very much Alerts, not alarms; I don't want to be told I've gone too low - particularly when I don't necessarily have enough time to catch a low before it becomes a Hypo. So my settings vary, but never lower than 4.8 and usually 5.5 - sometimes a bit higher; and my high is typically at 13.0. But often my high is on vibrate only; I no longer think its important to drop everything and respond to a high alert and I generally don't feel the need to correct a high promptly. At my last Consult my Endo was pretty robust in saying she felt I should not even consider correcting unless above 14.
 
Evening my tuppence worth is I have my low alarm set at 4.7 again as others have said more an alert and of course you do not have to act if you feel it may settle.
I don’t bother with a high alarm at all as generally don’t go into double figures for any length of time apart from when I get caught up in something and concentrated elsewhere.
Works pretty well for me and think it is about what works for you as an individual.
 
4.8 so can react in time if necessary depending on direction of arrow, high alarm is currently set at 10 but has been 9 in past.
 
I have my low alarm set for 5.5 if I’m gardening, so I get an alert before my body tells me I’m going low. I can drop quite fast while exercising, and there’s no point in finding out the hard way when I’ve gone low enough to get hypo symptoms, as it necessitates interrupting the pruning. (I’m not going to carry on using heavy loppers when I’m experiencing hypo symptoms, it’s plain dangerous, so I need to stop. By setting the alarm high enough to chug some jelly babies before I get to the wobbly brain zone, I can carry on with what I'm doing.
I don’t set the alarm at night: if I drift a bit low, I wake up, and I don’t want to wake up or wake my partner up every time I roll over and squash the sensor, or when the Libre algorithm tells me I'm going low, then ten minutes later says, oh no sorry, as you were, you weren’t going low after all.
 
These all seem rather high to me. Surely BG should be between 4 and 7. I make 5.5 exactly down the middle. I feel at my best at around 5.5. Even when I am running 10 miles, as I did today. If I ate lots of jelly babies at 5.6 my BG would go far too high. I went up to 8.3 today. Too high for my liking. What should the numbers be?
 
Hi @JonathanGi
That is some very tight control you got going on there, impressive, must admit I would get annoyed at the high one going off every time I ate or even looked at food 🙂
 
JonathanGi said:
These all seem rather high to me. Surely BG should be between 4 and 7. I make 5.5 exactly down the middle. I feel at my best at around 5.5. Even when I am running 10 miles, as I did today. If I ate lots of jelly babies at 5.6 my BG would go far too high. I went up to 8.3 today. Too high for my liking. What should the numbers be?
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That’s overly tight control, I think. In fact, it’s even tighter than the pregnancy targets, which are super-tight for the baby’s sake.
 
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