• Please Remember: Members are only permitted to share their own experiences. Members are not qualified to give medical advice. Additionally, everyone manages their health differently. Please be respectful of other people's opinions about their own diabetes management.
  • We seem to be having technical difficulties with new user accounts. If you are trying to register please check your Spam or Junk folder for your confirmation email. If you still haven't received a confirmation email, please reach out to our support inbox: support.forum@diabetes.org.uk

Blood suagr checks

Status
This thread is now closed. Please contact Anna DUK, Ieva DUK or everydayupsanddowns if you would like it re-opened.
Mealtimes (in order to work out whether a correction amount is needed when calculating insulin bolus), bedtime (to make sure not heading too high or low overnight), I also do one check approx 3 am to make sure nothing crazy going on (hypos don't always wake my daughter up), and then any other time if something seems amiss. Probably a little more often now we have the Libre.

How often you check is less important than what you do with the information. If you are testing at certain times just because you think you should but aren't doing anything with the information then it's a waste of time. But if you are using that information to help you adjust your insulin doses to try to keep your blood sugars more stable, or to make sure you are at a safe level before going to sleep, or to check what's going on if you don't feel right, then it's absolutely not a waste of time and perfectly justified.
 
4 unless there's a need to check them more

before each meal and bedtime when I take my basal
xx
 
I test as soon as I wake up, before meals, before bed, any time I feel hypo, and any time my Libre says I'm hypo (not always the same). Before I got the Libre I was testing about 8-10 times per day most days, but I have a lot of hypos so I suspect that's more than most people test. Now I'm testing 6-8 times per day most days.
 
I test with test strips only once every couple of days now, because I'm using Libre and find it accurate and reliable enough. (So after I change sensors I'll do a few more tests that day and the next just to make sure the new one's accurate, but after that just now and again, and when it doesn't seem to quite match what I feel.)

I scan it lots, much more than is useful to act on. Given I'm sitting at my desk most of the day I don't really need to scan much; on the other hand, there's no cost to doing so (takes 5 seconds) so there's no reason not to. When I'm walking somewhere I'll scan a few times an hour (I really like to avoid going too low and I know it happens), and similarly when I'm out dancing I'll scan whenever's convenient (typically between tandas, so about every 10 minutes), and for those two things I'm more likely acting on the result (if it looks like I'm going low).
 
I realise reading your post, Bruce, that I said how much I test but not how much I scan - I scan between about 20-25 times a day most days.
 
TheClockworkDodo said:
I scan between about 20-25 times a day most days.
Click to expand...

The app says I scan 35 times a day on average. I feel slightly guilty about that sometimes (it's something that some of the videos warn against, recommending only scanning when you might expect to respond), but I think what they want is for people not to over correct (so they recommend not scanning until about 90 minutes after a meal, for example, because nothing you might see should cause you to do anything), and I'm only rarely doing anything and I'm fine with just noting that the graph is more or less what I expected to see (or that it's not, but I don't need to do anything about it for a while).
 
I finger prick anywhere from 5-11 times a day, very occasionally 12 or 13 but usually around 8. Sometimes I will need 2 a day to drive, then a fasting reading, before each meal to calculate bolus and sometimes 2 hrs after, then anytime I don't feel well....menopausal symptoms are quite similar to hypo symptoms, so that might be 2 or 3 times a day. I am on my own with big strong animals a lot of the day, so can't risk ignoring potential hypo symptoms. Sometimes I will experiment with timing of bolus injections before food, so that might take up 2-3 more tests.... as a result of this I bolus at least an hour before I eat breakfast. Sometimes I experiment with exercise or manual work to see what effect those have. Some days I get chewed off and only test 4 times a day because whatever I do seems to make little difference...particularly if I am having an extended spell of high levels.
 
Sally71 said:
Mealtimes (in order to work out whether a correction amount is needed when calculating insulin bolus), bedtime (to make sure not heading too high or low overnight), I also do one check approx 3 am to make sure nothing crazy going on (hypos don't always wake my daughter up), and then any other time if something seems amiss. Probably a little more often now we have the Libre.

How often you check is less important than what you do with the information. If you are testing at certain times just because you think you should but aren't doing anything with the information then it's a waste of time. But if you are using that information to help you adjust your insulin doses to try to keep your blood sugars more stable, or to make sure you are at a safe level before going to sleep, or to check what's going on if you don't feel right, then it's absolutely not a waste of time and perfectly justified.
Click to expand...
I completely agree with the checking at 3.00am to see if anything crazy is going on! I have found it to be a bit risky for myself to go the 7-8 hours without checking as I am still in the honeymoon period and I'm taking a fair bit of insulin injections a day
 
If you find you are hypo-ing in the night, Joe, you should probably have a chat with your DSN about reducing your basal insulin. The doses they put you on at first are a best guess, so they are likely to need a fair bit of tweaking over the first few months (when I was diagnosed I was put on 16 units of basal, and I hypo'd so much I was getting up about 3am every night and eating a jam sandwich! - after the first week they dropped my basal dose to 6 units).
 
I agree 100% with @TheClockworkDodo they are a total guess based on weight etc given your basal dose, I was started on 8 units but had to reduce that down to 1 and was fine and happy there up until the end of last year! 😱

The insulin your taking during the day for your meals shouldn't be affecting you during the night unless you are going to bed within 4-5 hours of taking your last dose of it
xx
 
According to my Libre reader I test on average 11 times a day. Because it's so easy, I suppose, it's not because of any particular need. It's not as informative as when I first used the system, because I've learned all the lessons from it.
 
Status
This thread is now closed. Please contact Anna DUK, Ieva DUK or everydayupsanddowns if you would like it re-opened.
Back
Top