Blood sugar monitors

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Louisa36

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Type 2
Hi everyone Are cheap blood sugar monitors any good for type 2 diabetes? And should we be measuring our blood sugars ourselves at all? Or just rely on the doctors 6 monthly tests?
 
Louisa36 said:
Hi everyone Are cheap blood sugar monitors any good for type 2 diabetes? And should we be measuring our blood sugars ourselves at all? Or just rely on the doctors 6 monthly tests?
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Absolutely definitely we should be testing ourselves, 6 months plus is a long time to be unaware that things have gone awry and the measures you are taking are not being effective.
It is like going out in your car every day without a working speedometer, I suspect that at least 50% of the time you would be driving over the speed limit which equates to having more carbs that your body can tolerate.
It also enables you to find foods which you may reject but which are fine as well as avoid those which are not doing you any good.
The monitors to look for are those with the cheapest test strips, worth shopping around but the Gluconavii and TEE2 are a couple which can be bought on line.
 
Louisa36 said:
Hi everyone Are cheap blood sugar monitors any good for type 2 diabetes? And should we be measuring our blood sugars ourselves at all? Or just rely on the doctors 6 monthly tests?
Click to expand...
If you're doing things designed to bring your BG down then how do they expect you to know whether it's working unless you test? Wait for your next HbA1c they'll say, but to me that's a fingers-crossed event. I can't imagine anything worse than spending months thinking you're doing all the right things and then finding it's not worked.

Admittedly random testing won't tell you anything meaningful, and this might be where HCPs are, but if you stick to a regime of testing on waking, and before and then 2 hours after a meal, and record the results, over time you'll be able to see which way your BG is trending - downwards (good), upwards (not so good) or whether it's flat.

It's your diabetes and if self-testing helps you manage it then why not do it?
 
I used a blood glucose meter to sort out my meals, lower my blood glucose levels and get down to HbA1c of 41 - after that I did not really need to do more than a few checks after eating something I would not usually have on the menu.
From diagnosis I have never had 6 monthly checks and since I hit the top end of normal numbers it has been annual checks only.
 
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