Not exactly new but hello

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Merluza

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Hi,
I've been a member of this site before but not very active and somehow I keep losing the login. Maybe this time I'll be lucky. I've had type 1 for 42 years so I have seen a fair bit. Today I got and attached a Freestyle Libre2 which is what brought me back here. Like some of you I had to buy a new phone, I hope it was worth it. It's interesting so far seeing how much sugars seem to lurch up and down. Now to see if it stays on overnight.
 
Hi Merluza, welcome again and hope you don't lose your login 🙂 Good luck with the Freestyle tonight!
 
Welcome back @Merluza !

Yes seeing what has been going on ‘between the dots’ can be a real game changer can’t it!

Plus now you have access to 2 extra bits of information - the direction of change, and the rate of change. These can be hugely helpful in deciding what to do next. Eg 5.2 and a flat arrow just needs keeping en eye on, but 5.2 and a down arrow needs fairly urgent preventative action to gently head off an impending low!

If you’ve not worn a sensor before it can be helpful to understand some differences between how they act vs fingerstick BG meters. There’s a handy list of things to bear in mind here:
forum.diabetes.org.uk

CGM limitations and precautions

Moderator Note: This helpful reply was copied from another thread as it details some of the commonly experienced limitations of continuous glucose sensors. My blood sugar has been in perfect range for days now, but although I haven't changed anything, I'm starting to get very short periods of...
forum.diabetes.org.uk forum.diabetes.org.uk
 
Thanks for the link, that's got lots of interesting info in it. About a week in and I'm finding it very interesting observing what is going in approximately real time. Since I started using it my bg seems to be averaging lower than previously and doing better at keeping within range but that may be because of the timing of my finger pricks which generally suggested a higher HbA1c than it actually turned out to be, or it could just be one one of those things, or something else altogether. I certainly get lots of warnings from the app.

I'm intrigued by how the direction arrows know which way to point, and also slightly dubious about how it does this. I assume it's something to do with a clever algorithm.
 
Merluza said:
I'm intrigued by how the direction arrows know which way to point, and also slightly dubious about how it does this. I assume it's something to do with a clever algorithm.
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My understanding is that the arrows are not that clever. The Libre is taking reading , I think, every 5 minutes which you can see on the graphs and the arrows show the direction of the trend on the last few readings.
As someone with Type 1, I find it does not include enough readings to work out the trend arrows. I ignore them and look at the graph. For example, my BG may have levelled off in the last 15 minutes so I get a flat arrow but, if I look at the last 30 minutes, I see that it is definitely falling.
Because it uses trends over such a short time, the arrows can cause panic for some people when they get the double down arrows when the overall trend is not that extreme.
The value of using the graph over the values is that you can see what the peak reading was in response to your meal and when it occurred relative to your meal and how long it lasted. I find this history the most interesting.
 
Yes, in order to be able to give more than an educated guess it would need more information than it has available such as timing of injections and quantities and types of insulin.
 
Merluza said:
I'm intrigued by how the direction arrows know which way to point, and also slightly dubious about how it does this. I assume it's something to do with a clever algorithm.
Click to expand...

Yes that’s exactly it. It extrapolates from what has been happening in the past few minutes. And then the algorithm is also trying to predict what will happen next (to try to close the lag between interstitial fluid and capillary glucose. Which sometimes means you can have a scan ‘dot’ that ends up being away from the line that is drawn after the system has more data to go on - especially if glucose levels have been changing rapidly!
 
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