The Different Ways of Monitoring your Blood-Sugar

When it comes to diabetes knowing and anticipating your blood-sugar levels is important. There are lots of lifestyle changes you’ll need to make to help to keep that level under control and better maintain your own health and wellbeing but sometimes they won’t quite be enough. In these cases something else may effect your blood-sugar, something you won’t have been able to anticipate and thereby plan for. In these cases it’ll be important for you to have a way of directly monitoring your blood-sugar levels so you’ll be able to take steps to counter them before they get out of control and cause you harm.

There are two kinds of blood-sugar (blood-glucose) monitor:

Continuous Glucose Monitoring

These are high-tech and recent in terms of medical technology. They provide you with constant, real-time information regarding your blood-sugar levels so you can be constantly monitoring them and won’t be taken by surprise ever again!

A tiny sensor is inserted under the skin, this sensor is there to constantly check the glucose levels in the tissues around it. The sensor has a transmitter which gathers the data and sends it to a monitor by using radio waves, the wireless monitor receives and then displays the information in a way which is easily understandable to the patient.

Blood-Sugar Testing (Traditional Blood-glucose Meters)

These are the much more standard alternative to the wireless models. They’re less convenient and much lower tech but, as with most things, this means that they’re also much cheaper. They’re much more accurate than they used to be and are being advanced in many ways from time to time.

To take the test a patient must prick their skin to get a drop of blood, this is generally through the use of a spring loaded lancet (similar to a tiny needle) in the device. This blood drop is placed on a test strip which is then slid into the blood-glucose meter, the meter analyses the sample and from this it can calculate your blood-glucose level.