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Understanding Diabetes » Basics » Control And Testing

Control and Testing


Self-monitoring of blood glucose is an essential and central part of treating your diabetes. As you live with your diabetes, self-monitoring tells whether your therapy is working. And the results of self-monitoring guide you and your healthcare team to adjust the many parts of your therapy.

Self-monitoring is the best way to see how your body handles food, exercise, diabetes medication, stress and illness. Testing your blood glucose lets you see what happens to your blood sugar when you eat certain kinds or amounts of food, do certain exercises, or lose or gain weight. You can see what effect your medications have on your blood glucose level, which tells you whether they are working properly. Your blood glucose result may prompt you to eat a snack, take more insulin or go for a walk. It also alerts you to a blood glucose level that is too high or too low, which requires special treatment.

Blood Glucose Testing

When to test

Your doctor will have specific recommendations, but many people test before meals, at bedtime, before driving, and before, during, and after exercise. Start testing consistently every day, and within about two weeks you'll be in the habit. Don't take the weekends or holidays off—diabetes doesn't take a vacation, and those days when you're staying up late, eating at odd hours, and more or less active than usual are often the days you need the tests most of all.

If you are ill, your blood glucose levels may be affected. Therefore you need to test more often in case your insulin dose needs adjusting.

Blood Glucose Testing

Tips for successful testing:

1. Wash your hands in warm water and dry thoroughly. * (this will remove and substances which may interfere with the test results).
2. Prick the side of your finger with your finger pricker.
3. Don’t squeeze your finger, hold your hand down below your waist for about 5 seconds.
4. Apply the blood to the blood-testing strip and wait for the machine to flash up your result.

* If you are going out for the day and think hand-washing facilities won’t be available, pack a wet flannel in a plastic bag to wipe your fingers with before you test your blood sugar. It is best not to use ‘wipes’ as these can alter your blood glucose reading.

 

 

Decrease Diabetes Complications

If you frequently test your blood glucose, you will have better control over your diabetes and fewer complications as well. According to the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial (DCCT),

  • More frequent blood glucose testing can significantly help to decrease or slow development of complications in people with type 1 diabetes.
  • Intensive therapy (including frequent self-monitoring and frequent insulin administration) designed to lower blood glucose levels reduces the risk of complications such as eye, kidney and nerve damage by up to 75% for people with type 1 diabetes.

 

According to the United Kingdom Prospective Diabetes Study (UKPDS), better blood glucose control for people with type 2 diabetes reduces the risk of:

  • major diabetic eye disease by 25%
  • early kidney damage by 33%
  • death from long-term diabetes complications by 33%
  • strokes by more than 33%

Time to Test

Going for a jog, drinks after work, eating out or a sneaky midnight snack; these are things most people take for granted, unless you have diabetes. Doing unplanned exercise, drinking alcohol and missing meals can mean problems with your blood sugar. But while high blood sugar levels are linked to health problems later in life, low levels can give you a hypo. Only by keeping your blood sugar under control can you greatly reduce the risk of ill health now and in the future.

Blood sugar testing is an important way of keeping an eye on what’s going on – and an essential tool for managing your diabetes. To read more download our Time to Test booklet.

Click here to download (296KB)


Last modified: 21/11/2008