Basic knowledge about glucose meters:
If you have type-1 diabetes, latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (a condition that straddles type-1 and type-2 diabetes), type-2 diabetes, gestational diabetes (similar to type-2 but only occurs during pregnancy), monitoring blood glucose (also known as “blood sugar”) regularly is an essential approach to take more overall control of your health. By recording and identifying daily changes in your blood glucose, you can obtain more information about what makes your blood glucose levels crash or spike; for example, you can monitor the effects of medication as well as the related therapies, and you can see how your blood glucose levels respond to recent stress or exercise… in short, the more you can identify the areas in which you can improve your diabetes management, the better you can treat your diabetic conditions.
Each year, more and more people are being diagnosed with diabetes, but a large number of people with diabetes did not know their disease in time until they go to a hospital for a general checkup; on the other hand, for people who have been diagnosed with diabetes, simple, regular blood glucose tests can be lifesaving by preventing the complications associated with consistently high blood glucose, such as cardiovascular diseases, nerve damage, and kidney problems.
Currently, there are 3 major methods to obtain blood glucose readings for individuals – the blood glucose levels can be measured through a finger-stick glucose meter, by using a continuous glucose meter (CGM), or by a flash glucose monitor (FGM). FGM and CGM let users check their blood glucose levels without having to prick their fingers. The accuracy of CGM is very similar to that of FGM. The finger-stick glucose meter is relatively accurate because it measures the glucose directly from the blood versus underneath the skin. When it comes to CGM/FGM, the glucose measurement is taken from the interstitial fluid ( fluid in the tissues between cells).
