How to Use a Glucose Meter

Featured Image Caption: Glucose Meter

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If you, like so many others, suffer from diabetes, then you will be needing to constantly self-monitor your blood sugar (glucose) levels to ensure everything is in balance in your body. By doing so, you will be able to pre-empt any complications or health risks from occurring before things get really scary.

That is why health professionals have invented a nifty tool known as a glucose meter. It is a self-monitoring tool that you can carry with you and check your glucose levels any time you want. That way, you know if your levels are dropping and you need to inject yourself with an extra boost of insulin.

But more than that, here are some other quick reasons why a glucose monitor should be used.

Two reasons to use a glucose monitor

1. Helps you monitor your body

As just mentioned, one of the best things a glucose monitor can do is track how your medication or blood sugar levels are impacting your body—allowing you to self-monitor wherever in the world you are. It will help you know when your levels are too low or too high in an instant!

2. Tracks your progress

Those with diabetes are likely on treatment plans. The glucose monitor helps track the progress of that plan to help you and your doctor understand if it is working This way, you can get instant feedback as to how any adjustments in your lifestyle—whether that be diet or exercise—plus the combination of your medicine are impacting your glucose levels. It can also show how factors such as stress or exhaustion play a role in your glucose levels as well.

How to use a glucose monitor

Now, how exactly do you use a glucose monitor? The device has been designed to make it as easy as possible to be used. But there are some important steps you should follow to ensure you are using the device correctly.

1. Understand your targets

To monitor your glucose levels, you first need to understand what your target level should be. Your doctor will be able to help you determine this through factoring in the type of diabetes you have, how old you are, how long you’ve been diagnosed for and any other factors that need to come into play.

2. Practice good hygiene

In order to actually manage your glucose levels, you will need to first ensure you practice good hygiene. That means that you need to wash your hands to ensure there is nothing external on the finger you are going to prick, but also the needle that you are going to prick yourself with. This can not only cause infection, but any external elements mixed in with your blood sample—food, alcohol—can mess up the glucose monitor reading.

3. Use a test strip

After you prick your finger with a needle, make sure you have a test strip nearby to transfer the drop of blood to. This test strip will be what you feed into your glucose monitor for the reading. Once you have transferred to blood sample, you will feed it into the monitor—which takes at least a few seconds to process. Once this is done, your glucose monitor will show you a reading on the monitor’s screen, which you can compare against the glucose levels you and your doctor had previously established.

Using a glucose monitor is not as hard as it sounds. It is designed for both children and adults to be able to use and easy enough to transport with them wherever in the world they may be. Thanks to this incredible medical device, those with diabetes can self-monitor their glucose levels in three easy steps!