Diabetes and Diabetic Care: Importance of Blood Glucose Monitoring

Since your doctor already told bad news that you have diabetes, then it’s time to make few changes to your habits and overall lifestyle, and you probably have to use a small device called blood glucose meter. What are the importance of using a blood glucose monitor? Let us talk about it.

Diabetes is a chronic disease affecting glucose or sugar metabolism, wherein the pancreas cannot produce insulin as seen in type 1 diabetes, or it cannot produce enough insulin in type 2 diabetes, resulting in inappropriate breakdown of insulin. Diabetes requires a lifelong blood glucose monitoring, medication, and healthy lifestyle such as having healthy eating habits, weight loss and increased physical activity. In type 1 diabetes, the patient needs to take insulin injections for life, and for type 2 diabetes, you will be required to eventually have to take oral medication and via insulin injection in some situations.

Patients may not feel particular symptoms or notice any signs, not until they experience hyperglycemia or too high blood sugar levels or hypoglycemia or too low blood sugar levels. Hyperglycemia can lead to diabetic complications such as myocardial infarction or heart attack, stroke, kidney problems that may require dialysis, blindness, erectile dysfunction and problems with blood circulation, which may lead to amputation. Thus, it is important to avoid these complications, and patients need to monitor and control their blood glucose levels with reliable blood glucose meter to minimize the serious risk of hyperglycemia. Blood glucose test using a blood glucose meter is an important part of diabetes management, allowing you to study and integrate the impact of different measures you do in controlling your diabetes, such as losing weight, changing diet plans, doing exercise and medication intake.

There are many types of blood glucose meters available in the market today, ranging from basic models that merely reads blood glucose levels, to more advanced versions, offering various features such as memory for storing information. The cost of blood glucose meter and blood test varies, and insurance companies may not always provide coverage for these, so there are things you must take into consideration before buying your own blood glucose meter, to get your money’s worth. Thus, you need to consider the cost, your doctor’s suggestion, ease of use, length of time to read and show the result, maintenance, and special features. Some of the special features offered by some brands of blood glucose meter includes audio capability for people with visual impairment, back lit screens to assist with low-light visibility, memory to store readings, various handling capabilities like having a USB meter or strips stored in meters, and ability to test blood ketone levels.

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