Self- Monitoring Diabetes
Because control of your diabetes depends mostly on a of diet, exercise, insulin, and emotions, daily self-monitoring of your control of your disease may be recommended by your physician. Through careful monitoring you and your physician can determine any need for adjustments in these keys to your good health. The benefits of self-monitoring vary among individuals, and your physician will explain how the merits of various tests relate to you and your condition.
If you have insulin dependent diabetes, your doctor will probably ask you to test your glucose level several times throughout each day. The goal will be to obtain consistently normal results. If you detect a change, you will be asked to watch to see if any pattern is developing. Depending on the situation, your doctor may recommend that you vary your insulin dosage, alter your diet or exercise program, or make an office visit.
Self-testing is particularly valuable for patients with “brittle” or unstable diabetes who have wide swings in blood sugar levels. It is also helpful for those who have complications of diabetes, such as kidney or eye problems. If your before-meal readings are consistently normal, your doctor may have you begin with readings after meals, a time when glucose levels are more likely to be high. If these readings are consistently normal, you may then be advised to test less frequently.
Home glucose monitoring can be very useful for patients who cannot always tell whether or not they are experiencing hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). Such patients may often misjudge their situation and take simple carbohydrates in an attempt to raise a blood sugar level that is actually already normal. As a response to this, their blood sugar continues to rise. In such cases if the patients tested their blood sugar first, they would discover that they were not hypoglycemic and could avoid causing unnecessarily high blood sugar and poor control. During pregnancy self-testing is particularly important because diabetic control can greatly reduce the number of fetal abnormalities and stillbirths among infants of diabetic mothers. In patients treated only by diet or by diet and oral medication, home monitoring may be less necessary because blood glucose levels fluctuate less.
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