How Often Should I Test My Blood Sugar

The Big Picture: Checking Your Blood Sugar

Blood sugar monitoring is the primary tool you have to find out if your blood glucose levels are within your target range. This tells you your blood glucose level at any one time.

Its important for blood sugar levels to stay in a healthy range. If glucose levels get too low, we can lose the ability to think and function normally. If they get too high and stay high, it can cause damage or complications to the body over the course of many years.

The logging of your results is vital. When you bring your log to your healthcare provider, youll have a good picture of your body’s response to your diabetes care plan. To help keep track of your levels, we have a glucose log. We also have a blood glucose log available for purchase that is smaller so you can carry it with you.

When Your Stress Increases

Stress, physical or emotional, can alter your blood glucose levels according to the American Diabetes Association. If you are going through a period of high stress, take the time to test your glucose more often than you typically do. When testing your glucose, rate your stress level between 1 and 10. After several weeks, you should be able to see a pattern and discern how stress affects your blood sugar and make corrections accordingly.

Managing Blood Sugar When Youre Ill

When you get sick, your blood sugar levels may fluctuate and become unpredictable.

If you’re sick, it’s very important that you:

• drink plenty of water or sugar-free fluids
• check your blood sugar levels more often than usual
• take 15 grams of carbohydrate every hour if you are not able to follow your usual meal plan
• replace food with fluids that contain sugar if you can’t eat solid food
• continue to take your insulin or other diabetes medication

If you have a cold or flu and want to use a cold remedy or cough syrup, ask your pharmacist to help you make a good choice. Many cold remedies and cough syrups contain sugar, so try to pick sugar-free products.

As an extra precaution, you should always check with your health-care team about guidelines for insulin adjustment or medication changes during an illness.

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How Do Carbs Affect Blood Sugar

Carbs in food make your blood sugar levels go higher after you eat them than when you eat proteins or fats. You can still eat carbs if you have diabetes. The amount you can have and stay in your target blood sugar range depends on your age, weight, activity level, and other factors. Counting carbs in foods and drinks is an important tool for managing blood sugar levels. Make sure to talk to your health care team about the best carb goals for you.

What Affects Your Results

If you have certain conditions, like anemia or gout, or if it’s hot or humid or you’re at a high altitude, that can affect your blood sugar levels.

If you keep seeing unusual results, recalibrate your meter and check the test strips.

The chart below gives you an idea of where your blood sugar level should be throughout the day. Your ideal blood sugar range may be different from another person’s and will change throughout the day.

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Consider Testing Before And After Exercise

Check to see how exercise affects blood sugar by occasionally testing immediately before and after exercise. Aerobic activity tends to lower blood sugar, even hours after stopping. This is not the case if you take insulin and start exercising when your blood sugar is high. Exercise can cause blood sugar to rise because you don’t have enough insulin to get glucose into the cells. Strength training, such as weight lifting, may temporarily increase blood sugar levels, but it has long-term glucose-lowering benefits.

How Often To Test Your Blood Glucose

Checking your blood sugar, keeping a record of your results, and using your results to improve your management is an important part of having diabetes. But before you grab your meter and check your blood glucose level, ask: Why am I checking now? How will I use the information to make decisions in how I manage my diabetes? If you don’t know, find out before you do a check. Our blood sugar guide answers your questions about when and how often to check.

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Factors That Affect How Often You Need To Test Your Blood Sugar

How often you test depends on several different factors.

You should test your blood sugar at home, but how often is enough? Well, it dependsmostly on your medication, you, and your doctor.

The American Diabetes Association recommends testing your blood sugar at least three times a day if you need multiple daily insulin injections. But for the rest of those with type 2 diabetes, testing frequency should be “dictated by the particular needs and goals of the patients,” the ADA says.

That means that frequent testing is clearly necessarily for some people with type 2 diabetes, but there is a little wiggle room for others.

Some studies suggest that frequent monitoring is not always helpful for people with type 2 diabetes. But that research is still being debated. Your doctor or diabetes educator can help you determine how often and when you should be testing.

How often you test depends on the following factors.

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Are Fingersticks Necessary On Dexcom G6 Or Freestyle Libre Cgm

Lets talk about when to check your blood sugars when youre using a CGM like Dexcom G6 or libre. The CGM companies like Dexcom or freestyle Libre or Medtronic, they all advertise no finger stick. No finger sticks are true to a point but they dont really tell you downsides of the products they sell. Heres what happens if youre on CGM: Any CGM is somewhat delayed when the blood sugars are changing rapidly. If you check the fingerstick you will see that if your blood sugars are changing rapidly your Dexcom is not going to be true. One typical example that a lot of people do wrong is this.

Dexcom G6 will show that their blood sugar is low and its true. Its typically low when it says so. Its generally correct although freestyle libre has not been the most correct CGM,. Anyhow, then you eat something, and then Dexcom will keep it showing still low. They end up to keep eating more and more and next, you see blood sugar is 300.

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Ahmet Ergin, MD, FACE, CDCES, ECNU Endocrinology

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What Tests Do I Need To Do At Home

• Blood test: The blood test is used to measure the amount of sugar in your blood. It will help you find out if your meal plan, exercise, and medicine are working to control your blood sugar.
• Urine test: The urine test looks for ketones in your urine. This can be done if you are sick or if your blood sugar level is very high. Meters are also available that can test your blood for ketones.

How To Reduce The Pain Of Blood Sugar Checks

Nobody gets excited about pricking their fingertip. In fact, studies have shown that it’s one of the main reasons people refrain from regularly checking their blood glucose.6,7 So how can you make this less of a hurdle in your self-care?

Select a less-painful lancing device

Naturally, one factor that can contribute to the pain is your lancing device. That’s why we’ve worked hard to ensure that Accu-Chek lancing devices keep discomfort to a minimum. For example, our lancing devices feature:

• Technology that minimizes side-to-side motion, so there’s less skin tearing
• 11 customizable depth settings to help match your skin type
• Precisely manufactured, beveled, thin-gauge lancets to ensure smoother entry

You can reduce pain by using a fresh lancet for every test. Today’s lancets are so tiny that just a single use can bend or dull the tips. This can make them hurt more as you reuse them.

5 tips for reducing fingertip pain

You can make testing more comfortable and help ensure that you get a good sample on the first try by following these 5 easy steps.

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Who Should Monitor Blood Glucose

If you’ve been diagnosed with type 1 or type 2 diabetes, or you’re pregnant and have developed gestational diabetes, a form of the disease that occurs during pregnancy and goes away after a baby is born, testing your blood glucose levels regularly and at specific times throughout the day will be a key aspect of managing your disease.

The American Diabetes Association recommends that, for ideal use and implementation, anyone prescribed continuous glucose monitoring should receive robust education, training, and support and should be able to perform self-monitoring of blood glucose in order to calibrate their monitor and/or verify readings if they don’t represent their symptoms.

It will be helpful to keep a log of your results, as well as details about what you’ve eaten throughout the day and how much physical activity you’ve gotten. With this information, you and your doctor can get a grasp on how certain foods or activities affect your blood sugar and what adjustments you should make to meet your target goals.

What Are Target Blood Sugar Levels For People With Diabetes

A target is something that you aim for or try to reach. Your health care team may also use the term goal. People with diabetes have blood sugar targets that they try to reach at different times of the day. These targets are:

• Right before your meal: 80 to 130
• Two hours after the start of the meal: Below 180

Talk with your health care team about what blood sugar numbers are right for you.

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Questions To Ask Your Doctor

When visiting your doctor, you might keep these questions in mind to ask during your appointment.

• What is my target blood sugar range?
• How often should I check my blood sugar?
• What do these numbers mean?
• Are there patterns that show I need to change my diabetes treatment?
• What changes need to be made to my diabetes care plan?

If you have other questions about your numbers or your ability to manage your diabetes, make sure to work closely with your doctor or health care team.

Whats My Target Range

You might be asking, what’s the normal range for blood sugar levels? The answer is, there is a healthy range that you should ideally be aiming for. The infographics above show the general guidelines, but your individual target range for your blood sugar levels may be different. Youll healthcare team will agree with you what it is.

Youll get different readings at different times of the day, depending on things like what youve eaten and how much you are moving around. Heres a guide to help you get started on finding your target range:

If youre a child with Type 1 diabetes

• when you wake up and before meals: 4 to 7mmol/l
• after meals: 5 to 9mmol/l

If youre an adult with Type 1 diabetes

• when you wake up and before meals: 5 to 7mmol/l
• before meals at other times of the day: 4 to 7mmol/l

If you have Type 2 diabetes

• before meals: 4 to 7mmol/l
• two hours after meals: less than 8.5mmol/l

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What Time Of Day Should I Test

Recommendations for the best time of day to test your blood sugar depend on your medicine, mealtimes, and blood sugar control. Your doctor may provide a chart that outlines when to check your blood sugar and what level you should target. Your doctor may also suggest different goals, depending on your situation.

The chart may look something like this:

*Depends on the size of the meal and the amount of insulin in your medicine

What Are The Goals Of Diabetic Cats Treatment

The goals of treating cats with diabetes include: Restoring normal blood glucose concentration Minimizing or eliminating signs of weight loss. Minimizing or eliminating signs of increased thirst and urination. Normalizing the appetite. Avoiding inducing inappropriately low blood glucose levels with therapy.

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What Is Causing My Blood Sugars To Be Out Of Range

Here are some common scenarios of blood sugars being out of range, possible reasons for them and what to do if you face these scenarios.

High glucose levels before breakfast

Morning glucose levels are often referred to as fasting glucose levels. If these levels are out of range, you may find that it is difficult to keep your levels down for the rest of the day. Possible reasons why your blood sugar is high in the morning include:

• Consuming sweet drinks in the morning before measuring your sugar levels

• Forgetting to take medication

What to do if your blood sugar is high in the morning:

• If this is the first time you notice it happening or if it only happens occasionally, try taking note of what you had the night before and the duration of sleep you had

• If your blood sugar has been high in the mornings continuously for a few days, speak to your healthcare team about it

High glucose levels before meals

If your levels are out of the target range before your meals, think about whether you had anything to eat or drink within the last two hours. If the answer is yes, your glucose levels may have been caused by this. Perhaps you had a chocolate bar on the way home, or a sweet drink before dinner? If you have not consumed any food or drink, and your glucose levels are high before your meals, speak with your healthcare team as you may need to adjust your medication.

High glucose levels after meals

Hypoglycemia

How Often Is Enough

There are two sides to this, said Lisa Harris, CDE, RN at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois. Sure, some patients test just to test because their doctor said to do it, but if no one is actually looking at the blood sugar logs, and the patients themselves dont know how to interpret them, then yes, thats a waste.

But Harris says many patients with type 2 diabetes and even those with prediabetes would likely benefit from testing more frequently, not less.

Along with better diabetes education and support.

She also hopes to see continuous glucose monitors given to patients for a few days at a time shortly after a diagnosis of prediabetes or type 2 diabetes so they can see the fluctuations in their blood sugar levels for themselves.

Testing your blood sugar can be extremely informative for people when theyre trying to prevent the need for further medication, like insulin, Harris told Healthline. Even if theyre only taking metformin, seeing for themselves how certain types of foods affect their blood sugar can have the biggest impact on motivating them to make changes in their diet.

Harris says, on the other hand, if a patient is showing consistently healthy blood sugar levels over a period of a few months, its appropriate to take a break from frequent testing.

Id tell them, Just keep doing what youre doing, and periodically, well spot-check, testing frequently for a few days just to see that things are still on track, she said.

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How Many Times Do You Really Check Your Blood Sugars At The Early Stages Of Diabetes

You dont really have to check too many times. If your blood sugars are not very uncontrolledMeaning your A1c is below 7%, you can check it once a day in the mornings, just to keep an eye on your blood sugars overall. As we mentioned occasionally you can check it after meals to see where your blood sugars are. You can do that occasionally after meals. Lets say you think that you had too much carbs, and you want to check. This will help you understand how food affects you and so forth. For example,if your overall well controlled and youre waking up with you know say 100 Or 110 and then occasionally you check after meals and you never go more than 160 170 after meals then youre pretty well controlled.

Know Your Blood Glucose Targets

Before you use another test strip, make sure you know your blood glucose targets.

In a telephone survey of 500 people with type 2 diabetes, over half of those taking no diabetes medication, 30 percent of those taking pills, and 12 percent of those taking insulin did not have blood sugar level targets. See our blood glucose guidelines for general targets. Then ask your health care provider what ranges are right for you.

Type of test: Fasting

American Diabetes Association recommends: 70-130 mg/dl

American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists recommends: Less than 110 mg/dl

Type of test: A1C

American Diabetes Association recommends: various A1C goals, from 6.5 percent to less than 8 percent. Talk to your provider about what A1C goal is best for you based on your diabetes control, age, and overall health. If you can keep your glucose levels in tight control with minimal hypoglycemia, then 6.5 percent may work well for you. However, if you are older, have had diabetes for many years, or have some unawareness of hypoglycemia, then an A1C of 8 percent may be better.

American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists recommends: 6.5 percent or less

Note: A woman who is pregnant or trying to get pregnant will have lower target numbers for the health of her baby. Children have higher target numbers. Elderly people, especially those who have cardiac disease, may have higher target numbers.

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