Type 1 Diabetes: Tracking Blood Sugar Levels
For people with type 1 diabetes, tracking blood sugar levels is a critical daily habit.
If you have type 1 diabetes, then what you eat, how much you exercise, and how you take your medications can affect the most important measure of your health: your blood sugar levels.
Diabetes: Why Blood Sugar Needs to Be Checked
Blood sugar levels can change throughout the day, and should be checked at least four times a day, maybe more.
Why so often?
Even though you take your medications as you have been told to, you should still check your blood sugar levels to make sure that your medications are working correctly and that you are making the best choices in diet and exercise. Since it is not possible to “feel” high blood sugar, you need to test for it.
“In many cases we are looking for patterns so that we can make appropriate adjustments,” explains Suzanne Ghiloni, RN, BSN, a diabetes educator at the Joslin Diabetes Center at Harvard University in Boston.
For example, if someone tests and finds that he has high blood sugar after lunch on a regular basis, that’s when Ghiloni starts her detective work: Is the person eating correctly? Is he taking his insulin before lunch as he is supposed to? Does he need to change his insulin dose? Solving these problems can help get people with type 1 diabetes get on track to better health.
Checking your blood sugar and learning how to respond if the results are too high or too low will give you a sense of control over your diabetes.
“The more people learn about how to manage their diabetes, the more they feel that they can make good decisions and are in control of it,” says Ghiloni.
Diabetes: How to Check Blood Sugar
Your diabetes nurse or educator will teach you how to self-monitor blood glucose. Most often you will prick your finger with what’s called a lancet so that a drop of blood can be put on a test strip and read by your monitor. Make sure you know whether the monitor reports results as whole blood or blood plasma. You should have the results in under a minute.
It is a good idea to make notes about when you test your blood sugar levels, what the results are, and what you did about those results if they were high or low.
“Written records are very much appreciated,” says Ghiloni.
Many people default to the memory in their meter, says Ghiloni, which is better than nothing, but may not give all the information your team needs to help solve problems. A meter may record the time when you took your blood test, but it doesn’t say whether an 11:30 a.m. test is before lunch, after breakfast, or when you first woke up after sleeping in.
Diabetes: When to Check Blood Sugar
You should check your blood sugar before breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and before bed. You may also want to check your blood sugar at other times of the day, such as:
- Two hours after meals, to find out how your body is responding to food
- Before and after exercise
- Before you get into your car
Ghiloni says that driving with low blood sugar is very dangerous; if your blood sugar is below 90, don’t drive.
Note that if your numbers are not terrific on a particular day, you mustn’t beat yourself up. Keep telling yourself that you are testing your blood sugar levels to see how well your diabetes care plan is working. If the numbers say your plan needs adjustment, then that’s what you need to do. Judging yourself won’t help; changing your care plan could.
Diabetes: Other Blood Sugar Tests
Your doctor will also order a blood test called an A1C, which gives an idea of how well you have controlled your blood sugar over the past three months. Your goal is to be below 7 percent. To achieve this, your blood sugar levels have to be controlled all day, every day — another reason to be vigilant.
Have you checked your blood sugar today?