Home blood glucose monitoring

Home blood glucose monitoring provides a snapshot of how your treatment is working at one particular moment, so you can better tailor your eating program and medication. It also tells you if any symptoms you may be experiencing, such as sweating or feeling faint, are the result of low blood glucose (hypoglycemia), so you can treat this problem swiftly. When you are sick or under stress, careful monitoring helps you adjust your treatment program immediately to keep your blood glucose level from going too high or too low.

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Your doctor or diabetes team will help you decide what type of meter to buy. Most new meters today read the glucose level as if the blood sample were plasma rather than whole blood, since that's the way results are reported by your doctor's office or lab. By having the meter record results as "plasma glucose," you and your healthcare team can more easily compare your lab tests with your home tests. Plasma numbers run 10 to 12 percent higher than those for whole blood; if your pre-meal plasma glucose target is 90 to 130 mg/dl, the target would be 80 to 120 mg/dl if your meter reads whole blood.

This section has more on how to test your blood glucose.