A Blood Glucose Meter is primarily used for testing our blood to monitor our glucose level. However, there are other purposes too. Understanding the different purposes gives you better ideas of how to use a glucose meter more effectively.

What Are The Purposes Of Glucose Meter?

1. Monitor Quality Of Insulin

Sometimes, your insulin might be long expired and you may not know or the expiry date wasn’t clearly indicated on the packaging. Hence if you are taking insulin regularly yet your blood glucose level seems to behave abnormally, it could be a problem with the insulin and you should either verify them with your health care provider and purchase new ones immediately.

2. Monitor And Adjust Your Insulin Dosage

You can check your blood glucose level many times a day and observe for any abnormality or consistent pattern over a period of time. Example, if your glucose level went too high on every morning consistently over the entire week, you may consult your health care provider if you should take extra or lesser insulin during the morning time to increase or lower your blood glucose and avoid health risk.

3. Understand The Effects Of The Food And Portion Choices

Certain glucose meters with food monitoring feature allow you to manage your glucose level before and after each meal and provide you with the average results over a period of time. You shall be able to understand the effects of your food and portion choices and decide whether you should avoid certain food choice or consume lesser portion where necessary.

You may like to consult your diabetes educator for more information on the purposes of a blood glucose meter too.

This “wrist watch” version of Blood Glucose Meter, also known as GlucoWatch, is a new technology glucose testing product that will test your blood glucose through fluid drawn from under your skin with electrodes, rather than your blood itself. The process is painless.

How It Works?

A GlucoWatch depend on a skin pad that adhere to the skin, and measure your blood glucose using electric current. When your blood glucose goes too high or low, an alarm will sound off.

Key Features :

• Readings can be generally taken up to 3 times an hour. Certain models of GlucoWatch can take as frequent as every 10 minutes.
  
• Skin-pad can be worn as long as 13 hours yet need to be changed periodically.
• Ideal for pregnant women who want to catch low blood glucose that occurs during the night.

Note(s) :

• A new calibration is required whenever a new skin-pad is replaced which should be every 12 hours.

Update :

A Blood Glucose Meter with food monitoring capability allows you to manage your blood glucose before and after each meal so that you can be aware of the effects of your food and portion choices. You may then make necessary adjustment to continue to enjoy the food you like yet maintaining your body glucose level everyday.

How Does It Work?

Add a meal flag – You can simply flag your blood glucose results as before or after meal. This will help to remind you of the impact of your food choices. Over time (7 days, 14 days or 30 days), the meter will provide you with the meal averages too.

Add a comment – After each test, you can store your result and attach a simple comment to it to note why your glucose level for that test was particularly high or low eg. “Mild Exercise”.

Benefits :

A Food Monitoring Blood Glucose Meter can typically store results and show either the average of all results, average of all before-meal results, or the average of all after-meal results. It can also show average results for 7 days, 14 days or 30 days.

Some will come with free diabetes educational material (user manual, DVD and a booklet) to help you manage your diabetes around meals.

Example :
OneTouch Ultra2 Meter

A Combined Wrist Blood Pressure And Blood Glucose Meter is fundamentally a 2-in-1 product that eliminates the need to purchase a Blood Sugar Meter and Blood Pressure Monitor separately. It is most ideal for people with both diabetes (hyperglycemia) and high blood pressure (hypertension) for home use. It is typically compact, light-weight, comfortable, designed for ease of use and accurate measurements.

How It Works?

Use your wrist to take your blood pressure using the oscillometric BP method with wrist cuff technology. When testing your blood for glucose, it works almost the same like a Blood Sugar Meter except that now you place your blood sample on the same device too. Stores results for both blood glucose and blood pressure tests.

Price Range :

Slightly cheaper than you get both devices separately. Around $50 – $56 per unit.

Note :

This device does not measure your blood glucose using the wrist function (you need a Wrist-Watch Blood Glucose Meter for this). The wrist function is solely for blood pressure monitoring only. Blood test for this still requires traditional blood sampling with test strip and testing with a lancet device.

An All-In-One Blood Glucose Meter is a compact, light-weight and convenient meter that you can place into your backpack, briefcase, suitcase, carrying bag or sport bag where-ever you go. Due to it’s convenience, you can now test more often so you can monitor and manage your diabetes (hyperglycemia) closer.

Different models of such meters arrive with different designs and conveniences. Below are some key features which you need to know.

Key Features :

• No individual test strip handling. Certain brands/models come with preloaded test strips within. All you need is to punch a button and the test strip is ready for you. See Example.
• Alternatively, if you prefer to handle test strips yourself, some would come with a drum of test strips yet with a built-in blood glucose meter as the cover. Upon running out all strips or expiration date, you may simply discard the whole unit away. See Example.
• Attachable or detachable lancet device. Certain brands/models comes with a lancet device that can be used either attached or detached from the meter itself.
• Lesser test sample (as low as 1uL) and less painful.
• Comes as light weight as 4.2 oz.

Pricing Range :

$30 to $35 per unit

A Lancet in medical terms, refers to a surgical knife with a short, wide, pointed double-edged blade, used especially for making punctures and small incisions.

A Lancet Device is a medical device that holds the lancet firmly in place. When the user triggers the device, the lancet will move ahead in a linear way to prick against any skin or surface in a controlled manner.

Purpose Of Lancet Device And Lancet :

Lancet device and lancet are typically used in blood glucose monitoring to draw out a small amount of blood sample from the patient for testing of glucose level. The blood sample will be dropped onto a test strip and inserted into a blood glucose meter for result.

How To Choose A Good Lancet Device :

• Comfort level (some lancet devices allow you to adjust the depth which the lancet goes into your skin. Pick one that provides different levels of depth so that the process can be less painful.
• Ease Of Use (pick one that has ease of adjustment setting and ease of triggering to release the lancet)
• Safe To Use (pick one that does not expose the lancet)

Important :

Do not recycle a lancet. Always remember to insert a new one before you use the lancet device and dispose the lancet immediately after each use for safety purpose.

A Blood Glucose Meter is also known as a Blood Sugar Meter, Glucose Meter or Glucometer. It is fundamentally a medical device which measures the concentration of glucose in human blood using a blood glucose test strip.

By testing a person’s glucose level using a Glucose Meter allows him to be aware of his medical condition in the shortest period of time. If a person’s blood glucose is either too low (hypoglycemia) or high (hyperglycemia), life-saving remedial action can be carried out immediately and a human life might be salvaged in time.

Question: How Does One Look Like?

A Glucose Meter comes typically in the size of a palm of the hand which may not necessarily be. Most of which are battery-operated and portable.

Question: What Cannot Be Tested?

A Glucose Meter cannot be used for complex (haematology) blood tests like Full Blood Count, Platelet Count etc.

Note(s) :

If a patient’s blood glucose is too low, you can quickly offer him high-sugared food/drink to consume which will help in bringing his glucose level out of risk. Else if his blood glucose is too high, you can offer him with extra insulin to bring down his glucose level (please consult your health care provider further for this).

Important :

Treating consistently high blood glucose level is important so that it can decrease a patient’s chances of developing heart, blood vessel or nerve complications from diabetes.

Written And Updated On : 10th October 2008

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Written And Updated On : 10th October 2008

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