Today’s blood glucose meters are small, fast, and portable, and they are getting more accurate—and sophisticated—with each generation. Most of them interface with computers, and some have the ability to send data wirelessly to other diabetes devices. Some meters allow you to reapply blood to the test strip, if needed; others let you easily share your glucose data with your family members and/or doctors. Still others enable you to track not just your glucose levels, but your medication, carbohydrates, and exercise, too.
But are you taking advantage of all that modern meters have to offer? Are you checking smart, or just checking? Are you even doing it… right? This primer on blood glucose self-monitoring will help you assess how you’re doing and guide you toward using your numbers to improve your control, not just fill up your logbook.
MONITORING TECHNIQUE
To measure the concentration of glucose in your blood, you put a strip in the meter, stick your finger with a lancing device to get a sample of blood, touch the tip of the test strip to the drop of blood, and wait for the result. It sounds pretty straightforward. But, of course, the devil is in the details.
Setting up
Let’s start at the start. Once you have your meter, strips, lancing device, and lancet assembled, what’s the first thing you should do? While there’s no right or wrong answer, the most efficient way to get started is to put a strip in the meter. Once the strip is in the meter and, if it’s a coded meter, the code has flashed, the meter will do a self-test and then signal that it’s ready for a blood sample. The amount of time a meter takes to do its self-test varies by brand and model. This self-test is the main reason it’s more efficient to turn on the meter by inserting a strip first, before you lance your finger for a blood sample. It’s better to have the meter waiting for your blood than to have blood drying on your finger while you get the meter ready.
Speaking of getting a blood sample…
Lancing issues
The next step in measuring your blood glucose is to get some blood for the meter, and thus we arrive at one of the debates surrounding self-monitoring of blood glucose: Do you first need to clean your finger with an alcohol pad? The answer is no.
At one time, cleaning the lancing site with alcohol was the standard recommendation for self-monitoring. This advice stemmed from unsubstantiated worries about infection from the environment. But times have changed, and the evidence simply does not support the need to clean the skin with alcohol prior to lancing it. In fact, using alcohol may be counterproductive, as it can dilute the blood sample and lead to an erroneous result.
The only situation in which cleaning a lancing site with alcohol might conceivably be helpful is in a hospital, where the potential for contact with infectious pathogens is higher than in the rest of the world. But even so, bacteria such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other hospital-dwelling menaces are tough bugs that are unlikely to be killed by lowly alcohol pads, and there’s no evidence that such pathogens can spread through a finger-prick, anyway. A quick wash of your hands with soap and water will ensure that any surface residue that might interfere with the test is
