Understanding Diabetes Glucose Monitors

Understanding how to properly use glucose monitors is vital to controlling diabetes. One trick that I have learned along the way is that these expensive meters can be obtained for free at the doctors office. No lie! My endocrinologist hands them out like fast food restaurants hand out napkins! Once you have your meter you will need to first turn it on and then code your strips to the meter.This code is located on your test strip bottle in big, bold numbers. I have had malfunctions with test strips in the past, and its no fun. First learn to keep the test strip bottle secured when not in use and check the dates on the bottles. This will help prevent false glucose readings from occurring.




Next, learn the different areas that you can take a blood sample and find which is most comfortable for you. Also, most "prickers" as I call them can be adjusted to accommodate tough skin and sensitive skin. Once you have "pricked" yourself try to avoid excessive "milking" of blood. What I mean by this is don't try to squeeze really hard to make more blood come out. Simply adjust the the level on your pricker to a higher level and try again.

You will learn to get the right amount of blood to avoid the annoying and costly "er" message when insufficient blood is on the strip but this is inevitable. Also make sure you change your needles after every use. I understand that we are in a recession and money is tight, but its not worth the infections so make budget cuts elsewhere for your own sake, please. I hope this article has helped your understanding of diabetes and feel free to visit my blog a add/comment.