Blood Glucose Monitoring

Knowing the level of glucose in your blood is useful to maintain day to day control of your diabetes, detect hypoglycaemia (abnormally low blood sugar levels), assess diabetes control during any illness, and helps to provide your healthcare team with information to alter your treatment to prevent any long-term complications from developing.

Checking your blood sugar level can tell you how well your treatment plan is working. It is a two-part process:

• Self testing of blood sugar at home gives your blood sugar level at the exact time of the test.
  Type 1 & Type 2 diabetics: Use a GlucoRx blood glucose monitoring system and see how it fast becomes a key part of your diabetes plan!
• The HbA1c (glycated haemoglobin; more of it is produced in the body by high blood glucose levels) test is done at your doctor’s office. It shows your average blood sugar over a sustained period of time, usually 90 days. The recommended goal is less than 7.0mmol/L.

The target blood glucose ranges below are indicated as a guide:

Children with Type 1 diabetes (NICE 2004)
Before meals: 4-8mmol/L
Two hours after meals: less than 10mmol/L

Adults with Type 1 diabetes (NICE 2004)
Before meals: 4-7mmol/L
2 hours after meals: less than 9mmol/L

Type 2 diabetes (NICE 2008)
Before meals: 4-7mmol/L
Two hours after meals: less than 8.5mmol/L

The test strips for the Nexus meter utilise latest FAD-dependant glucose dehydrogenase (GDH-FAD) enzymes for more accurate blood glucose measurement. This is particularly useful for insulin dependent Type 1 diabetics as GDH-FAD technology avoids interference from blood oxygen variations and can be applied to most blood samples; from capillary to artery, vein and AST. Additionally these GDH-FAD strips can prevent maltose and galactose interference in blood samples, i.e. no interference for patients on dialysis or those undergoing intravenous drip solutions.

Each diabetic should seek individualised expert advice regarding the need to measure their blood glucose level.

Get an action plan from your diabetes team that tells you exactly what to do when you get sick. For example, you should know:

• whether you will need insulin, or extra insulin
• when to call the doctor; call the doctor if your blood sugar is excessively high.
• what soft food and drink you should have on hand in case you are not able to eat normally; If you cannot eat, drink juice or regular (not diet) soda to keep your blood sugar up. If you cannot keep anything down, suck on ice chips and then sip clear soda such as regular ginger ale.
• what extra medicine you may need, for example, to settle your stomach. Keep taking your medicine.

Download ‘Blood Glucose Control’ leaflet

Note: Please see ‘Resources’ page (Resources) for further information on this disease as well as support groups.