Making Monitoring Work

An important part of self-care for people with diabetes is monitoring your blood glucose. It provides information on how food, physical activity and medications affect your blood glucose. The reason why monitoring is so important is that it is vital that you keep your levels within a range recommended by your health care team so you do not experience the short and long term complications associated with diabetes.

It is recommended that you; Check your fasting blood glucose, before and 2 hrs after a meal, and just before you go to bed for 3 consecutive days out of the week.

Checking your blood sugars consistently using this method helps yourself and your healthcare team to see a pattern in your blood glucose. Once a pattern is seen it creates a basis for a change or a continuation in your self- care plan. There are many ways of documenting your blood glucose but some are better than others.

Some blood glucose monitors allow you to upload your reading to a computer where it generates a graph to show you where your highs and lows are. If your machine does not do this then click on the link below. You can download a template, as the one above, that allows you to input your readings and then it automatically creates a graphical representation of your control.

http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/blood-sugar-chart.html

Knowing how to interpret this chart is important so take it along to your health care provider. They will be able to look at it in depth and teach you how to use the results.

Making monitoring work for you is one of the most important skills you can learn.