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Blood Glucose Monitoring Systems

on wants to wait on the reading may be of some concern. There has to the ease of use of the system and a person choosing one may want to actually get on line and see how each of the blood glucose monitoring systems under consideration works, some requiring more steps for a final reading than others. Many of the latest monitors enable the diabetic person to actually use the arm rather than the finger as the place to do the testing, which can eliminate painful fingertips from daily pricks of the test lancet.

These monitor devices are really designed so that the patient can begin to learn how his or her body reacts to different foods and to the times of day. Each person is different on how they respond to the disease, and every person is different in response to certain foods. The blood glucose monitoring systems device helps the diabetic to learn over time what issues in life raise the glucose level. For example, stressful times have been shown to be a highly reactive time when sugar levels can certainly spike. Mornings may show lower than normal readings, reminding the person that breakfast is an important meal.

Now how accurate are the readings a person gets from these systems? Testing on different fingers or on arms may give three different readings from the same blood glucose monitoring systems meter. Testing with three different meters may also give three different readings and this can really be a problem if a person uses one brand of meter at work and another one at home. It would seem the best thing to do is get one brand of meter and stick with it, even if a person keeps one in the desk at work and one at home. Surprisingly, the standard for accuracy by the American Diabetes Association is that the ones sold in drug stores just need to be within 20% of an actual accurate reading. No doubt, the burden of diabetes often causes a person to groan over the daily grind of testing so often. The psalmist also shared his groans with God: "Give ear to my prayer O God, and hide not thyself from my supplication...attend unto me and hear me; I mourn in my complaint and make a noise." (Psalm 55: 1, 2)

Blood glucose monitoring systems are small battery powered devices that are easy to carry everywhere with the diabetic patient. The first ones just thirty years ago weighed six pounds and cost six hundred and fifty dollars, but now they weigh a few ounces and can be purchased for less than fifty dollars. A very small sample of blood is placed on a test strip and the strip is placed in the meter. The test strips are coated with chemicals such as glucose oxidate, dehydrogenase or hexokinase. These chemicals combined with glucose in the blood then allow the meter to see how much glucose is actually in the blood. Some meters test to see how much light reflects from the strip while others measure how much electricity can pass through the sample. Many of the blood glucose monitoring systems models now can store a number of readings for several days and others can provide downloads of info onto a computer.

Since there are about twenty five different models of these syste3ms on the market today, there is plenty of information to digest about each model before choosing. Since all of them are under a hundred dollars and many under fifty, close attention should be paid to what each meter can do. But more than that, perhaps the long term cost of certain blood glucose monitoring systems should be considered. And in that case, the cost of test strips should be explored. Test strips run between thirty and fifty cents apiece and if a person is testing three times a day, the overall cost of maintaining a certain system might want to be examined carefully. While most health insurance companies will cover the cost of such test strips, meeting the deductible may be a consideration worth pondering before finally settling on a particular monitoring system.

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