Measuring your blood sugar levels with a blood glucose meter can help you control your diabetes. Watch a video guide on how to test your blood sugar. (2024)

FAQs

How does blood glucose meter help diabetes? ›

It gives you information on how to manage your diabetes on a daily — and sometimes even hourly — basis. Monitoring your blood sugar is important when you have diabetes, especially if you use insulin. The results of blood sugar monitoring can help you make decisions about food, physical activity and dosing insulin.

Place the device against the side of your finger and press the plunger. Use a different finger each time and a different area. Take your meter with the test strip and hold it against the drop of blood. It'll tell you if the test strip is filled, usually by beeping.

Insulin. Diabetes medicines like insulin, which lowers the amount of sugar in the blood, affect blood sugar levels too. You'll learn to balance it with the foods you eat. Your care team will teach you about using insulin, and how and when to adjust it.

A small device called a glucose meter or glucometer measures how much sugar is in the blood sample. The drop of blood you get with a finger prick is often enough to use on a test strip.

Blood glucose meters require you to prick your finger with a small device called a lancet. You apply a drop of blood to a test strip and insert it into a small, electronic glucose meter, which measures the glucose is in your blood. Continuous glucose monitors (CGM) use a tiny sensor that you insert under your skin.

Less than 100 mg/dL (5.6 mmol/L ) is normal. 100 to 125 mg/dL (5.6 to 6.9 mmol/L ) is diagnosed as prediabetes. 126 mg/dL (7.0 mmol/L ) or higher on two separate tests is diagnosed as diabetes.

If you're living with diabetes, tracking your blood sugar is an important part of managing the disease. The target for people with diabetes is 70 to 130 mg/dL before meals and less than 180 mg/dL after meals.

The dawn phenomenon is an early-morning rise in blood sugar, also called blood glucose, in people with diabetes. The dawn phenomenon leads to high levels of blood sugar, a condition called hyperglycemia. It usually happens between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m. The cause of the dawn phenomenon isn't clear.

From 90 to 130 mg/dL (5.0 to 7.2 mmol/L) for adults. From 90 to 130 mg/dL (5.0 to 7.2 mmol/L) for children, 13 to 19 years old. From 90 to 180 mg/dL (5.0 to 10.0 mmol/L) for children, 6 to 12 years old. From 100 to 180 mg/dL (5.5 to 10.0 mmol/L) for children under 6 years old.

Insulin and glucagon are vital for maintaining moderate blood sugar levels. Insulin helps the cells absorb glucose from the blood, while glucagon triggers a release of glucose from the liver. People with type 1 diabetes need to take supplemental insulin to prevent their blood sugar levels from becoming too high.

What makes diabetes worse? ›

Even if you have a healthy diet and are taking tablets or using insulin therapy, exercise, illness and stress can affect your blood glucose levels. Other factors that may affect your blood glucose levels include drinking alcohol, taking other medicines and, for women, hormonal changes during the menstrual cycle.

Blood glucose monitoring can help you to keep your blood glucose level in your recommended target range. To live well with diabetes, it's important that you keep your blood glucose levels as close to target range as possible.

Monitoring blood sugar helps to determine if you are meeting your glucose targets which helps to reduce the unpleasant symptoms of high and low blood sugar, and avoid long-term diabetes complications. It is helpful to remember that the numbers are neither good nor bad.

When you have diabetes, your body doesn't make enough insulin, can't use it as well as it should, or both. Too much glucose stays in your blood and doesn't reach your cells. Over time, having too much glucose in your blood can cause serious health problems (diabetes complications).

Diabetes is a problem with your body that causes blood glucose levels to rise higher than normal. This is also called hyperglycemia. When you eat, your body breaks food down into glucose and sends it into the blood. Insulin then helps move the glucose from the blood into your cells.