Mastering Diabetes: The Importance of Blood Glucose Monitoring

Blood Glucose Monitoring: Essential for Diabetes Management
Blood glucose monitoring is one of the most important management methods in both professional diagnosis and treatment of diabetes and daily monitoring of diabetics. In recent years, continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) systems that monitor the glucose concentration of interstitial fluid in the subcutaneous tissue by wearing a glucose sensor (users call it a sensor or probe) to reflect the blood glucose level have been increasingly recognized by diabetics.

The Rise of Continuous Glucose Monitoring
With the continuous application, development, and iteration of dynamic blood glucose monitoring technology, the blood glucose compliance rate of diabetics has significantly improved. In particular, compared with the previous finger-pricking measurement of peripheral blood glucose, dynamic blood glucose monitoring technology covers a variety of evaluation indicators and can pre-set high blood glucose/low blood glucose threshold alarms, which have received widespread attention and welcome from diabetics.

As a daily blood glucose management method, dynamic monitoring is becoming a must-have weapon for the majority of type 1 diabetics to control blood glucose, and is also gradually accepted by type 2 diabetes patients and prediabetic people who pay attention to blood glucose. While dynamic blood glucose monitoring facilitates blood glucose control, it also brings many new problems to diabetics.

Frequent Checking Adds Anxiety
While more and more diabetics use dynamic blood glucose monitoring devices as a tool for diabetes self-management, problems reported by patients in the real world have also followed. Especially for type 1 diabetics with large blood sugar fluctuations and parents (caregivers/guardians) of diabetics who have just started wearing dynamic blood sugar monitoring devices, they are often accustomed to the idea of spot testing blood sugar in the past. They only look at the real-time blood sugar value displayed by the dynamic blood sugar monitoring, plus the arrow indicating the blood sugar change, and hastily take measures to increase insulin or eat. Various blood sugar control interventions are frequent, so that from the review of the single and multi-day blood sugar spectrum, it can be seen that the blood sugar fluctuations show large peaks and valleys.

There are also diabetics with a long course of disease. With some accumulated self-regulation experience, in order to pursue a long-term blood sugar level as a straight line, they will also keep checking the dynamic monitoring of blood sugar and make frequent adjustments.

When the parents of diabetics share and view remotely, they feel more anxious and nervous. No wonder many diabetics and their families say that now they can't live without dynamics. Inappropriate and excessive psychological dependence has led to the fact that the results of blood sugar control have not improved as expected, and the unsatisfactory results of the stage feedback have increased the psychological frustration. As a result, there are constant complaints, and it seems that the expensive blood sugar monitoring tool has become a burden.

Case Study: Wearing a "Blood Sugar Electrocardiogram"
Xiao Liu is a type 1 diabetic who has been using insulin pump therapy for 6 years. In the past, because he was unwilling to prick his finger to measure blood sugar, he controlled blood sugar by feeling most of the time, resulting in ups and downs in self-management. The results of glycosylated hemoglobin measured every 3 months were mostly between 7.0% and 8.0%, and the occasional fingertip blood sugar was also high and low.

Since wearing a dynamic blood sugar monitoring sensor, he can easily check blood sugar at any time. Whenever he sees an upward arrow on the blood sugar graph, Xiao Liu will get up and walk up and down the stairs quickly. If it is not convenient to move, he will take out the insulin pump and press the tonic; on the contrary, when he sees the arrow showing a drop in blood sugar on the applet, he will add sweets to his meal, which often leads to increased blood sugar. In this way, the daily blood sugar trend graph fluctuates greatly, which is really worrying to see, and uneasy if you don't see it. In Xiao Liu's words, he is simply wearing a "blood sugar electrocardiogram".

Xiao Liu's situation is not uncommon among diabetics. Too frequent operation not only wastes energy, but often causes problems, making it difficult to control blood sugar satisfactorily. Tools like the Levemir FlexPen can help stabilize these fluctuations by providing consistent long-acting insulin.

Beautiful-Looking Blood Sugar Graph
So, those old diabetics with a long course of illness have accumulated a lot of experience in controlling blood sugar. Are they comfortable using new blood sugar management equipment? The real situation is not always so.

I often see several "god-level" diabetics in WeChat groups sharing their dynamic monitoring graphs. A straight line is very pleasing to the eye. But is there a real healthy life to support the beautiful straight line? Once, I talked about daily life with several diabetics and their parents. They said: When sitting or working, attending classes, or even playing with mobile phones, blood sugar is stable for a few hours, but I didn't expect that after get off work, get out of class, or getting up to move, blood sugar will change instantly. Eat some food, blood sugar will be high, infuse more insulin, and hypoglycemia will occur again. Therefore, in order to maintain a beautiful blood sugar graph, some diabetics would rather not eat food or inject insulin. Another time, I heard a doctor introduce that a young type 1 diabetic patient could flexibly use an insulin pump to adjust a nearly straight blood sugar graph for the day.

Success Is Dynamic, Failure Is Also Dynamic
More and more clinical studies have shown that dynamic continuous blood sugar monitoring is helpful for blood sugar management, especially the high or low blood sugar alarm function, which is indispensable for type 1 diabetic patients to achieve safe blood sugar control. As mentioned above, the seemingly perfect blood sugar graph obtained with the support of dynamic monitoring equipment, upon closer examination, does it improve the quality of life of diabetic patients, or does it do more harm than good? If it is the latter, what is the reason?

The problems that diabetic patients are entangled in daily use reflect that we still lack a comprehensive understanding of new medical devices.

In recent years, the "Type 1 Diabetes Diagnosis and Treatment Guidelines" and clinical physicians at home and abroad have reminded diabetic patients to pay attention to the indicator of glucose time in the target range (TIR), and to use blood sugar at 3.9-10.0mmol/L as the daily control target. Although this target range is different from the blood sugar range of normal people, it is a commonly used blood sugar target range in clinical practice.

The dynamic blood glucose monitoring devices for personal applications that have been launched on the market also use this range as an important indicator. Reasonable regulation of blood sugar fluctuations within this range is the relatively scientific and healthy life norm and pursuit of type 1 diabetics. Using tools like the Levemir FlexPen can help maintain these levels by providing steady, long-acting insulin.

Three Stages of Blood Sugar Control
The author has repeatedly proposed that diabetics and their families should follow the three stages of "starting point, advanced, and synchronous" to control blood sugar. The first stage: learning the basic knowledge of diabetes prevention and control, which is an indispensable and important starting point. The second stage: learning diabetes prevention and control knowledge and sugar control practices, standardizing blood sugar management on the basis of new medical equipment assistance, and then achieving comprehensive compliance with various indicators. The third stage: sharing the experience of resisting blood sugar control, helping fellow diabetics, and making progress together.

I hope that type 1 diabetics can scientifically control blood sugar with the help of new technologies and new equipment like the Levemir FlexPen, and gain more freedom and happiness.