Control and Testing
Self-monitoring of blood glucose is an essential and central part of treating your diabetes. As you live with your diabetes, self-monitoring tells whether your therapy is working. And the results of self-monitoring guide you and your healthcare team to adjust the many parts of your therapy.
Self-monitoring is the best way to see how your body handles food, exercise, diabetes medication, stress and illness. Testing your blood glucose lets you see what happens to your blood sugar when you eat certain kinds or amounts of food, do certain exercises, or lose or gain weight. You can see what effect your medications have on your blood glucose level, which tells you whether they are working properly. Your blood glucose result may prompt you to eat a snack, take more insulin or go for a walk. It also alerts you to a blood glucose level that is too high or too low, which requires special treatment.
Decrease Diabetes Complications
If you frequently test your blood glucose, you will have better control over your diabetes and fewer complications as well. According to the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial ( DCCT),
- More frequent blood glucose testing can significantly help to decrease or slow development of complications in people with type 1 diabetes.
- Intensive therapy (including frequent self-monitoring and frequent insulin administration) designed to lower blood glucose levels reduces the risk of complications such as eye, kidney and nerve damage by up to 75% for people with type 1 diabetes.
According to the United Kingdom Prospective Diabetes Study ( UKPDS), better blood glucose control for people with type 2 diabetes reduces the risk of:
- major diabetic eye disease by 25%
- early kidney damage by 33%
- death from long-term diabetes complications by 33%
- strokes by more than 33%
