Understanding the Need for Diabetic Monitoring Using a Blood Sugar Monitor

If you have a family history of diabetes you need to be extra careful about your lifestyle and make sure that you have regular diabetic testing, including a diabetes blood test using a diabetes meter. Diabetes is usually a lifelong disease in which there are high levels of sugar in the blood. Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas to control blood sugar. Diabetes can be caused by too little insulin, resistance to insulin, or both.

People with diabetes have high blood sugar because their body cannot move sugar into fat, liver, and muscle cells to be stored for energy. This is because either:

Their pancreas does not make enough insulin
Their cells do not respond to insulin normally
Both of the above

Several things happen when food is digested:

A sugar called glucose enters the bloodstream. Glucose is a source of fuel for the body.
An organ called the pancreas makes insulin. The role of insulin is to move glucose from the bloodstream into muscle, fat, and liver cells, where it can be used as fuel.

There are two major types of diabetes. The causes and risk factors are different for each type:

Type 1 diabetes an occur at any age, but it is most often diagnosed in children, teens, or young adults. In this disease, the body makes little or no insulin. Daily injections of insulin are needed. The exact cause is unknown.
Type 2 diabetes akes up most diabetes cases. It most often occurs in adulthood. However, because of high obesity rates, teens and young adults are now being diagnosed with it. Many people with type 2 diabetes do not know they have it.

For anyone showing the signs it is essential to have regular diabetes monitoring after a positive test for diabetes.

Symptoms

High blood sugar levels can cause several symptoms, including:

Blurry vision
Excess thirst
Fatigue
Hunger
Urinating often
Weight loss

Tests:

A urine analysis may show high blood sugar. However, a urine test alone does not diagnose diabetes. Fasting blood glucose level -- diabetes is diagnosed if it is higher than 126 mg/dL twice. Levels between 100 and 126 mg/dL are called impaired fasting glucose or pre-diabetes. These levels are risk factors for type 2 diabetes.

Self-monitoring of blood glucose

This provides people with diabetes with an accurate method of measuring blood glucose concentrations and therefore detecting both hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia. Although glucose meters are not prescribable at NHS expense, they are often provided free to patients from the manufacturers on the basis of income made from the testing strips, which are prescribable at NHS expense and each type of testing strip is specific to each sugar monitor.

A blood sugar monitor is not very expensive and is an essential tool for anyone trying to control their diabetes monitoring. Treatment of diabetes involves medicines, diet, and exercise and getting better control over your blood sugar, cholesterol, and blood pressure levels helps reduce the risk of kidney disease, eye disease, nervous system disease, heart attack, and stroke.