Diabetes – Blood Sugar Checks

Transcript

Many people with diabetes need to check their blood sugar on a regular basis because it allows us to identify trends and adjust medications to improve blood sugars. It really depends on the medications you’re taking whether or not you need to check your blood sugar. For example, there are a lot of medications for type 2 diabetes where you probably never have to check your blood sugar at all. Whether your blood sugar is checked needs to be individualized – you need to talk to your diabetes provider to figure out if it would help you at all. On the other hand, people who are taking insulin do need to check their blood sugar because there are a lot of different doses of insulin and we just can’t adjust those doses without having some information about what the blood sugar is doing. If you’re only taking one injection of insulin a day (like many people with type 2 diabetes) you might be okay just checking your blood sugar once or twice a day. On the other hand, people with type 1 diabetes who are taking 3 or 4 injections a day or using a pump, it might be necessary for you to check your blood sugar 4, 5, or even more times a day. It really depends on what treatment you have, whether or not you should check your blood sugar.