You can’t manage what you don’t measure. Before we can manage our blood sugar, we need to know exactly where it is.
Measure often
There’s no way to know your blood sugar level without measuring it. You might think you feel high or low sugar, and to some extent you might, but the feeling will give you an imprecise idea and is often wrong. It’s much better to measure.
My preferred method is to use continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). The two popular systems are Dexcom and Freestyle Libre. I tried both and was very successful with them. People have personal preferences, but both work fine. There is no pricking your fingers, no awkwardness when you need to know your sugar but are out in public, and you get a ton of info that can help you manage your condition.
The CGM systems monitor your glucose 24/7. It works with your phone and can display not only what your sugar currently is, but also the direction it’s going and how quickly. When I first started using it I got a lot of info about how different foods affect me. You can clearly see how quickly a pasta dish raises your blood sugar and compare it to a veggie-based dish. You can also see trends, not only within a day but over time. If you have a chance, I highly recommend CGM.
If your health insurance doesn’t cover CGM, you have to check your blood glucose manually. That’s better than nothing but nowhere near as convenient. Still, it’s important and you need to do it regularly.
No insurance covers an infinite number of test strips. Usually, you get 2 a day or so. The assumption is that you’ll test twice a day, morning and evening, and that’s it. I find this not informative enough. At the same time, test strips are expensive so I don’t want to buy more and pay full price for them. I learned a different system that I’m going to share with you.
When my insurance didn’t cover CGM and I used test strips, I didn’t do the same thing every day. 5 days a week I tested in the morning only, as soon as I got up. The other 2 days I tested 4 times: morning, just before lunch, just before dinner, and before bedtime. I picked those 2 days a week at random, so it wasn’t always the same day. This way, I had a better picture of what my body was doing and could make adjustments while staying within my test-strip budget.
If you do the math you’ll notice that each week I had a strip left over. I used it as a spare, just in case. If, on occasion, I suspected my sugar was out of whack, I used those spare strips to check it.
Some smart watches offer blood sugar readings. Unfortunately, I have yet to find one that actually works. Hopefully soon we’ll all be able to use these.
Keep a journal
It’s not enough to know what our sugar is at any particular moment. It’s more helpful to know what it’s doing over time. To keep track long term, I use a diabetes journal. There are several on the market, but the most common ones are better suited for type 1 diabetes.
I recommend my own journal. It has space not just for blood sugar numbers and meds, but also for food and exercise. It’s very thorough and helpful in tracking data, and if I notice irregularities I can go back to see what I ate and what activities I did. I can then use this info to figure out the reason for the irregularities. I’ve kept my journal for years.