Monitoring blood glucose levels is crucial for diabetics to manage their disease and prevent complications. While urine glucose tests are inaccurate, blood glucose meters provide a more accurate reading and come in various styles and features. Insurance coverage for meters and strips can vary, but having access to these tools can greatly improve a diabetic’s quality of life.
For a diabetic, daily monitoring of blood glucose levels is the most important aspect of managing the disease. Keeping blood sugar at a healthy, normal level helps the diabetic feel better in the short term and dramatically reduces complications in the long term. With the specters of heart disease, blindness, kidney failure, limb amputation and dementia haunting the future of a poorly controlled diabetic, good control now means a better quality of life later.
Doctors have long known that the presence of glucose in the urine means that a diabetic generally has high blood glucose. A negative urine glucose means your diabetes is under better management, but how much better? The urine glucose test is an inaccurate test, at best. Hence, medical laboratories have been monitoring blood glucose levels for many years. In the United States this number is expressed in milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl), while the international standard expresses the level in millimoles per liter (mmol/l). An approximate conversion from one to the other is obtained by multiplying the number of mmol/L by 18 to arrive at the mg/dL reading, or by dividing the number of mg/dL by 18 to obtain the mmol/L equivalent.
So, any person can get a blood glucose level by having their blood checked by a laboratory (usually through a doctor’s office) or by using a blood glucose meter at home. This is a small device that uses proprietary strips that take a small drop of blood and give a reading of your blood glucose level.
Anton Clemons patented the first blood glucose meter for home use in 1971, while working for the Ames Research Group. Other companies caught on and began developing their own meters, but the 1980s were almost over before home blood glucose meters became common in diabetic homes, or before most insurance companies covered them. Nowadays, ads for home blood glucose meters are all over television, and coupons for them appear in newspapers and magazines.
How these meters actually measure blood glucose is too complex for an article of this magnitude. However, it is understood that these meters are generally accurate to +/- 20 percent, usually by a narrower margin than this. However, even within these parameters, it is possible for a diabetic to get good control using home glucose meter readings. For example, if a meter reads 110 mg/dL, the reading could go as high as 132 or as low as 88. However, most meters are much closer to the actual 20 percent number, and the user’s experience with a particular meter will give you a “feel” of how the meter usually reads.
Blood glucose meters come in a wide variety of styles, with many different features. Some meters use individual test strips, while some models have a disc filled with strips inside the meter itself. Some have backlit reading screens and some are slim to fit in a purse or pocket. A diabetic is advised to check which brands his insurance will cover before purchasing a meter. Counters are relatively cheap and are sometimes free. The strips, however, are expensive, sometimes over $100 US dollars for 100 test strips. An insured person can pay a co-pay, usually for 300 strips at a time, saving a lot of money, if the doctor prescribes a meter and strips.
Diabetics in the 21st century are extremely fortunate to have access to reasonably accurate tools for measuring their blood glucose levels. Whether their equipment includes a doctor’s lab or a home blood glucose meter, this knowledge enables diabetics to live longer, happier and healthier lives.
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