The Diabetes Manager

Posts Tagged ‘diabetes testing’

Listed below are the various methods you can use to test your blood sugar levels. Though they differ in the way they do it, these diabetes testing methods are used for the same purpose. The best one for you is dependent on personal preference rather than anything else.

1. Blood sugar monitoring at home. This method is the most common. It involves pricking your finger with a sharp needle (professionally designed for this purpose). Having done this, you then need to squeeze some blood from your finger on to a testing strip. This test strip will then be placed into a meter which will in turn determine your blood sugar level.

2. Alternative self testing. Over time, meters which allow you to test blood taken from various parts of your body, not just your finger tip, have been developed; possible parts to test include: your upper arms, your forearms, the base of your thumb, and your thighs. Despite these additional options drawing blood from your finger tips remains the most used. The reason being that the blood in your finger tips gives a more precise reading than blood in other parts of your body.

3. Drawing blood through laser. Sometime in 1998, a laser device that was capable of extracting blood from a finger was approved by the FDA (Food & Drug Administration).. The development of the device was a result of the widespread complaints about the pain and inpractibility of existing methods. It’s a popular choice for those who feel uncomfortable piercing their skin with a needle.

4. Glucose monitoring system. This device involves a very small tube which is inserted under your skin. The device then collects small amounts of fluids and measures the sugar levels or content of these fluids over a 72 hour period. It’s an underused system but should be considered by those who forget or don’t always have time to take blood samples themselves.

5. The ‘Gluco Watch’. The FDA approved the Gluco Watch, which is device that is like a watch, in 2001. This watch-like meter helps you to measure your blood sugar levels three times per hour over a 12 hour period. This is one of the first diabetes testing meter that that is really non invasive.

When a body produces higher levels of sugar within the bloodstream it is known as the disorder diabetes. When individual has this disorder, the body loses its ability to breakdown excess sugars by itself. In order to breakdown additional sugar you require to add insulin at conventional intervals. The body will also require a diet mainly constructed for anyone with diabetes. If you think you can have diabetes, or it runs in your family, get a diabetes test done. The basic test is a blood workup.

When doctors first suspect that anyone has diabetes, they perform diabetes tests to make certain. One of these tests is a glucose test. Sometimes the tests are not conclusive. Where diabetes is concerned the essential way to determine it is by the glucose in the blood. The glucose level should be on top of 140 mg/dl and the test should always be given twice.

Besides the drawing of blood different diabetes test is a tolerance test which tests oral glucose. If you act not follow this ultimate rule then the diabetes test could be off plus ruin the results. The test is then repeated several extra times. The downside to this test is that someone must be in good shape and not on any medications for diabetes. Before doing any diabetes test you should steer clear from coffee plus cigarettes.

The glucose tolerance test measures your glucose levels within a three-hour period. It breaks down to about five separate diabetes tests in the course of that time frame. The glucose level of a person who drinks the sugar water will experience a raise five times then it will fall utterly rapidly. Impotency may well be found including Type 2 diabetes. It is essential to be tested when several of these symptoms arise, unusually if diabetes runs in the family.

Diabetes has steadily become a major public health problem over the years. According to the juvenile diabetes association, more than 120 million people in the United States. have diabetes, the majority of  them with type 2 diabetes. As the federal government and insurance companies begin to face rising health care costs of treating diabetes and the accompany problems, there is a great incentive to begin to identify those at risk for diabetes before they actually develop this chronic disease.

One way of determining this is with different kinds of diabetes pre-screening tests. Diabetes is a metabolic disorder in which a person has excess sugar in the blood. You can’t perform testing, however, by merely drawing blood and measuring the glucose levels. This is because a meaningful percentage of the public has normal blood glucose levels during the day but raised glucose levels as they eat during the day. Any valid test for diabetes has to take this into account.

Medical care practitioners use 3 primary text to determine if someone has diabetes. What they measure is how fast and efficiently your body is able to clear glucose from your blood stream. A test showing results of relatively high glucose levels is a good indication that you have glucose intolerance, pre-diabetes, or diabetes. The three tests are:

1) Casual or random plasma glucose test – the patient can be tested at any point in the day. According to the American Diabetes Association, a test showing a casual plasma glucose concentration of 200 milligrams or more per deciliter (mg/dl) , indicates that the person can be diagnosed with diabetes.

2) Fasting plasma glucose (FPG) testing – sometimes referred to as the fasting blood sugar test because the patient has to fast before the test is administered. Fasting, in this context, means that the patient has not consumed food or drink, other than water, for at least eight hours prior to the test. It’s probably most convenient when done first thing in the morning after a night’s sleep. The test measures blood sugar levels. The normal glucose level after fasting is approximately 100 mg/dl. A diagnosis of diabetes can be made if the glucose concentration is 126 mg/dl or more. Monitoring of the blood glucose measurements persists throughout the day. Because this test is relatively inexpensive, it is a popular one with insurance companies and health care providers. This is also a standard test given to check for pre-diabetes.

3) Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT) – This is the most comprehensive of the tests and considered the best by many. It’s more sensitive than the FPG test plus it can test for impaired glucose intolerance which the other two cannot. However, It is also the most expensive which makes it the least popular with insurance companies and health providers. The test is performed two hours after orally taking 75 grams of glucose. If the blood glucose results show 200 mg/dl or greater, a diagnosis of diabetes can be made.

It is possible that a test, for any number of reasons, can give a false positive and indicate that a person has diabetes when, in fact he doesn’t. This is why a diagnosis is not usually rendered until the results are confirmed with a repeat test.