Glucose Meter
With obesity quickly becoming a worldwide epidemic, diabetes is rapidly growing its number of sufferers. When you have diabetes or are at risk for diabetes, a glucose meter can be a life saving instrument. To understand why a glucose meter is so important, you must understand how diabetes works.
Before we do that, let's talk about how a normal body functions. Normally, when you eat food the body converts the food into glucose (blood sugar). In order for your cells to take in the glucose and benefit from its energy producing qualities, insulin produced by your pancreas must come a long and take the glucose to the cells that need additional energy. The insulin binds with the glucose which allows it to enter your cells and keep them working.
How Diabetes Works
There are two types of diabetes and each works differently so let's examine them separately.
Type 1 Diabetes: When you suffer from Type 1 Diabetes, also known as juvenile diabetes since it is most often diagnosed in children, you are suffering with a pancreas that does not produce enough insulin. That means the glucose your body creates out of food intake is left in your blood stream and cannot be taken to or absorbed by all the cells in your body. This can lead to weight loss, fatigue, coma, thirst and death. Type 1 Diabetes is only treated by the injection of insulin into the body.
Type 2 Diabetes: Type 2 Diabetes, also called adult onset diabetes, is a disorder in which the pancreas produces enough insulin for the body but the cells become resistant to insulin. Type 2 Diabetes is often caused by obesity because it creates a condition in which the body consistently has an elevated level of blood sugar (glucose) and because fat interferes with the body's ability to process insulin. The pancreas tries to resolve this issue by creating more and more insulin, but this simply elevates your insulin levels as well as your blood sugar. Type 2 Diabetes is usually resolved with exercise, weight loss and prescription medications like Glucophage.
What is a Glucose Meter?
A glucose meter is a machine that allows you to test your blood sugar (glucose) levels. This machine can help you manage both Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes and, in the case of Type 1 Diabetes, can help you determine when to take insulin injections and how much insulin to inject.
When you test your blood sugar with a glucose meter after certain meal, you can figure out which foods affect your diabetes negatively and which help keep your blood sugar levels on track. If you test your blood sugar with a glucose meter before and after exercise, you can determine which types of exercise have the most benefit to you and what time of day is best for you to exercise.
A glucose meter can help both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetics plan their lives, food, activities and exercise better. A glucose meter gives the control of your health back to you and helps to ensure that you have fewer problems managing your life around your blood sugar.
It is important that you log your results after testing your blood sugar with a glucose meter because it is this log that will help to reveal patterns and behaviors to you that will eventually make your life more manageable. Without a log that explains the time of day you used your glucose meter and what (or if) you had eaten you may not derive the same benefit out of the glucose meter as other diabetes sufferers are able to.
