So, this the only post so far that I wasn’t sure of how to
write. I do not know much about blood or how a blood sugar meter works and I
couldn’t find much information online. So I will post what I found and give a
few fun facts. This will be a short post!
First, this picture is my finger with my own drop of blood.
This is about how much blood that is needed to do a blood sugar a test. I put
the blood on the tip if my test strip and it sucks it into the meter. The meter
then waits about 5 seconds and gives me a number. This is what I use as my
blood sugar level and correct that number using insulin if needed.
So, I couldn’t find much about how my meter works. I may
have to do more research or figure out a different way to search for it. But I
found this from http://engineering.mit.edu/ask/how-do-glucometers-work:
“Current glucometers use test strips containing glucose
oxidase, an enzyme that reacts to glucose in the blood droplet, and an
interface to an electrode inside the meter,” explains Michael Strano, the Charles and
Hilda Roddey Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. “When the
strip is inserted into the meter, the flux of the glucose reaction generates an
electrical signal,” he says. “The glucometer is calibrated so the number
appearing in its digital readout corresponds to the strength of the electrical
current: The more glucose in the sample, the higher the number.”
I’m not really sure how to simplify what he said. If this
confuses you a lot and you still want to know, I can try to simplify! But I may
end up confusing you all more.
There are two ways to measure blood glucose. Here in
America, milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl) is used. Pretty much the rest of the
world uses millimoles per liter (mmol/L). There is a little math required to
convert from one to the other. There are websites online that will do this
easily. But the math is 1 mmol/L = 18 mg/dl.
So when I say I’m at 125, a good blood sugar for me, it would be 6.9
mmol/L. I took my blood sugar of 125 and divided it by 18 to get mmol/L. In the
diabetes support groups on facebook that I frequent, there is a mixture of
mmol/L and mg/dl. We have learned pretty quickly to convert so that we don’t
panic that someone is at 6.9 mg/dl since that’s what we are used to here in
America when they are in Europe or somewhere else and use mmol/L.
That’s about it for diabetes related blood information
besides the blood tests needed to watch while dealing with diabetes. But that
will be in a different post!
Here are some fun facts about blood!
There are about 15 drops (about the size in the picture) in
1 ml. So during the day, I test my blood sugar 8 times a day on average. I
bleed out about .5 ml a day. Which is not much at all! The human body holds
about 6 liters on average (actual is based on hydration status and body weight).
So a 150 lb person will have about 6,000 ml of blood in circulation.
Red blood cells (that carry oxygen, glucose, and other
things in the blood) last around 120 days before they die and get recycled.
This is why the 3 month average test (HbA1c : hemoglobin A1C) test is used to
check overall control of diabetes. I’ll talk about about HbA1c in a different
post!
And just so you all know. A diabetic who pricks their finger
and sees blood daily can still be squeamish about blood! I will not watch my
blood get drawn and if I cut myself I turn into a 3 year old girl and Jeff has
to take care of me.
You can see in the picture all of the marks from all of the
blood sugar tests I do! This is key in managing my diabetes!
I got my information from:
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