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Continuous glucose monitoring or CGM is a wearable technology that makes it much easier to track your blood glucose levels over time. Blood glucose and blood sugar are interchangeable terms.
What Do CGM Devices Measure?
Continuous glucose monitoring devices are efficient tools for those with diabetes. It accurately measures your blood glucose levels throughout the 24 hours of a day, provided you are wearing the device.
Insulin is a hormone that helps your body in regulating your blood glucose levels. If you are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, your body does not produce enough insulin. When it comes to type 2 diabetes, your body produces insulin, but it cannot use this insulin effectively.
Individuals with diabetes need to administer insulin to themselves regularly to help in keeping their blood glucose levels within the target range.
Importance Of Blood Glucose Monitoring
Close monitoring of blood glucose levels successfully informs you how much insulin is needed by your body and when. Blood glucose levels can fluctuate a lot throughout the day, causing damage to your body in numerous ways. Extremely high blood glucose (or hyperglycaemia) or extremely low blood glucose (hypoglycaemia) can be profoundly serious, and even life-threatening if it is not treated in a quick manner.
Several things (such as the foods you consume, sports you play, and lifestyle factors) can impact your blood sugar levels.
Hence, glucose monitoring is essential, and there are no two ways about this.
Do Diabetics Need CGM for Better Management?
You can check your blood glucose levels regularly with the help of a fingerstick blood check and a glucose monitoring machine. Scores of diabetics do just that.
That said, fingerstick checks only measure blood glucose levels at a single point in time. It is quite similar to reading just one page of a book. Performing more fingerstick checks offers you additional snapshots, which can successfully provide you clues about what is happening with your blood glucose levels.
Importance Of CGM
With the help of a CGM device, it is much easier to manage type 1 as well as type 2 diabetes. Some individuals use CGM for barely a week to successfully comprehend the patterns of their blood glucose levels. Most diabetics use CGM long-term.
To know the importance of a CGM, it is essential to know their advantages and what they bring to the table.
- Offers A Larger Picture Of How Diabetes Affects You
CGM devices measure blood glucose levels every few minutes. This data demonstrates a more complete picture of how your blood glucose levels alter over time. This info can help you and your healthcare provider better understand how factors such as food, physical activity, illness, and stress have an impact on your blood glucose levels.
- Leads To A Highly Personalised Care
CGM does not provide the entire story of all the ways diabetes affects you. For instance, it informs you when blood glucose goes up or down, without stating the causes. That said, your healthcare provider can successfully download CGM data from your device and conduct reviews to learn about your condition’s trends and patterns. In this way, doctors and healthcare providers can offer personalised care based on what they eventually learn.
- Provides Alerts Regarding Highs And Lows
Most CGM devices provide an alert when your blood glucose levels rise above or fall below a certain amount. With the help of this info, you can quickly resort to remedial measures. In this way, you can treat as well as prevent highs or lows before they become a major problem.
- Reduces The Number Of Fingerstick Checks
CGM drastically reduces the need for numerous fingerstick tests that you need to carry out each day.
On A Final Note
Mastering how to use a CGM device can take some time. In addition, it must be noted that it is not a cure or quick fix for diabetes. However, it has the potential to help you better comprehend your condition. A CGM device allows you to keep a closer eye on blood glucose trends, rather than individual glucose numbers. By viewing the larger picture, you can eventually prevent problems or catch them during the initial phases for optimum management of your health. A CGM device’s automated and always-on setup can successfully offer you freedom, peace of mind, and flexibility. It can additionally help you in focusing on other things without worrying too much about your blood glucose.
