digest
Short Summary
Main recommendation: Dr. Ergin's recommendation: Check your blood sugar with a meter and strips that match, keep strips sealed and within their expiration date, and run a control solution test to confirm the meter and strips are accurate. He also gives finger-stick techniques to get enough blood with less pain, and stresses sharing your readings with your doctor.
Key Points
- Strip storage and expiration: keep the strip lid closed, avoid heat and humidity, follow the expiration date, and do not mix strips and meters from different brands.
- Control solution check: a red control solution should read between 95 and 130. A bad reading points to bad strips if the solution is fine, or to the meter if strip results and control results disagree.
- Less painful finger sticks: wash hands with warm water if blood is hard to get, hang your hand at your side so gravity pulls blood to the fingertip, and shake your hand downward for about 10 seconds.
- Hygiene before testing: wash hands or wipe with alcohol so food residue does not transfer to the strip and skew the result.
- Sharing data: however you track readings—via an app, a special meter, or written notes—make sure the numbers reach your doctor.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions:
- Insert a new lancet into the lancing device, unscrew the tip to remove the cap, and replace the device cap.
- Set the lancing depth to a low setting first. Only increase it if no blood comes out. The speaker advises against the highest setting, which he says creates a large hole in the fingertip.
- Insert the test strip, which usually turns the meter on automatically.
- Stick the side of the fingertip rather than the very tip, which has many nerve endings and hurts more.
- Milk the finger gently by squeezing, releasing, and repeating. Squeezing too hard can produce incorrect results.
- Touch the blood drop to the strip tip when the meter prompts you to apply a drop of blood.
- Optionally wipe away the first drop if your hands are not clean. The speaker says this is not necessary when hands are clean.
- Control solution details: the speaker says most people skip this check, but it confirms meter and strip accuracy.
- Hand washing is recommended before the finger stick for infection prevention, which the speaker links to the COVID-19 situation.
- The speaker notes any meter that works is acceptable, without promoting a specific product.
Bottom Line
Accurate blood sugar testing depends on proper strip storage, a control solution check, and a clean, gentle finger-stick technique, and the results must reach your doctor.
