Diabetes Patients To Get New Guide For Blood-Sugar Testing

Patients To Test Blood Sugar More Often

POSTED: 2:20 PM EST January 29, 2004

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CLEVELAND -- For the nearly 13 million people diagnosed with diabetes, frequent self blood-sugar testing is key to staying healthy and avoiding serious long-term complications.

Surprisingly, there has been no clear self-testing guidance for these patients -- until now.

Millions of these patients with Type 2 diabetes have dangerously high blood sugar, NewsChannel5 reported.

Keeping blood-sugar levels in a safe range has been shown to reduce the risk of developing serious diabetes-related complications such as blindness, kidney disease and amputation.

Most patients with Type 2 diabetes are treated with pills, not insulin. There has been no clear guidance for these patients regarding the frequency of self blood-sugar testing.

The American Academy of Family Physicians has just issued a new physician guide for blood-sugar testing.


"Today, most people with Type 2 diabetes test about once a day, yet nearly two-thirds of patients with Type 2 diabetes have blood sugar levels out of control," Dr. Steven Edelman said.

The new guide calls for people with diabetes who take pills and whose blood-sugar levels are not in control to test their blood sugar two to four times a day.

In addition, all diabetes patients should test more frequently than normal under certain conditions, such as illness, major stress or changes in diet, exercise or medication.

"By testing more frequently and at the right times they will be better able to see what's happening with their blood sugars throughout the day, and make the necessary changes to stay healthy," Edelman said.

The guide is being mailed to more than 94,000 family doctors. It's important because nearly 80 percent of the people with diabetes rely on primary care doctors to help them manage their disease.

You can find the new guide on the American Academy of Family Physicians' Web site.

link to new advice: http://www.familydoctor.org/x6528.xml

I still find it frightening that they are continuing to recommend <180 1-2 hours following meals for diabetics. Anything over 150 starts doing damage at the cellular level. If you pre-meal blood sugar is 80 and then you test at 179 nearly 2 hours after eating, imagine how much higher it went during that previous 2 hours and you're still nearly 100 points higher than before you ate!
Frequent testing has been proven to help diabetics achieve better control. It's only effective, however, if the diabetic recognizes the correlation between what they just ate and that high blood sugar reading and makes adjustments.

Only problem is, once they get people testing more often, they (the "experts") have no clue about what "necessary changes" to make! Bill

I think it is totally irresponsible the information they give people with type II diabetes. This condition is totally cureable with the Atkins diet. I know, as a person told by a nutritionist to eat more carbs and never able to get my blood sugar below 170, even with medication. With this diet my sugars are almost always in the 90s, I have been off medicine for a few years and my GHB A1c is 5.1 The medical establishment is totally clueless. Dr Atkins was brilliant.

catfishghj.

with you on that one. my blood glucose in now normal no medication, untill I eat high carb food then its out of wack, so no high carb food, its so hard Ha Ha Ha,

Lez

Dr. Bernstein's been saying diabetics should test more often for years!
Water dripping on rock does have an effect.