10 facts about blood sugar testing: avoid these common mistakes!

Are you testing your blood sugar the right way? It’s easy to make these common mistakes! Here are some top tips to ensure you get an accurate result when blood sugar testing.

Blood sugar testing tips

1. Modern blood sugar meters only take 5 seconds and need just a tiny drop of blood.
2. Pricking the tip of the finger is the easiest place to get the drop of blood.
3. Before you test, it’s important to wash your hands with soap and water and dry them properly.
4. Type 1 diabetics should test before every meal, to decide how much insulin to take. Here’s the difference between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.
5. Before a meal, blood sugar readings should be 4 to 7mmol/l.
6. Two hours after a meal, blood sugar readings should be 5 to 10 mmol/l.
7. The goal is always to keep your blood sugar in a healthy range: not too high and not too low. Here’s an explanation of what normal blood sugar looks like.
8. Keeping a blood sugar log is a very helpful tool for all diabetics. Write down your blood sugar test results, along with the date, time and what food you ate. This can make it easier to see if there are patterns in your blood sugar readings.
9. Checking your blood sugar often makes it easier to understand the relationship between blood sugar levels and exercise, food, medication and things like travel, stress and illness.
10. Blood sugar readings also give your doctor, diabetes nurse educator or clinic sister information to help you adjust medication and food, if your numbers are often too high or too low.

How often do you test your blood sugar? Blood sugar testing is an important part of managing diabetes but we know it can be difficult sometimes. Join Diabetic South Africans on Facebook to meet other people with diabetes!

Photo by Mykenzie Johnson on Unsplash