Know Your Numbers

How tracking your blood glucose data can help you better understand your diabetes.

- Kate Ruder

You check your blood glucose regularly and have your numbers in your metre or on your phone. But are you using that information?

“There are lots of ways people can use this data,” says Molly McElwee-Malloy, RN, CDE, a clinical services manager for Tandem Diabetes Care. Studying your numbers can help you better understand how food, exercise, and medications affect your blood glucose. It can also help you see trends over time.

GOING BEYOND A1C

Your A1C can give you an overall sense of your blood glucose over the past three months, but it doesn’t show the whole picture.

“Your A1C is just a tiny picture of what’s going on,” says McElwee-Malloy. Your day-to-day blood glucose readings will give you and your provider more details about how your management plan is working. For example, seeing your morning fasting blood glucose is always high or your blood glucose is consistently high two hours after eating could alert you that you need some changes. “It warrants some problem-solving,” says Diabetic Living advisor Toby Smithson, M.S., RDN, LD, CDE. “It may be something you ate, a difference in physical activity, a poor night’s sleep, a cold or infection brewing, or a missed medication. There really are a number of reasons you can have a high or low reading.”