Frequent Blood Sugar Testing is the Key to Active Management

• Almost every doctor who diagnosis diabetes instructs her patient to purchase a blood glucose meter, or provides one for free. You use these devices to prick your finger and measure the glucose, or sugar, circulating in your blood.
  
  People without diabetes usually measure 80-120 upon waking, 80-120 before meals, less than 160 two hours after meals, and 100-140 at bedtime. You and your doctor will set specific target ranges for your measurements as part of your treatment.
  
  How much you eat, when you eat, when you exercise, how much you exercise, any insulin or other medications you take all will impact your blood sugar readings.
  
  Type 2 diabetics, who do not take insulin, usually will take pills to stimulate their bodies to produce insulin, and to help their bodies use that insulin properly. They then will use diet and exercise to control their blood sugar levels.
  
  Type 1 diabetics, who take insulin by injection or pump, will adjust their diet, exercise and insulin intake to keep their blood sugar levels within doctor-specified parameters.
  
  

Early in Your Treatment You Should Test Often

• If you are a newly diagnosed diabetic, you may test as often as 10 times per day. You need to become familiar with how different meals and different activities affect your blood sugar. You may wake up in the morning with a blood sugar level a little less than 80, and this may help you decide to have a small late-night snack before bed in the future. You may get up and eat cereal for breakfast, only to find out an hour later that your blood sugar has jumped over 300, and two hours later, it is still over 200. This may cause you to change what you eat for breakfast.
  
  Frequent testing for new diabetics is a good way to see just how important eating and exercising correctly is. It may also allow you to correlate large mood swings, feelings of fatigue or lethargy, or bad headaches with your body's reaction to certain blood sugar levels. For example, high insulin readings may correlate to headaches and a sense of panic or rage. Low insulin levels may make you feel sleepy or stupid. The meter helps you correlate these feelings with your blood sugar levels, so even when you aren't testing so frequently, you'll know when you've entered a danger zone.
  
  

Over Time You Will Test Less, but Still Often

• Testing when you wake up, two hours after every meal and just before bedtime is optimal for most diabetics. If you work out, you may add a blood sugar check 30 minutes after you exercise so you know if you need a snack.
  
  You always should have your blood sugar meter with you, and you should ensure you have enough test strips to feel comfortable testing often.
  
  

New Treatments for Diabetes and New Methods for Delivering Insulin

• The good thing about being diagnosed with diabetes now is that research and development is proceeding at an incredible pace. Bio-identical insulin has replaced the use of porcine (pig) insulin used in previous decades. Insulin pumps allow diabetics who choose to use them to receive insulin continuously instead of having to inject it with syringes throughout the day. In the years to come, new developments may make blood sugar metering even easier, or may eliminate the need for diabetics to test blood sugar at all.