People who are living with type 1 or type 2 diabetes will usually work with a local endocrinologist. A local endocrinologist is a medical doctor who specializes in the study of hormones and hormone-related disorders. In addition to diabetes, some of the conditions that a local endocrinologist may treat include hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism and metabolic syndrome. If you have type 1 or type 2 diabetes, you will probably work with a number of health care providers, including a local family physician, endocrinologist, ophthalmologist and/or optometrist and registered dietitian.

For example, people with diabetes must see an ophthalmologist and/or optometrist once a year to help prevent diabetes-related eye conditions such as diabetic retinopathy, retinal detachment and glaucoma. A local endocrinologist can perform physical exams, screening and testing; prescribe diabetes medications; help prevent diabetes-related complications and offer exercising and nutritional advice such as eating a low-glycemic diet and lowering cholesterol. Your local endocrinologist can refer you to other health care providers as needed, whether it’s a local cardiologist or a registered dietitian.

There’s been lots of advances in continuous glucose monitoring. It’s been around for a few years. There are now two insulin pumps that have built-in glucose monitoring, and a standalone device. Not only does the standalone device not require an insulin pump, but it can now actually be connected to your smartphone.

Really exciting is a new computerized software. Taking all those wave forms from your CGM and dumping it in to give you one modal day that helps you understand what your blood sugars are doing, it’s called ambulatory glucose profile.

Until recently, that was only available to individuals using continuous glucose monitoring, until recently, the launch of flash glucose monitoring technology. For the first time ever for people living with diabetes, you no longer have to stick your finger to get a blood sugar reading. The device is a patch that you wear on your arm and a standalone reader.

The patch is good for 14 days, and all you have to do is wave the reader over top of it to get your glucose reading at the time, to tell you what your trend is, and more importantly, to store all that data, to create that same wave form – called ambulatory glucose profile, which will help you and your health care professional make decisions on treatment regarding your diabetes. For more information regarding these advances on blood glucose monitoring, you should speak to your health care team, perhaps your pharmacist, your nurse, your dietitian or your specialist.

Regards to which blood glucose meter you decide on and you and your healthcare provider decide on, all of the components are very similar across the board.

They all consist of a blood glucose meter. They all have different types of displays of course. Many of them have memory. Many of them also have a cord that you can apply and you can relay the information into your computer.

For this particular one it has a test strip, which is very easy to use, and you actually just insert it from the bottom in this case. And when you put it in it actually turns on by itself, and once it sort of recognizes the test strip, it will display a blood droplet and that indicates that it’s prepared and ready to accept your sample.  Remember good information from your local endocrinologist  is the corner stone to understanding your condition or disease.

When we’re ready to do the testing what we want to make sure is that the patient does have clean hands, because any sort of residue on the hands can affect the actual outcome of the sample. So we want to make sure that they wash their hands with warm soap and water and dry it very well before they proceed.

Once we take your lancet device we just take off the simple little top, and then we grab one of these little lancets, we insert it, and then we just take off the top, exposing the needle. Once that’s ready to go we can put the cover back on and cock the mechanism so that it’s ready to get your blood sample.