CGM is great. It tells us so much about what our blood glucose is (or has been) doing. But it’s not perfect. It’s not actually measuring our blood. It’s measuring the interstitial fluid between our body’s cells, which gets its glucose via osmosis but is essentially an “analog” of the blood. I’ve previously written about …
It’s now officially winter here, and I’ve quickly noticed something which I forget about every year. BG meters don’t like to be cold! I remember decades ago (before we had CGM) on a week-long hike in Tasmania getting to the cabin at the end of the day, cold and bedraggled. Got into warm clothes, and …
“Continuous” glucose monitors (CGMs) aren’t actually continual. Most take a reading every 5 minutes. But it’s easy to forget that. In any moment we see a number on our CGM display, and it feels like that’s our current BG. But it was calculated by the CGM up to 5 minutes ago, and will usually be …
Most CGMs (Continuous Glucose Monitors) require calibration by comparing with BG fingerprick samples. These help ensure that the numbers the system reports are a good analog for your current blood glucose. If left uncalibrated for too long the values can drift from reality, but the speed of this drift varies across systems. I wrote earlier …
To quote from Wikipedia, Segal’s Law is an adage that states: “A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.” How is this relevant to diabetes? Well, for the last fortnight I’ve been wearing three CGMs. It’s been quite enlightening. The three systems I’ve been using have been: …
Over the years I’ve spent some time living with multiple CGM systems: Dexcom G4 and G5 Medtronic Guardian2/Enlite (640G pump) FreeStyle Libre FreeStyle Libre with Spike/xDrip+ Incidentally for the purposes of this technical discussion, the Libre is a Continuous Glucose Monitor. Any lack of alarms/etc does not change this, even if “Flash” monitoring doesn’t have …