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 …
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 …
“How accurate is the Libre anyway?” It’s a question we hear a lot. Many people are surprised when the values it reports are different to the BG value reported by their meter. But as I described in a recent article about meter accuracy, your meter doesn’t always tell you “the truth”. So I decided to …
Blood glucose meters are an essential tool for anyone with diabetes. Even those of us using Continuous Glucose Monitors need to manually check every now and then (e.g. to regularly calibrate the CGM). I’ve used many different meters over the years, but this isn’t going to be a history lesson. It’s more about some of today’s …
Earlier this week I replaced my first Dexcom G5 CGM sensor, after letting it run for over 16 days. Here’s part of the graph shown by xDrip+ (the CGM that runs on an Android phone) for the old sensor. You can see the way the value is skipping up and down, and this is the …
Well my first sensor, anyway. Having switched my CGM from Libre sensors as an experiment, I’ve been using a G5 transmitter and a single sensor. But in the last few days the values being returned have been a bit jittery, and xDrip+ has been reporting high noise from time to time. Here’s a little sample from …