Reading diabetes data

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Permalink Reply by Scott on November 19, 2009 at 1:15pm

For me, the data is all about patterns. What does my daily pattern look like? Personally, I pump and have 4 different basal rates during the day. Those rates are adjusted to match my body's pattern of glucose needs. How does my body react to a given meal? If my pattern changes, that is my fist indication that something is going on. I could be getting sick, maybe my vial of insulin got too hot, the list goes on and on.

I use the Carelink software from MM. Personally, I like the Modal Hourly Report and the Weekly Sensor Overlay report(if you have the CGM)

Logging has long been the bane of the diabetic. There is so much info to keep track of on a daily basis and it can be daunting. I guess all II can say is try to find a balance between the information you could log and the info that you really need too

Good luck!

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Permalink Reply by Terry Keelan on November 19, 2009 at 3:35pm

As Scott says, you want to look for trends, Are there particular times of the day or events when your BG consistently goes up, or consistently goes down. You can focus on either your behavior or your insulin intake for those times.

The Modal Day Hourly Report is a good place to start, as is a Summary Report. (These are names from Carelink. Your software may use different names.)

In particular you may want to look at what your BG is when you wake up and what it is two hours after eating. See if the peaks and valleys occur consistently during the day and start looking for ways to level them out. This is why it's helpful to keep a log of what you eat and when you exercise. Not necessarily all the time, but for a week or so before you take your data to your doctor or CDE. Then you can correlate a peak in BG for instance to a particular meal.

Try to focuse on one or two reports. It's easy to get lost in the weeds and overwhelmed with the data. Over time you'll find the ones most useful to your or your doctor.

Good luck,

Terry

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Permalink Reply by Leo2 on November 20, 2009 at 10:13pm

I looked for swings - and then compared with my diary of food for relationships and what I did or did not do in exercise -
I looked for the standard deviation. When I got it to 11, I had a party for myself.
I look for the % in target zone and rewarded myself as the % increased.

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