Checking 24-hour trends

I spent some time earlier today looking at the various reports in Abbott's Co-Pilot software for the Freestyle series of glucometers. The one thing missing is the ability to view daily high and low averages and excursions by anything more granular than a two- to three-hour window (depending on how one sets up one's pre- and post-prandial times, plus bedtime and/or middle-of-sleep-cycle times).

After a bit of futsing around with Microsoft Excel 2007, I finally have a chart that looks like something reasonably usable. It took me the long way 'round to figure out that I could do it relatively easily... <*sigh*>

From a worksheet that includes separate columns for dates and times (Co-Pilot's .csv export file has both in the same cell -- Excel's long-format date -- so for me it's easier to use the information from my custom Excel workbook), copy the colums for date and time to a new worksheet. Remove any extraneous headers at the top of the worksheet. Now sort by time.

With both columns of figures selected, insert (or create) a chart. A line chart will show your blood glucose levels against time of day from midnight to 11:59PM. A Radar chart will show this same information in a continuous circle, which may show rises and drops over the midnight hours.

Knowing how your blood glucose levels change by time of day can be a useful tool in your blood glucose management.

Sample Line Chart

Sample Radar Chart