151
Innovative Saliva-Based Glucose Sensor to Revolutionize Diabetes Monitoring
(scitechdaily.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
151 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
59381 readers
986 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
The Dexcom isn’t always right though. They claim “no fingersticks” and “no calibration required” and both of those claims are complete bullshit.
Not so, I literally haven't needed to do a fingerstick since I got the g6. They come calibrated and as long as you can go 3 hrs between sensors without testing you're good to go. Maybe for someone with a different activity level this would change, but for some people no fingersticks is a reality.
I've had one for about 3 1/2 years and that's not my experience, unfortunately. Some of the sensors are right on from the start and stay that way... maybe 30% of them. Some are off when they start and take 1-2 days to start reading correctly. In the meantime, it might say I'm 140 when my meters say 110, or 110 when my meters say 140, or at worst, Dexcom says 90 when I am obviously low and I check and it's 65. Some sensors are just whacked out and unpredictable, like I'll be hanging at 100 and it shows a quick drop to 90, 75, 65, and I'm uh, what? And check with a meter and it's 110. The in-between sensors, they might be reading 30 points off for 3 days before I decide to calibrate and find out oh, it's been telling me 80 when I'm really at 110. So, it's always worth confirming.
Dexcom's own instructions say to never do a 'correction', meaning insulin or carbs, without double checking with a meter 'if your symptoms don't match the reading'. I can't always tell whether I'm low or high or normal, so that means realistically, it's good to double-check. I've had times where I was correcting at '80' up to 120 repeatedly for days and once I calibrated it, I found out I had really been 'correcting' from 110 to 160.
Hey friend. Pay attention to where you're inserting it, when I roll onto mine in bed, the values drop precipitously because you're squeezing out and preventing flow of subcutaneous fluids that the dexcom is specifically sensing.
Also of note, the dexcom doesn't sense your blood sugar directly, the sub-q fluids are a slightly delayed version of your blood glucose. Measurements between the two are almost guaranteed to differ if you're a living being. (Which I presume you are right? 😋)
Eta: here's a bit of technical background if you're curious: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28205324/
I’m aware of the pressure sensitivity thing causing a false low, and also how sensors have a delay from reading interstitial fluid. I’ve been doing this for 3 1/2 years, as noted. Even with the gibbering of the sensor, I maintain over 95% in range, so I feel like I am fairly attentive and well informed.
Honestly I don't calibrate almost ever, so I should really clarify that my symptoms match my sensor glucose most of the time. I do see the occasional too-fast-to-believe change, but that's usually at the end of a session and either corrects itself or is too small of a change to affect my decision making. I've been on a cgm for about a year, but have been diabetic for 28 and I must admit that my glucose monitoring before the cgm was horrible, so accurate or not for me it's a major improvement. using tandem control IQ closed loop is what has made the biggest impact on my a1c ever.