If you don’t like prick­ing your fin­ger or arm three to ten times a day then a con­tin­u­ous glu­cose mon­i­tor (CGM) may be a good alternative.

The CGM is not a com­plete replace­ment for your glu­cose meter, but an added pro­tec­tion against extreme high or low blood sug­ars, and a good way to mon­i­tor the trends and fluc­tu­a­tions of your blood sug­ars over time. It can dis­play blood glu­cose val­ues con­tin­u­ously, but glu­cose meters still pro­vide more accu­rate read­ings. The CGM con­tin­u­ously mon­i­tors and records fluc­tu­a­tions in your blood glu­cose lev­els. It helps you to know whether changes in the diet, med­ica­tion, treat­ment or phys­i­cal
activ­ity are needed.

A CGM unit has three com­po­nents: a sen­sor, a trans­mit­ter and a wire­less mon­i­tor. The sen­sor is inserted under the skin and except for the fin­ger it’s the same sites you’ve been using if you inject insulin or use a pump. Plac­ing the sen­sor is usu­ally quick and rel­a­tively painless.

The trans­mit­ter is hooked to the sen­sor and sends infor­ma­tion to the pager-sized mon­i­tor every ten sec­onds or so. The mon­i­tor then dis­plays your blood glu­cose val­ues. The trans­mit­ter is recharge­able and should be recharged every cou­ple of days. It’s also water resis­tant so you don’t have to remove it for bathing, exer­cis­ing or swimming.

A nice fea­ture of CGM sys­tems is its alarm sig­nal. This sure beats being alarmed by feel­ing shaky or sweaty. The alarm lets you know when­ever your blood glu­cose lev­els go below or above what­ever you set.

You replace the CGM every three to seven days, depend­ing on the brand and man­u­fac­turer. You can take all the stored data and down­load it to your com­puter. This infor­ma­tion can be ana­lyzed, charted and graphed to show you and your doc­tor the trends and fluc­tu­a­tions of your blood glu­cose levels.

Although the results recorded by the CGM are gen­er­ally accu­rate, these should still be checked with a blood glu­cose mon­i­tor from time to time for calibration.

Another advan­tage of using a con­tin­u­ous glu­cose mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem is that fluc­tu­a­tions as well as trends in glu­cose lev­els are iden­ti­fied more con­stantly. There are changes in your blood glu­cose that are too often over­looked by other test meters and meth­ods. For exam­ple, the CGM can mon­i­tor dan­ger­ous changes in blood glu­cose lev­els while you are sleep­ing. That means fewer rude awak­en­ings. It also keeps a record of your sug­ars in-between and after meals, and dur­ing and after exer­cise. This kind of infor­ma­tion can pro­vide you and your dia­betes health care team with crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion. With it, bet­ter deci­sions can be made
about changes in treat­ment, med­ica­tion or lifestyle.

CGM sys­tems are expen­sive and are not yet per­fected. Incon­sis­ten­cies in the data are still com­mon. So you will still need to cal­i­brate your CGM with your blood glu­cose meter. But the advan­tages of con­tin­u­ous blood glu­cose mon­i­tor­ing can often out­weigh the dis­ad­van­tages in added pro­tec­tion against highs and lows, as well as the infor­ma­tion it provides.

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