Squeezing the blood out for glucose test, AND, why are my numbers so different??!
Question: I read that squeezing the blood out of your fingertip to test your sugar can change your results. How so? Does it go up, or does it go down.
ALSO
I just tested my sugar two hours after eating about 45 carbs (dinner). The tests were done one right after the other. The first was 114, the second was 93, and the third was 73.
Why? Which one is right?
Answers: I read that squeezing the blood out of your fingertip to test your sugar can change your results. How so? Does it go up, or does it go down.
ALSO
I just tested my sugar two hours after eating about 45 carbs (dinner). The tests were done one right after the other. The first was 114, the second was 93, and the third was 73.
Why? Which one is right?
squeezing the blood put of your fingertips doesn't exactly change the result: it just goes a little bit down, because in the fingertips you find capillaries, that are very thin and peropherical, so you find a minor density of sugar. For example if you find 60, you might have 75 actually. Anyway you're told you should eat some sugar if you find 60, because they know it corresponds to 75-80 in veins, and that's the level beneath which one needs sugar: it's all 'switched', so you just should not worry about it.
It's strange to find 114, then 93 then 73... Maybe your sugar was going down fast.. or maybe you need to calibrate your tester
All I know is there is a "stastical error" that is about 20%: it depends on the fact that you're not really testing all the blood you have, but just a drop, and this leads to an unavoidable error. To explain this: if you wanna know how many of the boys in a country are blond, if you just 'test' 100 boys and find that 45 are blond, you would say that 45% of the boys of that country are blond, but this might not be exact, because you did not really test the whole country, you just took a sample).
If you can calibrate your meter do that it sounds like it is out by a bit. It has happen to me before.
Squeezing does not change your results. If you are having problems getting blood run your finger under warm water it helps.
Perhaps you weren't putting the same amount of blood on the test strip. And that's why you've got different results.
If you've used more blood the first time, less blood the second time, and even less blood the third time. Then this might be the cause of such variability in your results.
Squeezing your finger for a short time doesn't affect your blood sugar result significantly.
I suggest that you read the instructions included with your blood sugar test kit and follow those instruction exactly, including how much blood to put on the test strip and where exactly on the test strip to put that blood.
Here is more information about blood glucose testing:
http://www.bddiabetes.com/ca/english/mai...
1. Squeezing your fingertip won't make a difference in your readings. Your meter only measures the glucose in the blood touching the electrodes on the strip, any blood sitting on top of that won't be measured.
2. All the readings are correct, your blood is made up of cells and it's continually moving throughout your body so each drop of blood will show a different reading depending on how much glucose is adhering to the hemoglobin portion of any particular drop of blood.......Also the FDA requires an accuracy range of +/- 20% for all meters however the newer models are said to be calibrated in the 5-10% range of accuracy.
it all depends how your body digest sugar.
If you squeeze too hard, with the blood you will squeeze out tissue fluid, and dilute the sample, so have lower readings. The variability of these tests are also quite wide: plus or minus 10 mg%. And of course methodical error would account for most errors, have a diabetic nurse give you proper instructions how to perform the test.