How Often Should You Check Your Insulin Levels?
You ’ve presumably been told that you need to measure your insulin levels for blood sugar monitoring, If you ’ve presently been diagnosed with diabetes. And you ’re presumably wondering how frequently you should measure your insulin levels
How Frequently Should You Measure Your Insulin Levels?
This question pops up actually again and again for people recently diagnosed with diabetes. Unfortunately, there isn’t one answer that is right for everyone. How frequently you should measure your insulin levels depends greatly on your treatment plan and your unique circumstances. Thus, the answer should come from your medical professional or primary care professional.
Significance of Measuring Insulin levels
The frequency with how you measure your insulin levels will depend on your treatment plan and your medical circumstances. The most important aspect is if you ’ve been diagnosed with diabetes, regardless if its Type 1 or 2, you’ll obviously need to watch your blood sugar by consistently measuring your insulin levels.
Having diabetes means your body lacks insulin. Insulin is a hormone created by the pancreas to help blood sugar be used by the cells of the body as energy. When your body doesn’t produce insulin or produces insufficient insulin, the sugar in your blood doesn’t get converted into usable energy.
When the sugar in your blood doesn’t get converted into usable energy for your cells, you ’re prone to hyperglycemia ( high blood sugar) and hypoglycemia ( low blood sugar).
Some symptoms of hyperglycemia in diabetes include increased thirst, frequent urination, feeling tired, nausea and vomiting, briefness of breath, stomach pain, dry mouth, racing heart, and fruity breath odor.
Meanwhile, symptoms of hypoglycemia include unstableness or feeling jittery, anxiety, feeling tired or weak, sweating, hunger, nausea, dizziness, or lightheadedness, difficulty speaking, and confusion.
If someone with diabetes is left in a state of hyperglycemia or hypoglycemia for too long, this can lead to lasting and potentially fatal consequences to their health. Thus, it’s absolutely important that one monitors their blood sugar if they’ve Diabetes so they can adapt their life and treatment to maintain healthy blood sugar levels.
How to Measure Insulin Levels
There are three approaches you may use to measure your insulin levels. Depending on which approach is readily available to you or which approach is recommended by your medical professional, you may choose to use any one of the following approaches.
Poke The Fingertip
The most common approach of measuring insulin levels is by pricing the tip of your finger using a small and sharp needle or lancet. Also, you put a drop of blood on a test strip. Place the test in a meter which should give you a reading of your insulin level.
This is the favorite way of measuring insulin levels because blood changes occur the fastest at your fingertips, thus delivering the most timely reading of your blood sugar.
Draw And Test Blood From Other Areas Of The Body
A different way to measure insulin levels is by using a glucose meter. This will measure your insulin levels from blood taken from other areas of the body other than just your fingertips. Blood can be drawn from your upper arm, forearm, the base of your thumb, or your thigh..
The results from blood drawn from other areas of the body may be different from that taken from your fingertip because insulin levels change all the time and blood in some areas of the body are quicker to reflect this.
Still, this will have an impact on your insulin levels, If you ’ve just eaten or exerted yourself doing any kind of exercise. Blood from your fingertips changes more rapidly than throughout other areas so it’s ideal to use fingertips when possible for a more timely and accurate reading.
Use Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM)
Though poking your finger to measure your insulin levels will tell you about your blood sugar at the time, it can not give you comprehensive data on how your blood sugar level responds over a longer period of time.
In similar cases, people with Diabetes wear Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) devices to deliver data on their insulin levels 24/7. CGM devices have a detector which is fitted just underneath your skin, generally in your belly or arm. The detector measures your insulin levels also wirelessly transmits data to a wearable device or your cell phone.
CGM is frequently used to paint a clearer picture of how diabetes is affecting you. With constant blood sugar tracing, CGM provides you a lot of additional information which can help you thoroughly understand how food, exercise, and even stress and illness impact your blood sugar.
Using this data, your medical professional can modify your diabetes treatment so that it can be more suited to your life and circumstances. Also, CGM gives you the advantage of knowing changes in your blood sugar before you indeed feel the symptoms. This gives you a heads start so you can make changes in your treatment to avoid sustaining the side effects of hyperglycemia or hypoglycemia.
Do an A1C Test
Hemoglobin A1C or HbA1c test, also known as A1C test, is a lab test where your blood is measured to get your average insulin levels in the last 3 months. This test is most commonly used to diagnose diabetes or prediabetes.
But even if you ’ve been diagnosed with diabetes previously, you still need to get an A1C test at least twice a year or even more often if your medical professional sees the need.
An A1C test can help your medical professional understand how well you’re responding to your diabetes treatment. However, also your medical professional may customize your treatment, If your results are too high or too low.
When to Call Your Physician
When you have symptoms of hyperglycemia or hypoglycemia, you should instantly check your insulin levels and follow your treatment plan determined on the results. This should help ease your symptoms within a couple of hours.
In the event that you don’t feel like you have improved or begin to feel worsening symptoms, get emergency medical attention. You may be entering a diabetic coma where you feel like you ’re about to pass out. Immediately dial 911 or if you are with people ask someone to stay with you so they can speak to the medical professionals that you have diabetes.
Refill Your Insulin Prescription With Us
One of approaches used in treating diabetes is through insulin medication. However, taking it regularly as your medical professional instructed is vital to your health, If your medical professional specified you Insulin medicine.
If you need to order insulin online from Canada, go to Polarbearmeds! At Polarbearmeds.com, we have insulin and various other medications for sale online. You can order online, by phone, or send us an email and we’ll ship your Insulin medication directly to you in 3-5 business days!