• Zarobi@aussie.zone
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    10 hours ago

    I used one for a while. It kept waking me up saying I was dying from low blood sugar at 2.4mmol (43mg/dl). Turns out if you sleep on it, it stops working, but the location means sleeping on my left side or my back causes it to fail.

    Then, during the day, it says I’m at 9mmol (162mg/dl), but when I finger prick test to confirm it’s only 7.2mmol (130mg/dl).

    I just took it out after 6 days because it was completely inaccurate in my case. Maybe it’s just incompatible with my biology or something, either way it was a waste of money for me. Makes me wonder if it has a similar problem as those finger pulse monitors, where it only works for certain skin types?

    • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      Pressure lows are a known thing. I recently learned there is a new type of device that lasts 365 days, but it involves surgically inserting the sensor under the skin and removing it at the end. The sensor is then powered by a rechargeable external device. They claim this technique is basically immune to compression lows.

      But this isn’t available over the counter, and requires a specific diagnosis to qualify.

      • Zarobi@aussie.zone
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        9 hours ago

        Yeah I was looking at that. But I have prediabetes / insulin resistance, and in my local area, nobody cares until your pancreas completely kicks the bucket. Prevention of disease isn’t really a thing here. That’s why I went out and bought my own sensor, just to see what was going on. It was useful for seeing like, wait why did my blood sugar spike after breakfast? Oh I didn’t realise overcooked oats were high gi. I changed it to raw oats in warm milk which is much smoother on the graph. But I would never qualify for that device because my problems don’t show up on the 3 month A1C test. And after I optimised the 3 foods that were more spike-y than the rest, I had no use for the inaccurate glucose monitor.

        • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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          9 hours ago

          I’m glad you got some feedback out of it. I think that’s where they have the most value right now. But they are too expensive and too inconsistent for the sort of mass rollout RFK wants here in the US. They need to improve a lot to move away from the style of use you got out of an OTC version.