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Continuous Glucose Monitoring

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116 points zdw | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.576s | source
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bix6 ◴[] No.44419401[source]
I believe these cheaper devices are not very accurate ie accuracy range of 20% which is a fairly wide window. I’ve also heard there are many things that can impact your glucose even with the same meal like time of day, exercise, stress, sleep, etc. So if you actually want to find the patterns you’d need the expensive CGM over many months.
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loremm ◴[] No.44419457[source]
Is that true? I have no perspective but it's relied on by diabetics and if since they can't regulate it themselves, if the readings are off and they gave themselves insulin, they would know it is wrong. Maybe the OTC ones is different than the diabetic one but I didn't think so
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1. djur ◴[] No.44419508[source]
Stelo is basically just a consumer packaged version of the Dexcom G6, and in both cases they warn you to use a finger stick to verify unexpected readings. But finger sticks can be really inaccurate, too. For many diabetics it's not a life-or-death matter (only 1 in 4 type 2 patients end up using insulin), and the important thing is the trend over time.

I've personally found my CGM to be really useful in understanding the effect of diet, sleep, stress, etc. on my blood glucose, like the OP says, but you definitely get some weird readings sometimes. Yesterday a new unit told me that my blood glucose dropped below 70 for 2 hours. It definitely didn't! After a while it got itself straightened out in time to scold me for eating some corn chips.