Monitoring your blood sugar is a great way to learn how your body responds to your meals, exercise, and medications and lets you know if your levels are safe.
To ensure an accurate blood sugar reading, avoid this common mistake:
Pricking your finger without washing it first.
Wash your hands with soap and water before pricking your finger.
No, licking your finger doesn’t really clean it.
Alcohol pads are not as effective as plain soap and water. The dirty stuff gets moved around but but not washed down the sink.
Many people don’t bother with this step. But studies have shown that just touching fruit can leave a residue that can make a glucose reading high when checking your sugar.
I had a client once who was really surprised his glucose was much higher than usual, even though he had recently taken his insulin and had not eaten much. He asked if he should take some insulin to bring it down.
Thankfully I thought to tell him to wash his hands and retest. When he did, his sugar wasn’t high at all. He probably had something sweet on his fingers.
His glucose would have plummeted if he took insulin for an false high reading. Low blood sugar avoided-whew!
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