When Should I Monitor My Blood Glucose Levels?

Some diabetes medications are more likely to cause low blood sugar. In this video, endocrinologist John Merendino, MD, explains this and other factors that influence how often you should check your blood sugar.

Transcript

00:00

The question is often asked of me how frequently people should monitor their blood sugars, and there are a lot of factors that go into that,

00:06

but certainly one of them is how likely the person is to have low sugar reactions. [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:13

And that depends on a lot of factors. It includes what sort of diabetes a person has, and it includes the way in which the person is being treated.

00:21

The medications that are used to treat diabetes have very different risks in terms of low blood sugar. Insulin and medications like glipizide and glimepiride

00:31

and glyburide all carry very high risk of low blood sugar. So if you're on any of those treatments, you're at greater risk, and you have to monitor your blood

00:39

sugar more carefully. I think it's important for people to look at patterns in their blood sugar. It's useful to test at various times during the day

00:46

and see if you're trending low, even if you don't feel low. Because if that's happening to you on a regular basis at a certain time of the day,

00:54

then it may be only a matter of time before you have a low sugar reaction that's low enough to cause serious problems.

01:01

And it's clearly better to intervene early to correct something before the low blood sugar ever happens than to wait until it does happen.