After thinking on this response I finally twigged on what for me is an important issue:
Originally I was on 75/25 humalog when I first got my dexcom. After a month or two; my body decided to throw off all the excess insulin and Doctor put me on small doses of humalog Lispro standard. AT that point my BG moved very slowly for first time in 30 years and smoothly like waves on placid lake. In addition, Dexcom tracking and use became far better and easier.
When on the stinking 75/25 along with some exercise would see BG really scram fast. Far faster than dexcom could follow. To that end when on that crap; I would describe the Dexcom performance as terrible and could not catch error conditions fast enough.
SHould a person have a twichy fast moving system, special care and intuition is needed to use. Just becasue above writer has fast enough response does not mean others do. This is test equipment to help resolve medical conditions.
Yes this does job for me and what other choices does one really have.
The data and non existant graphs that should accompany said device listing its honest capabilitities, speed of response and expected speed on interstitial tissue do not exist nor stated.
When I buy a 10 grand oscilloscope I get all that data and can understand performance of said device and how to apply to my test problem and limitations. With Dexcom and I am sure for others, it is all crapshoot and guesswork and patience to work thru and figger out how best to settle down and collect data and what it means.
Many moons ago back in late 80’s before technology boost, I found that lunch and dinner were affected by breakfast and lunch buit unsure how.
Now with CGMS I found that fats typically come off as sugars/glucose at 5 to 6 hours after meal. Pasta will drag out digestion extra hours.
Breakfasts is easy as by midnight and meals at 5:00 to 6:00 pm all that crap disappears.
Unfortunately Lunch is lunch plus fat of brealkfast and dinner is
lunch fats plus dinner. So much fun indeed.
My guess is that this stuff is not properly understood nor how glucose works through out body. Stopping at insulin is incomplete and shortsighted.
Exercise is crucial to march glucose out of cells so they can keep accepting crap.
Insulin resistance is not permanent, not understood and is very dynamic and based upon how miuch glucose is loaded up in muscle cells at any one time.
This is not medical man’s view but electronics engineer black box behaviour analysis
struggling with my mess - walking, eating, meds plus adjusting and trying to explain.
Bets wishes, good luck and good health in day’s forward
Ok, so I’m a capitalist too, by adoption, so I can’t complain (see the legal issues with regard to manufacturing rights: the only explaination I’ve been able to find with regard to the weird Miracle Day style behavior of Abbott.)
That thread, however, contains this Dexcom 7+ clue:
“There’s a trick to improving the accuracy on Day 1 that my local Dex rep just told me about (I’ve been on Dex now for three weeks). She said that, unlike with Nav, Dex calibrates very well with a moving target and that if you can calibrate at the 2 hour mark, and then again when you think your next postprandial is at its highest and then again when you think you might be at your lowest (such as after a correction or 3 hours after a meal bolus), that you help Dex define its high and low parameters and improve the overall 7 day accuracy of the sensor.”
The “clue” here is that my black-box examination (I’ve only been on Dexcom a few days) couldn’t see more than a set point parameter. If there are high and low parameters that goes some way to explaining the behavior several people have reported that the 7+ stablizes after a few days. I have to say that my limited observations back this up: I’m pretty happy with the stabilty now, two days into the current sensor.
As of this moment the 7+ says “143” and the Contour USB says “141”. That’s pretty much what has happened throughout the day. Unfortunately there are two problems:
It took 2 days to get here.
The manual clearly says not to change test strip ubermensch in mid-sensor, so I deduce the correction factors are retained only for the current sensor (maybe not, given the comments on restarting a sensor.)
Oops, comfy-chair:
The correlation outside the range I’ve been re-calibrating in lacks merit (like, 7+ says 193, oops, but Herren Bayer said 170 - however I was rising rapidly, and I did hit close to 200 on the Bayer scale too.)
It’s about time we knew how the Dexcom works algorithmically, otherwise we’ll each individually have to reverse engineer it (as, clearly, many contributors to this forum already have). That’s a waste of time and, potentially, life.
Many thanks for info on free style. Time to shoot the lawyers again and get em out of congress.
Oh well, Thanks for analysis re dexcom and my sense is yes right now - that is as best as it gets
and one can get good usage with understanding and patience.
I’m more for shooting the bosses and giving control back to congress, but I guess it’s the sad epitaph of our failed attempt at democracy; democracy and capitalism (aka lawyers) don’t mix.
Now, if we can find out what that algorithm is our peculiar choice of government is moot
agreed. Secrecy imposed by or reaction to FDA oversight is unfortunate and not helping those who would like to get best out of their CGMS and how best to run with their body and its worts and wrinkles.
