Calibrate, Why or Why Not

I know you had a tough time with your G6, But for many it definitely does matter if you calibrate a G6. It makes it more accurate. And it makes it more accurate sooner. If I don’t calibrate it, it stays off for me. So for me I am much better off calibrating it. I either do mine right away or if it’s not too bad around 6 hours. I want my accuracy within 5 points, to get it to do that it has to be calibrated. For me anyways…

I find pre-soaks incredibly valuable for me with my G6.

Without a presoak I often get completely nonsensical low readings on the CGM followed by sensor offline in the first 12-24 hours that have no relation to reality.

With a presoak (I have done anywhere from 12 to 36 hours… sometimes 12 hours isn’t enough but 24 hours is always good enough) this is never a problem.

Nice to hear. I have G5 moving to G6 and have heard that soaking does not work for G6. I am same as you soak from 12-24 hours and always works.

PS. I think pre-soak and soak mean the same thing. Getting sensor ready in your body before you make it operational. :neutral_face:

I have a background (decades ago) in darkroom chemistry and “pre-soaking” was exactly what we called it when we tried to stabilize some of the film+developer mismatches (e.g. hot developer and cold film or other way around) by soaking the film in a matching temperature bath to stabilize things.

I calibrate in no code mode and thats where I see ‘quality’ calibrations.

Dexcom advises you NOT to calibrate more than 2x per day and not to calibrate unless you see more than 20% variance. Their rules, not mine. I don’t see a huge impact from calibrating above 20% variance. But, calibration is actually not recommended for G6 within 20% variance. These are Dexcom’s rules, not mine. Its important to state the device recommendations, just so everybody has access to them.

No code mode is better if your having trouble with accuracy. You will get more ‘bang from your buck’ with regards to calibrations.

I might code once in a 10-day session, coding on day-1. My sensor remains accurate for the 10 day session. And when I restart, I’ll calibrate again and it remains accurate until it peters out. I see no point to doing “no code” like you do. You can whip a coded sensor into shape if need be.

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Depends how inaccurate it it. Thats not true for highly inaccurate sensors. Mne have been good this shipment, so I haven’t needed much cali. But, I will be starting a new shipment soon. So, I’ll be on the ‘look out.’

The thing is - you actually can’t calibrate highly inaccurate sensors. They just shut down until the device believes its coming back into a state of good operation. Highly inaccurate sensors just shut down. You can’t calibrate them back into shape. They start behaving that way around above 70% variance. I’ve had whole 3 month shipments behave that way. As soon as I got a new shipment, variability was good. I still dont know what causes that, but I hear it from others and dont think its super uncommon.

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What day of wear are u declaring them “highly inaccurate”?

All days. Sorry, Dave. My internet is flaky this morning. I think I gotta go. Talk later. I’m gonna walk my doggy. Internet is going in and out.

dang! If they are that bad, how many strips do u estimate u are using per month?

At a max, when things are bad, I check hourly. When I was running automation, things were getting tricky.

kinda defeats the purpose of CGM. sounds like my Enlite days. you have my sympathy as I was never so aggravated over the course of a year as the year I wore the Enlites.

Same