I have always trusted my one touch meter. Because the strips are so expensive I bought a Reli On Prime. The Prime meter consistently reads 25 points higher than the one touch so I assumed the Prime meter was bad. I then bought a Bayer Contour Next meter, it also reads about 25 points higher than the one touch.
The strips I have for the one touch expire on 3/15. They have been stored in A/C room so should still be good.
I can't afford to go to the doctor to test the meters and don't know how to determine which meter is correct. I don't know anyone that uses a meter to compare results.
The best way to check a meter, but it costs money, is to get a lab to draw blood to check your blood glucose number. I wonder how much that single test would cost.
When I go to a blood draw, I do three fingersticks, being careful to wash and dry my hands well. I record the numbers and compare to the published lab results. I average the three fingersticks for comparison.
You can drive yourself crazy comparing one meter to another and try to draw any accuracy conclusions. The accuracy standard for our meters is so loose, it can really frustrate people trying to treat using the actual numbers.
A cheaper alternative would be to test when you feel low and see which meter matches your symptoms best. Likewise you could test when you're high. This can be hard to do since we all don't experience low and high symptoms reliably.
I like the idea of testing when I feel low. I'm going to try it by slightly over compensating with insulin until I feel low. I'll be sure to have some glucose tabs handy.
I would first recommend that you make sure your OneTouch meter is properly working. Put new batteries in and then reconfirm the coding. OneTouch strips originally required coding the meter but a few years ago they improved things enough to no longer require coding of the meter with every new batch of strips. But you still need the proper code in the older meters, I think it is 25.
And as Terry says you can drive yourself crazy trying to figure out if your meter is right. It is better to just decide they are all wrong and that all you get is an "estimate."
I use the One Touch Ultra meter and the Reli On prime. In my case the Reli On meter reads lower than the One Touch. I called and got the company to send control solution and I bought some for my one touch as well. Both meters tested fine with the control solution. I have been using the generic unistrips for the One Touch so not sure if that makes a difference.
I have had the lab compare my results to the meter and it was high for me too. And I just thought I was quirky like that! Unfortunely, my insurance only covers one touch strips, so I am stuck! But it did explain why I wasdropping low when I had to switch to One Touch. As a T1, it really stinks not to trust your meter.
They can vary widely-- as evidenced by most labs calling an A1C of anywhere from 4.0 to 6.0 “normal” and 6.0 to 6.5 "prediabetic"
It’s really like saying a healthy persons blood pressure or weight or anything else should be exactly ______.
The labs my doctors office used classify a "normal fasting glucose " as anything from 60-110. That’s a pretty wide range to try to pin down meter accuracy with.
Control solution is kind of a joke though, the control solution is a precisely engineered solution essentially guaranteed to fall within specified range of your meter works at all— which doesn’t mean it works well for you-- the real patient with real blood
The fasting bg of non diabetic shouldn't be a very wide range. Maybe do it on a younger person or do it on two people. Or do your testing right after your lab test.
Reli On does have greater error than One Touch. I use them because they are less expensive. Keep an eye on it. If you think that they are really off, the company should send you some calibration fluid. Give them a call. Remember that ALL blood glucose machines have 20% variance from actual blood sugar, for whatever that means. Maybe 25 points variation is within what they expect.
I'm not sure I follow why it's a joke. It just has a precise amount of glucose in it. So it should give you a pretty good idea of how accurately your meter is measuring glucose concentrations. Sure, your blood has other stuff in it, but who cares, or are you suggesting that certain meter/test strip defects might cause the meter to be confounded by those other blood ingredients, in ways that it wouldn't be by control solution? Kind of seems like a stretch to me, but maybe I'm missing something.
When I look at my current vial of One Touch Test strips, it gives the Control Solution range as 110 - 146, to me that is a big variation. I think that is why people see it as a joke.
I think people tend to forget how relatively inaccurate our meters are, they get caught up in the notion that that super specific number is actually what their blood sugar is. So in this case it's not the control solution that's the "joke," it's the underlying meter technology.
