Has any one heard of this an old guy told me about it you were a sensor it gives you blood
sugar readings every 3 min.
Hi, we use the Dexcom. It displays a reading every 5 minutes. It also recieves information from the fluid levels around the sensor, NOT the blood. we haven’t seen a 15 minute lag time (more like 5-10) and you can’t take tylenol with it. it gives you a general idea where it is and what direction it is headed. It has never been meant to replace bg checks with your meter. dexcom is Usually very accurate, last bg check showed a bg of 75 and dexcom said 78, BUT the FDA requires a real BG check before treating highs and lows. I recommend that you check out the CGM section of this board, you will find lots of people who love and and lots who hate every sensor out there.
Good Luck!
While much of this is true, the real advantage to using the CGMS is spotting trends in blood glucose. So while the numbers may not always precisely match your whole blood glucose measurement, the upwards and downwards trends are always spot-on for me. This helps immensely in preventing high or low blood glucose problems.
I still do a regular test before I take insulin or glucose.
My Dexcom gave readings every 5 min. If I calibrated it (two blood tests) at a time when I was stable, it gave reliable readings, but since it is reading interstitial fluid, the readings are 10-15 min BEHIND. It is useful for trend data. For example, after a meal I would see that my glucose was going into the 200s an hour after meals. Working with it, I brought post prandials down to no higher than 140, kept my average to 95 (my goal), eliminated lows.
Those were my goals with it and i accomplished them. It took awhile since I am a slow learner,
I also find the thing useful when I’m given cortisone in my knee: it warns me what’s happening so that I don’t have to quite do 10 sticks in a day.
Blood sugar readings would require an implanted device in a blood stream. So since none of us want THAT, this is the next best. It’s a learning device, useful, but has its limitations.
David: I also use the Dexcom CGM and I swear by it. By sounding an alarm when the glucose goes high or low it allows me to keep much tighter control without getting into hypoglycemia all the time. (My last A1C was 4.6).
Thank you for the feed back.
Betty: What is the tylenol issue? I use the MM CGMS and have never heard about it. Thanks.
Johnathan-
the dexcom sensor is reading the fluid and there is a chemical reaction that takes place from tylenol in the I.F. that the dexcom 's sensor interprets as a high BG. The BG is NOT high from tylenol, but the sensor intereprets the fluid as if it is.
The navigator does not use the same technology as dexcom, and so it doesn’t have that issue and I do not know about if tylenol affects the MM sensor at all( I do not think it has the tylenol issue either because it uses different technology too) .
We researched all three and decided that we would take the tylenol issue for the benefits that the dexcom sensor had. MM products are great too, but we needed to be able to calibrate when BG was changing and still get accurate readings. I am not trying to dis any other sensor, though because I FIRMLY believe that using any of the 3 sensors is better than trying to control Diabetes than none.
People can be sucessful with any cgm, if they follow the sensors rules, and everyone has individual preferences.