Shutting off your G6 CGM on a t-slim due to compression lows?

I’ve been using Dexcoms since 2012 and love them, but always suffer compression lows.
I always had to turn off my low alert at night (so that it would only wake me up at below 55) and even with that: the first night of a new sensor it often thinks I’m dying and that I’m am below 45 or it’ll just say LOW!

My solution for those first nights, was to go to bed with higher sugars than normal… and worst-case: I’d turn off my G6 receiver.

I recently switched from a Medtronic 530 to a t-slim X2 and have been loving it! Since my first night on it in July, my sugars have been perfectly flat at night every single night :slight_smile:

However, on my last sensor, I had a really bad Dexcom compression low and I couldn’t turn off my receiver because it’s now part of my pump!

Has anyone else ran into this?

I don’t want to shut off my pump (and even when I do for showering, it beeps like mad over and over again!)
I don’t want to put in another sensor, because after that first night it worked fine… and lasted the full 10 days.

Thanks for any advice!

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2 suggestions:
Put your pump in a faraday bag (check Amazon). This blocks data from transmitter to pump.

Or
Go into pump menu for cgm settings. Change one digit of transmitter id and save.

But you will likely still get alarms but not sure how often. Faraday bag may soften the sound.

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If you mean compression from sleeping on your sensor maybe you can put it in a different place. Mine goes behind my arm in triceps area so there is no compression of it when I sleep
I’m sure you can find a spot that doesn’t get compressed.

Oh and my nights are flat too. Really good and my dawn effect is also completely gone.
I play with settings so I can get into the mid 90s with no fear of going low.

There’s really only one CGM alarm you can’t avoid, the one that goes off if your CGM reads 55 or below. Mines on vibrate, though.

You don’t have to have a low limit set. You can turn it off under my CGM>CGM alerts>high and low. Unfortunately, the display is tied to this setting. If you turn off the low and/or high alert, you won’t have the lines on your graph that show the limits of your target range. Personally, I left the high alert, just so I could easily see how close I’ve trended to my upper limit, but disabled the low alert.

Of course, if you don’t trust your sensor, you’ll want to turn Control-IQ off. Then you won’t get the “Control-IQ predicts you will go low in the next 15 minutes…” alerts, either.

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@bort269, First question FIRST. What is the reason you are getting compression lows?

When disecting a problem, check 4ME according to kaizen (or continuous improvement).
Man
Machine
Method
Material
Environment

Look at each of those and analyze your situation. You should NEVER compromise your safety by turning off alarms. You should read more about compression lows. Here is my spin on compression lows.

BACKGROUND: Compression lows are caused by the person’s body pressing against the mattress, pinning the CGM sensor/transmitter (CGM) between the person’s body and the mattress during sleep. First, the interstitial fluid (IF) is the fluid around body cells. Most of the time IF is exchanged with fluids in the blood vessels. During this exchange, IF glucose is enriched and cellular waste products are removed from the IF all over the body.

THE PROBLEM: When a person is in sound sleep and is mashing the CGM into the mattress, the IF is also mashed. It is this mashing or compressing of the IF that causes the IF not to exchange as it normally does. Since the cells around the CGM sensor wire continue to consume (eat) the glucose available in the compressed area around the sensor wire the glucose in the area drops.

OBSERVATION: It is this low reading in the CGM data is usually seen as a nearly level data graph and then a sudden drop of the glucose level. Because it is a low brought about by the pressure on the CGM, the term COMPRESSION LOW has been offered in pumping circles. Because the Compression Low is a low glucose only in the area of the CGM, a finger stick performed in response to a LOW alarm will show NORMAL. The variation between the finger stick and the CGM data leads to frustration and bewilderment, believing technology is the source of the error.

The next observation is the blood sugar measured by the CGM will return to a value near where the CGM line was before the drop in CGM value. The near level line, the drop & alarm, the finger stick of different reading, and the return to the near pre-alarm value is the full picture of the COMPRESSION LOW.

Here is a link to an article from the US National Library of Medicine on the subject.
Susceptibility of Interstitial Continuous Glucose Monitor Performance to Sleeping Position