Can anyone explain to me the readings of a UK Blood Sugar Monitor against the USA version? I am from the UK and always used their Monitor and became familiar with the readings but now I am living in Florida I am obviously using the US Monitor but can’t quite get to grips with the readings and its equivalents. Is there a chart available anywhere that I could compare? All advice would be helpful. Thanks a lot.
The conversion factor is 18. Divide the US number to get the UK number, multiply the UK number to get the US number. Or, depending on how often you get back to the UK and how friendly your GP is, stock up with stripes for your UK meter while you are over there. I think some strips will work in either country but the Optium Xceed isn’t compatible with the Precision Xtra despite being the same meter. I keep my Optium Xceed about because I have ketone strips for it.
Thank you all for your responses which were very helpful. They have enabled me to understand where I am with my blood monitoring.
Jenny has a conversion widget on BloodSugar 101; there’s another conversion program on Diabetes Daily…
Depending on the meter you might be able to switch the units from the US mg/dl to the UK mmol/l. If you can it will be in the setup section of the meter.
Sadly, this feature seems to be on the way out. It seems that too many people can’t be bothered to either read the units, or notice that if it’s got a decimal point it’s mmol/L, and if it’s over 40, it’s almost always mg/dL. Apparently someone made the wrong treatment decisions, got in trouble, and now the meters come locked to the country units.
Being in Canada, where it’s mmol/L, it’s annoying to see mg/dL (only) numbers. but being so close to the US, knowing something other than mmol/L is a fact of life. That’s why I’ve been making an effort to include both numbers when I post. I don’t know why they don’t do it like the thermometers, where they will alternate between Fahrenheit and Celsius, and trust that people can figure out that if they are still alive and their temperature is less than 50, it’s Celsius.
Fortunately the conversion of blood sugar numbers is MUCH easier than centigrade and fahrenheit. When I lived in Guatemala I went to a hot tub place and was really surprised I couldn’t stay in the hot tub for more than a couple minutes, because I love hot tubs. I asked how hot it was and they gave it to me in Celsius, and it took me the whole 20 minute walk home before I did the math in my head and said, “Hey, that is 120 degrees…too hot!!”
Here’s a conversion site http://www.phlaunt.com/diabetes/A1Ccalc.php. Fortunately, A1c is the same everywhere.
Yank units = Brit units X 18