Articles -
Dr. Bernstein Shares His Insights
Many instruction booklets give inadequate or erroneous instructions for preparing the finger or putting the drop of blood onto or into the test strip or electrode. If the instructions that follow conflict with what you’ve been told, believe mine. My techniques aren’t based on something I read in medical school or in a medical journal. They’re the ones I use on myself every day. I’ve been measuring my own blood sugars for nearly thirty-five years and have performed more than 110,000 measurements.
Diabetes Solution Revised and Updated
The Complete Guide to Achieving Normal Blood Sugars
Richard K. Bernstein, M.D., F.A.C.E., F.A.C.N., C.W.S.
How and When to Measure Blood Sugar
Excerpted from Chapter 4:
Part 2 of 2 Continued:
The nondiabetic body is constantly measuring its levels of blood sugar and
compensating for values that are either too high or too low. A diabetic’s
body has lost much or all of this capability. With a little help from technology,
you can take over where your body has left off and do what it once did automatically
normalize your blood sugars.
Part 2
MEASURING YOUR
BLOOD SUGARS:
IMPORTANT TECHNIQUES
Many instruction booklets give inadequate or erroneous instructions for preparing
the finger or putting the drop of blood onto or into the test strip or electrode.
If the instructions that follow conflict with what you’ve been told, believe
mine. My techniques aren’t based on something I read in medical school
or in a medical journal. They’re the ones I use on myself every day. I’ve
been measuring my own blood sugars for nearly thirty five years and have performed
more than 110,000 measurements.
1. If you’ve handled glucose tablets or any food since last washing
your hands, wash them again. Invisible material on your fingers can cause
erroneously high readings. Certainly wash your hands if they are soiled. If
you are sitting in a car or some other place where you cannot wash your hands,
lick the appropriate finger enthusiastically and dry it on a handkerchief
or clothing. Don’t wipe your fingers with alcohol; this will dry out
the skin and can eventually foster the formation of calluses.Neither I nor
any of my patients have developed finger infections by not using alcohol.
2. Unless your fingers are already warm, it may be necessary to rinse them
under warm water. Blood will flow much more readily from a warm finger.
3. Lay out all the supplies you will need at your work area. These usually
include a finger stick device loaded with a lancet, your blood glucose meter,
a blood glucose test strip, and a tissue for blotting your finger after the
test. If you have no tissue, just suck off the blood (unless your religion
forbids consuming human blood). Insert a disposable test strip into your blood
sugar meter. (Some test strips are supplied in individual foil packets. The
accompanying instruction booklet may tell you not to handle the strips directly
but to hold them in the foil. This assumes that your hands are always dirty,
which is absurd, since they must be clean for an accurate result.)
4. Many spring activated finger stick devices come with two rigid plastic
covers for the end that touches your finger. Usually one cover is for thin
or soft skin (as in small children), while the other is for thick or callused
skin. To get a shallower puncture, use the thicker tipped cover; to get a
deeper puncture, use the thinner tipped cover. An even deeper puncture may
be obtained by strongly pressing your finger against the lancet cover. A very
shallow puncture may be obtained by barely touching the fingertip to the cover.
The pressure of the finger on the cover determines how deep the puncture will
go. It should be deep enough to provide an adequate drop of blood, but not
be so deep as to cause bruising or pain. Contrary to common teaching, the
best sites for pricking fingers are actually on the back of the hand. Prick
your finger between the first joint and the nail, or between the first and
second joints (not over the knuckles), as shown by the shaded areas in Figure
4-1. Pricking these sites should be less likely to cause pain and more likely
to produce a drop of blood than will pricking your fingers on the palmar side
of the hand. You will also be free from the calluses that occur after repeated
punctures on the palmar surface of the fingers.* When using this
technique, I press the tip of the lancing device very gently against the
finger, as the skin is thinner there than on the palmar surface. If you find
it repugnant to prick the dorsum (knuckle side) of your fingers, use the sites
on the palmar surface illustrated in Figure 4-2. Personally, I actually use
all of the sites shown in both diagrams. As you will not be sharing your finger
stick device, you need not discard the disposable plastic lancets with the
metal point after every finger stick. It is a good idea to discard them once
a month, as they do eventually become dull.
5. Over a period of time, you should use all the fingers of both hands. There
is no reason to prefer one finger over the others. Once you have pricked your
finger, squeeze it (use a rhythmic action rather than steady pressure) with
the opposite hand until the drop of blood is about ¹/16 inch (2 mm) in
diameter. If flow is inadequate (see items 7 and 8 below), perform a deeper
finger stick.
6. Touch the drop of blood to the proper point on the test strip.*
7. Most meters will start an automatic countdown as soon as the strip has
absorbed enough blood. The countdown, in seconds, usually appears on the display
screen and concludes with the appearance of your blood glucose value. If your
meter has a timer button, press it immediately after applying blood, without
delay; do not stop to examine the strip in order to determine whether or not
you have applied enough blood. (This comes later.) Since the accuracy of the
test usually depends upon the timing, the delay between applying the blood
and pressing the button should be no greater than 1 second. This doesn’t
sound like much time, but you’ll be an old pro in short order.
8. Once the timer has started, you may examine the strip to make sure it is
adequately covered or filled with blood. If it is not, discard the strip and
start again.
9. If you get a little blood on your clothing, rub on a few drops of hydrogen
peroxide with a handkerchief.Wait for the foaming to stop. Then blot and repeat
the process. Continue until blood has disappeared. This works best while the
blood is still wet.
10. When your meter finishes its countdown (or countup, depending on the model),
your blood sugar will be shown on the display screen. Write it down on your
Glucograf II data sheet as instructed in Chapter 5.
* My patients and I are much indebted to Mr. Ron Raab, president of the International
Diabetes Institute of Caulfield, Australia, for this not so obvious technique.
Mr. Raab’s attempts to publish this important finding were repeatedly
scorned by medical journals and finally came to my attention via personal correspondence.
I use Mr. Raab’s technique myself and find it far superior to the palmar
technique, which I used for years. By the way, this technique was in common
use by physicians seventy years ago. Like so many things in medicine, it had
to be rediscovered.
* At least one manufacturer (Bayer) provides strips that have an invisible
hole at their tip. Blood is sucked into the strip by capillary action. The puncture
site should point upward and the tip of the strip must be inserted into the
drop of blood.With such strips, the blood should not be put on top of the strip
as erroneously practiced by many users.
11. If you are measuring someone else’s blood sugars using your personal
equipment (not a wise practice), install a fresh lancet each time, and wipe
off the end cap of the finger stick device with fresh bleach after each use.
It is possible to transmit serious infectious diseases from one person to another
via finger sticks. The entire process, from pricking the finger to a final reading,
takes as little as 5 seconds, and rarely more than 1 minute.
PREPARING FOR YOUR FIRST BLOOD
SUGAR CONTROL VISIT TO YOUR
PHYSICIAN OR DIABETES EDUCATOR
Make sure you have all the supplies you and your physician have checked off
in Chapter 3. Put a string on your finger to remind you to ask someone at the
doctor’s office to watch you measure your blood sugar and to correct any
errors you may make. (About 80 percent of
my new patients are not measuring their blood sugars accurately when I first
see them.) Bring along at least two weeks’ worth of your blood glucose
profiles. Ideally, these should be written on Glucograf II data sheets (see
next chapter), which have been designed for quick review by the physician or
other health care professional. To compile
your profiles, blood sugars should be measured:
• Upon rising in the morning
• Immediately before breakfast
• Five hours after every injection of rapid acting insulin (if you use
one of these before meals or to cover elevated blood sugars); otherwise, before
each meal
• Two hours after meals and snacks (if you do not take rapidacting insulin
before meals)
• At bedtime
• Before and after exercising, shopping, or running errands
• Whenever you are hungry or suspect that your blood glucose may be higher
or lower than usual. Once your blood sugars have been fine tuned, it may not
be necessary for you to check them 2 hours after meals and immediately before
breakfast. Appropriate times for testing will be specified in subsequent chapters.
We would like to thank the publisher Little Brown and Company and Dr. Richard
K. Bernstein, for allowing us to provide excerpts from Diabetes Solution.
Copyright © 2003 by Richard K. Bernstein, M.D.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by
any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer
who may quote brief passages in a review.
Author’s Note
This book is not intended as a substitute for professional medical care. The
reader should regularly consult a physician for all health related problems
and routine care.
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