How to Manage Your Blood Glucose Patterns

We’re going to take the next couple of minutes and talk about blood glucose pattern management.

When people want to manage their own insulin levels and their own diabetes treatment, this can be helpful for them. Basically, it’s taking a 3 to 5 day period, and collecting the readings over the entire day and then looking for patterns in that 3 to 5 day period that correspond to either a spike or a decrease in glycemic levels that occur at the same time each day. So it’s part of a diabetes self-management program. You can take an analysis of a 3 to 5 day period of those glucose readings, and then you identify patterns of both high and low glucose that occur at the same time each day.

So you’re noticing that there’s a spike or a drop perhaps in the afternoon, after lunch or before supper, or associated with something else, but it appears repeatedly throughout that 3 to 5 day period. Because it is repeated, we have a pattern there, and because you’re not just responding to each individual measurement, like oh no it’s high I’ve gotta do this, or it’s low I’ve gotta do that, you’re saying I can plan ahead – I know that consistently during the week I’m going to have a spike or at this point I’m going to have a low and can respond appropriately, so it’s actually very helpful in self-management.

Basically what you do then is you would make adjustments based on the trend. And adjustment can take many forms, it’s not always the same thing, but you’re seeing a trend, and you can start tweaking things to help manage that trend and smooth out the bumps. And so one thing you can do is adjust the insulin level up or down based on the pattern and the time of day that it would be necessary to do that. Or you could also adjust carb consumption up or down at particular points of the day to reflect that pattern as well and help smooth out that pattern, or you can also change exercise frequency, timing or intensity.

So exercise frequency, timing, or intensity, which also has an impact on glycemic levels. So there’s a lot of options, but knowing when to use those options and what amounts to use those options are best determined by blood glucose pattern management, that 3 to 5 day period where you’re looking for patterns – spikes or dips in glycemic levels that occur at the same time each day, and then responding appropriately either with medication, diet, or exercise changes.