Eliminate the Negatives About Glucose Monitoring

'We need to say over and over again … “This is just information, and all of it is valuable.”' DR. POLONSKY

Using Data to Answer Patient Questions

Dr. Polonsky discussed several patients for whom he designed “home experiments” using blood glucose monitoring to answer their diabetes questions.

One patient who previously hadn't been motivated to exercise wanted to know whether exercise affected his blood sugar, so Dr. Polonsky asked him to walk for 30 minutes each day for 1 week, and measure his blood sugar before and after the walk.

The patient's blood glucose level fell by an average of 34 mg/dL after walking. “But the kicker was, [the patient] showed up in my office with [the log] and said, 'I've discovered something that will shock you,'” Dr. Polonsky explained. “I said, 'What is it?' and he said, 'Look, exercise lowers blood sugar.'

“I said, 'We've been talking about this for a year! You sat through that diabetes education program twice, remember?' He said, 'Yeah, but I'm not kidding. I mean, it really works.'”

Because the patient “figured out that exercise was of value, he got excited about it. … And he wasn't just interested in exercise, he got interested in blood glucose monitoring because he realized it [helped him] learn something useful,” Dr. Polonsky said.

Another patient was curious about how breakfast affected her blood sugar. Dr. Polonsky asked her to perform a similar 1-week experiment in which she wrote down her blood sugar results right before and 2 hours after breakfast. Her average increase was 34 mg/dL. “I said, 'Whatever you're doing, generally speaking, looks like it's working. Congratulations!' And for [her], that was very exciting. Patients desperately need a sense of positive treatment efficacy. … It helps them become activated, engaged, and interested in doing more.”