Last week I shared I have started wearing a FreeStyle Libre sensor, so I can measure by blood glucose levels. For the best part of a week every few hours I have opened the app on my phone and held the phone over the part of my arm the sensor is stuck on. My phone vibrates to say it has read the sensor. Done.

Already I have learned that the empty headed or spaced out feeling I get towards the end of the working day comes when my blood glucose dips to the lowest of the day, of any days, just above 4mmol/L. Most of these occurrences also coincided with a slightly larger lunch than usual and then “fasting” until later.

The days when my mmol/L doesn’t dip that low I don’t feel empty headed or spaced out, I feel OK. It’s a small sample from a week’s data but there’s a correlation, and a hypothesis there to test. After years of this late afternon thing it feels like I am learning, maybe getting some micro understanding.

A lesson learned here: For the foreseeable future I will have a smaller lunch and have several smaller snacks through the afternoon.

I have had one morning where I had breakfast at around 7am (my usual porridge and some chopped fruits and crushed nuts) and then didn’t eat anything else until lunch at 1pm and had the same head feeling. But just the one time I did this and had this occurrence so far. (Action and effect.) Again though, a little nibble between 10:30am and 11am might just be keeping me OK the rest of the time.

I am also learning what short term effects my running activities have, on my blood glucose levels: Not too much to be honest. But then the running is probably more helping with my longer term health, with my weight and blood pressure.

It’s a shame the data from the FreeStyle Libre doesn’t get slurped into Apple HealthKit so I can see all my data in one place, and maybe so HealthKit could do some analysis. (Tim Cook has laid out a few times Apple wants to be known for the difference it makes and made to health.) Nothing some manual analysis can’t do though. If I wanted that auto-slurp maybe I need to look at sensors that are HealthKit friendly. (And that’s a very first world thing to say, Si.)

Another thing has hit me over the last week: How much puncturing my skin has become a regular thing over the last couple of years, also markedly increased this year. The amount of blood samples taken: Some taken with a nurse, others taken at home by self puncturing, now I have a sensor stuck to me which sits just under the skin. Accessing and access to my blood feels like a regular part of my life now, maybe even a normal part of my life now.


This post tagged with:
diabetes