Management of blood sugar levels is critical for overall well-being, especially for people with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes. Timing of meals, medications, and activity can minimize blood sugar level extremes, thereby enhancing the time dedicated to rehabilitation to improve function.
Clinicians can assist their patients with sugar level fluctuations by providing comprehensive educational and conditioning programs for prevention and maintenance. Studies demonstrate that successful blood sugar management and testing can prevent unnecessary metabolic dysfunction, functional loss, and diminished quality of life.
A greater understanding of blood glucose levels can help delay or prevent diabetes complications such as heart attack, stroke, kidney disease, blindness, and amputation.
This information is part of healthclick’s new physical therapy continuing education course subscription
Watch this one-minute discussion of the blood sugar measurement intervals.
There’s no evidence to indicate that knowing every 15 minutes will be a more significant difference than knowing at the two-hour mark. That’s because a lot of the research using the A1C and the A1C is most closely tied to that postprandial level and we know for a fact that at two hours, you should be able to have dealt with this. I think it might be useful to do it at one hour and then two hours and then at three hours and then where did that go. Did it keep going up at three hours? Then is it a real issue? Then you know, wow, I need to change this. But what you should see is it’s going up, and at two hours it starts going down.
For somebody with diabetes, that curve is going to be slow and low. In somebody without diabetes, it’s going to be like a boom bump, you know. So it might be if you don’t think you have diabetes and everything’s groovy, at the 15-minute mark, it’s an interesting exercise to see how quickly a normal body can deal with a glucose load. I mean, that’s what I used to do to my husband, and you know, it always proves me wrong because he did just rocket, and then he was back down. I ate rice, and I was like, no 194, that’s not good.
Learn more about Blood Sugar Measurement Interval for Diabetics in our new occupational and physical therapy online course, Diabetes – Implications within Rehabilitation Programs.
