CGMs’ strength is marking the relative field rather than being 100% accurate
I remember having this conversation years ago with a friend, fellow type 1 and doctor. He said to me, and I didn’t want to hear it, “Your CGM isn’t going to be accurate or precise in the way that you want it to, rather it’s going to tell you about where you are.” Why, I thought, can’t it tell me I’m 106 or 202 or 57 with pinpoint accuracy? Well, I get it now.
Wearing the Freestyle Libre 3, that delivers blood sugar (although it ‘s really interstitial fluid) results every single minute, I can see how it isn’t precise. Not in that machine-like way we think of precision. One minute I’m 104, next minute I’m 108, next minute I might be 105 or 119. And I have learned to take a pause before I determine if I need to do something about where my blood sugar is.
It’s mind-boggling to think what in the world is happening in my body for these moment to moment readings to be ever fluctuating like this. I don’t know. What I do know is you can’t think any one number is perfectly it. So I am learning to slow down a bit, watch the numbers and look at the trend. That’s really what CGMs are all about. Showing you trends. Indicating about where you are and if you’re climbing or bottoming out.
As I was keeping an eye on my CGM today, I just thought this was worth mentioning.
