 Hey guys, this is Dr. Ahmet Ergin, founder of Sugar MDs. Today I'm going to talk to you about your problems, the problems about checking the blood sugar. Now, let's face it guys, it is really really hard to check blood sugars, carry all the stuff with you. You like your meter, your strips, your lung sets, your lensing device. It's like a whole pocket and not a case just like this. Now, when I see patients in the clinic every day, they sometimes bring this, but more than half the time they don't have their meter. Now, I wonder how do you really check your blood sugar if you're going to go out and have a lunch somewhere or if you're not going back directly to home and you're going to need to check your blood sugars. So, half the time we tell them to check their blood sugars for example 3-4 times a day and they check it only once or twice because they don't want to carry this around. And I get it guys, this is like really bulky. If I was a diabetic, what would happen is this I would probably lose my strip somewhere, put it down and then forget to put it back in there. You really need to be really organized, uh oh, for this. Now, so, but the thing is you know you have to check your blood sugars, right? So, at least once or twice a day even if you have a CGM such as Dexcom or Libre you're still, they're not very accurate all the time especially when the blood sugars are rapidly changing when the blood sugars are not reflecting how you feel and so forth. So, finger sticks are not going anywhere and you still have to rely on the finger sticks because that's the most accurate, well, close to the most accurate measurement. So, you also want to make sure that your meters are good quality. We had another video about this as well but you want to make sure that when you choose a meter it needs to be practical, it needs to be inexpensive, it needs to be FDA-cleared, it needs to be studied. So, there are a lot of brands out there that's going to try to you know sell you cheap stuff. That doesn't mean that that's necessarily good for you. Even the good meters will have 10% variability. Now, what I found recently there are a couple good meters out there that you can consider looking into and what I don't want you to do go buy the most expensive stuff. That's not what you want to do. Sometimes the most expensive is not necessarily the best thing for you. Now, this thing that I just came along recently is called Dario and a few of my patients showed me that and I looked at it and said let me have a look at it. So, I purchased one for myself and I looked at their website and I see that that's pretty cool stuff. So, I'm going to tell you a little bit about this quick and you know, I want you to check this out because it is very inexpensive. It is FDA-cleared. It has been proven by studies. It's published in ADA which is American Diabetes Association, American Association of Diabetes Educators. They all recognize this device. So, these are the things you have to look for when you're looking for a meter and then you have to make sure that somebody is supporting you. Now, diabetes coaching is extremely important. So, if your blood sugars are low or high your doctor is not going to respond to you immediately, right? So, you need a coach, somebody on your side. So, make sure that when you go for a meter it could be Dario or it could be another meter but make sure that you have a coach that's really helping you. Now, another thing you need to look for is strips, right? So, if I was a diabetic, to be honest with you I would probably go out of strips pretty quick and then next thing you know I will not have time to go buy strips. And then, you know, then it's going to create a gap and so forth. What I found that Dario actually pretty much, you know gives you unlimited strips for a low price. So, you can check as many times as you want and you don't have to worry about, you know having to buy more and more and more so you can stay on a budget. You can do HSA, FSA, like all this medical, you know even in my practice if you can become a concierge service, you know you can use HSA, FSA for all these medical things that includes Dario meter as well. And most importantly, it's HIPAA compliant. So, your data is not going to be stolen. It is securely saved and so forth. The coolest feature that I found on Dario is that actually when your blood sugar goes low you can alert four people. That's pretty cool because one of the biggest scare that I have for my patients what if their blood sugar goes too low? What if they're alone? So, other than that I think one last feature that I found useful was to be able to transfer your health data to your loved ones and to your doctor. So, if you are using Dario it is easy for me, it's easy for you because you can just email me your data and so forth. So, these are the cool things that I found but I think Dario is very practical. So what I found here is that you have everything in one device. So, think about this instead of having everything separately in a big case like this you have this you can keep in your pocket and the long set goes right here and that's a lancing device. So, it's like a little pistol you just cock it and then push the button and then it pricks your finger. There's even an adjustment here and a tiny thing like here. So, and then when you take this out here's your strips just right here. So, I'm like that's the coolest meter that I've seen so far that keeps everything in one and you can keep everything in your pocket. So, that is pretty amazing and then everything goes to your app directly so you don't have to worry about recording your number. Guys, to claim your 80% discount on Dario Starter Kit go to mydario.com forward slash sugar and bees. You can share your data with your doctor again, pretty amazing. So, if I was diabetic that would probably be my choice but let's talk about that a little bit other things as well. So, when you check your blood sugars why do you have to record your blood sugar numbers or why do you need an app that can actually record your blood sugar numbers? That's important because you need to know you need to know your trends you need to know where you're going are you high in the mornings are you low in the mornings are you going high after breakfast because trends are much more important than individual numbers a lot of times patients will come and tell me that their blood sugar was you know 75 they're too concerned about this because they think it's low but I'm like okay well what time was that it was in the morning well how many times do you see 17 numbers they're like no not many times so it's typically like 130-140 and this time it was 75 well I'm more interested in hearing the trending but yeah of course I need to know that was 75 one time and what we do in this case for example we need to find out why it was 75 that day maybe they exercised a lot that day physically very active maybe they didn't have a dinner that day maybe they were on too much insulin and so forth but the trend data is the most important thing instead of trying to get hung up on single individual numbers so your doctor will be able to analyze well yourself you can analyze as well see where you're going and then passing the data to your doctor is extremely important as well that way you guys can make a mutual decision about your diabetes management again the compliance or adherence I don't call that a compliance but I call that an adherence to your diabetes regimen is very important now it's easier said than done because as you all know diabetes is a lifelong disease and it's a constant struggle to try to remember to check blood sugars and I totally get it it is hard hard hard whatever can make your life easier go for it whatever makes it easy for you guys other couple things that you want to know about checking blood sugar is the accuracy make sure that your meter has ISO and FDA standards to give fairly accurate results again remember none of the meters are 100% accurate they are just giving you an estimate of your blood sugars and they will have around anywhere from 5 to 15% variability on a fairly good meter so don't get hung up that your blood sugar was 120 now and you checked it nice 130 in 2 minutes it is okay the 10% variability is acceptable and it's not going to really change your diabetes management a lot so nevertheless guys I hope you all the best I hope this video helped you and if it is just give a thumbs up and we'll see you in the next video