 Hello guys today we are going to talk about whether you need dexcom g6 or not I get this question all the time. I'm an endocrinologist. I'm a diabetes expert and we do In-person or virtual visits So wherever you're in, Florida and we are expending to other states soon But if you have diabetes and you need endocrinologists, you don't have to look no further You don't have to travel to places wait in the waiting room for hours You don't have to wait for a couple months to see an endocrinologist. We are changing that game. So Get ready. We are going to talk about dexcom g6 I'm into this video Please remember to give a thumbs up or subscribe And so that you can get all the videos you want And you get notified and you help us Support us so more people can see these videos that they can educate themselves and understand diabetes better Now I get a lot of patients. They will be like, okay. I would dog. I heard about this dexcom g6 are advertising everywhere Do I need it? Do I qualify for it? How do I get dexcom g6? There are a lot of questions, right? I mean So if I get dexcom g6, what's the benefit to me? How expensive it is? So those are the questions that come to me all the time And these videos are for my patients, but also for general public as well. So feel free to enjoy and learn more about dexcom g6 Now it's very popular, right? So we prescribe dexcom g6, especially type 1 diabetics And patients with type 2 diabetes on insulin multiple daily injections of insulin If you are taking a lot of insulin, which is type 1 diabetics and some type 2 diabetics What their biggest problem is when they take insulin, right? And they eat But sometimes there's a mismatch. So if you're if you're normally eating 60 grams Let's say you'd a bagel and you take 10 units for that You know exactly how it works and you kind of understood. Hopefully A lot of type 1 or type 2 diabetic patients have no idea about this But most of our patients will understand because we educate them. We train them So if let's say I'm a type 1 diabetic patient, I eat a bagel which is huge. I mean I'm not saying that it's good for you, but if you're eating that bagel And you're taking 10 grams 10 units of insulin for that. Let's say himaloc And you know that works. So if you're eating bagel every morning and 10 units, that's great But sometimes let's say you put a peanut butter on it or you do something different with today Or you want to have a french toast today or you want to have something different Then if you don't know exactly how much that's that other food in terms of how much 60 grams of that other food Right, you may not be able to Match that so if you took 10 units, but you didn't eat 60 grams of carbs your blood sugar may plummet It can go down very fast So a lot of people will eat for example a one day bagel on the next day. They're going to eat egg whites Okay, so how do you take the 10 units of insulin if you're eating For 60 grams of carbs and no carbs. What do you expect to happen? Right? So you're going to go low Now that is an educational aspect and actually an educated patient You know may not even need dexcom because some people are like, hey, I'm on I'm on top of it I never go low never go high. We have a lot of patients like that Those patients don't need dexcom g6 because it's an extra device that sits on you on your skin or whatever If you don't need it, you don't need it. You don't have to be like fancy, you know Nobody really is going to be proud. Hey. Hey, I look at dexcom, you know So it's nothing to be to to as a like a like a jewelry piece, you know But if you need it, it's a great tool. Why because some patients for one or the other reason They will not be able to get handle off their blood sugars and their blood sugars are going up and down and they They get really upset about it Dexcom g6 will tell you that your blood sugar is dropping, right? If you see and there are different signs we talked about this before how to analyze and interpret Dexcom g6 is a whole different video like how to do that So if you just use it right now how to analyze and interpret dexcom g6 You will see our other video Which is like going to detail a lot of people end up getting dexcom and they don't know how to do it It's like buying a very nice car and not knowing how to drive it. So that you know or Just driving but you're driving in 20 miles an hour in that's that's all you think that's going to do But that car maybe is going to go 200 miles an hour. Not that you should but You know, you should understand the potential with the device that you have that you have been using Now back to the topic we're going off the topic here But basically uh dexcom will tell you you're dropping so If you see one arrow down Two arrows down that all have a certain significance that you may be dropping, you know 30 per 30 milligram per deciliter per 30 minutes within 30 minutes you may be dropping 60 or 90 or more. So if you see two arrows down And that means that you're dropping 90 or 100 milligram per deciliter within 30 minutes and you're already down to 150 You should maybe do something about it. Maybe you know you know that now You took too much insulin So you can intervene before you go down to 50 Which believe me if you never had hypoglycemia That means that you're uncontrolled because most of the time when you're running high you never go low You know, it's not always a good thing. Sometimes you have to go low if you're really controlling the abbey is tight, you know You will have you will have some lows But the the goal is to minimize the lows and to catch them before it happens. So as a result guys, so you will end up You know, if you're using dexcom, you will know That you're having low and you can prevent that so you can maybe eat a couple 15 20 grams of carbs and keep watching it You know, it's going to allow you to really real time watch your blood sugars and avoid a low Now sometimes you didn't do it right and instead of Eating a bagel you ended up eating a whole pizza. Hmm. Not a good thing, but it happens Now in that case the ten units is not going to cut it Maybe you needed 25 units instead of 10 units But you just the 10 units anyways and then next thing you know, your dexcom is beeping at you your blood sugar is skyrocketing to 250 300 so Before you get there dexcom will tell you your blood sugar is going up rapidly Do you do you have done something wrong if don't you don't do something right now Your blood sugar will be at 200 300 and you're not going to be happy So dexcom also tells you that so you maybe can take an extra bolus before you get very high And more importantly When did that keeps happening? What happens? You'll learn. Okay. Well, I have had this pizza I should not have had just 10 units now if you take another 10 units and your blood sugar comes down Now you know, okay. Well if I eat this I have to take that much insulin that teaches you How much insulin to take for what food so as a result, you know patients understand And then, you know, you have to be able to understand how to watch your blood sugars If you just put a dexcom on your pocket and never look at it or silence the alarms and don't even care about it Of course, you're not going to learn from it, right? But if you're a good observer and you understand what's going on with your blood sugars A lot of people actually get obsessed about it, especially in the beginning They keep looking at what's going on with blood sugars, which is great, you know Without me doing anything sometimes just prescribing dexcom and fighting for it for our patients, you know pays off And they end up controlling their blood sugar is much better. A lot of people will say that's a revolutionary The device Now remember, I don't refer to dexcom. We don't get paid from dexcom. I'm here to tell you The facts about dexcom, right? So if you really need it or not So but remember so if if you are multiple daily injections of insulin insurance coverage will be much easier Medicare covers it if you're on three or more injections A day they pay 80% of it For a lot of commercial plans if you have a good plan they most of the time cover dexcom if you're on multiple injections Now Once you get to dexcom another good benefit is that you don't have to do finger sticks most of the time, right? So accuracy is very good. I still recommend my patients if they go low like very low You shouldn't be relying on dexcom a lot of people a lot of mistakes happen because they go low, which is great They they they catch it and they do something about it But then they keep following the dexcom to see if their blood sugar is going to go up Now remember dexcom is delayed especially when your blood sugars are rapidly going up or rapidly going down It is telling you but it's telling you a little bit later. So you it's delayed So you may be down to 50 you may eat 20 grams of sugar or carbs your blood sugar will go up to 80 within just minutes Dexcom will not tell you that dexcom will still tell you that you are still in the 50s 60s Just because it is delayed. So at that moment you have to the finger stick to make sure that you actually Are back to normal And then you can go by your symptoms as well, of course your symptoms disappear dexcom still says you're 60 Who cares, right? So you feel better you that finger stick the blood sugar is up And then dexcom eventually will catch up in 10 15 minutes So as a result if your blood sugar is overall stable before eating when you wake up dexcom is going to be Like that accurate, right? But it's it's also telling you the good thing about dexcom is telling you the direction you're going It doesn't have to be exact. Sometimes when patients will say, oh, I do a finger stick either dexcom. They don't match Long long story, right? So the finger sticks are not perfect either So when you do a finger stick in a droplet form your vein, uh, it's going to be 20 different sometimes So the finger sticks are not necessarily exactly what you're trying to match with Even when you do a toe versus finger your blood sugar will be different. So you your body is dynamic So things are different in your body. So And dexcom is not even measuring the blood sugar. It's measuring the fluid glucose So for glucose to get transported to the tissue It has to go from the blood get out go to the tissue and that there's a time delay there So so even if your blood sugar goes up after you eat, you know that blood sugar to travel to your tissues Uh for dexcom to measure it's going to take some time Also, there's some, you know, the electronics involved, you know when when dexcom is measuring there is a sensor That has to be a that has to be a certain reaction for that Glucose to be translated to a number on your dexcom all these things guys take time. So, uh, so it's it's sometimes minutes You know 10 minutes maybe But you don't want to eat another 100 grams of carbs within that 10 minutes Try to get your blood sugar up because you're following dexcom That should not happen. So these are common mistakes that happen with dexcom now As I said, if you're on multiple injections of insulin guys Call us if you're a florida resident, we'll take care of you. We'll get the dexcom covered for you We'll get a freestyle librae covered if you are Let's say for one or the other reason your insurance doesn't cover dexcom. They cover freestyle librae It's still better nothing in my opinion dexcom is much better than librae in terms of accuracy and so forth in the alarms and so forth But freestyle librae Definitely still will help you although you will need to do much more frequent finger stick. So freestyle librae is not necessarily going to Put you to no finger stick zone It will put you into No finger stick most of the time zone Okay, but with the dexcom you can get away without Finger sticks for a long time, especially if you are not having very severe highs or severe lows And that is the video of dexcom So I hope that helps you guys so if You enjoyed this video, please give a thumbs up and make sure that you subscribe to our channel You're going to get a lot of valuable information You are going to be educated. Do not please ask personal questions, but you can ask general questions about Anything about diabetes insulin resistance and weight loss. That's what we are helping you with Again, we are in person and virtual if you live in the west palm area more than welcome to see us if you are living in tampa living in pancicola We are just a Call away And we are going to make a virtual visit and we'll stay in touch through texting and emailing Again sugaramdies.com a wonderful day. I'm dr. Ergen, and I hope you enjoyed this video. Bye