High Blood Sugars

The Diabetes Mall now has Accu-Chek Aviva Test Strips available! You can get 50 strips for $37.50, 100 strips for $68.50, and 150 strips for $111.50. These easy to handle test strips fill quickly with a tiny drop of blood. The Aviva test strips work with the Accu-Chek blood glucose meter.

Timesulin is a cap for insulin pens that shows users how long it's been since their last insulin injection. It is easy to forget when you last took a shot. Was it 10 minutes ago? An hour? 3 hours? Missing the shot can results in blood sugar highs, while taking an extra can result in blood sugar lows. Timesulin helps avoid these mistakes.

How To Prevent Highs

For better blood sugars and fewer lows, test often and review your readings once a week for patterns of lows or highs, or both. Identify these problems, then consider their causes and how to correct them. Make one change at a time and correct lows first. If you need any advice at all about how to correct a problem, be sure to call your physician or nurse educator right away. Do not let control problems linger as they usually turn into larger problems.

• Immediately drink a large amount of non-caloric or low caloric fluid. Continue to drink 8 to 12 oz. every 30 minutes. Diluted Gatorade, water with Nu-Salt™ and similar fluids are good because they help restore potassium lost because of high blood sugars.
• Take larger-than-normal correction boluses every 3 hours until the blood sugar is below 200 mg/dl (11 mmol) and ketones are negative. It will take much more rapid insulin than normal to bring blood sugars down when ketones are present in the urine or blood.
  

Symptoms

These symptoms are due to the ketone poisoning and should never be ignored. As soon as a person begins to vomit or has difficulty breathing, immediate treatment in an emergency room is required to prevent coma and possible death.

Ketoacidosis And Hyperglycemic Hyperosmolar Syndrome

Severe high blood sugars, ketosis (the presence of ketones prior to acidification of the blood), and ketoacidosis (DKA) are serious and potentially life-threatening medical problems which can occur in diabetes. High blood sugars become life-threatening in Type 1 or long-term Type 2 diabetes only when that person does not receive enough insulin from injections or an insulin pump. This can be caused by skipping insulin or not receiving enough insulin when large amounts are required due to an infection or other major stress.

Learn to control your diabetes with flexible insulin therapy (FIT). Why flexible insulin therapy? Think for a second and the answer is clear---that's what everyone else's pancreas is doing. Insulin is given in varying amounts depending on the need at that moment.