Other Blood Glucose Tests For Diabetic
Your medical practitioner may give you an extra blood sugar test to see if your own monitoring as well as your home meter are accurate. She can also do other glucose tests if there is a need to change your medicine or the treatment. Test results will be given in plasma sugar values.
The Fructosamine Test
It is a test that determines your blood glucose covering a period of about three weeks. For the A1c test, the period covered is about three months. This fructosamine test measures glycated serum proteins and can be used together with A1c to know how blood glucose control has reacted to particular treatment changes in a lesser time. However, it cannot be a substitute for daily glucose monitoring or A1c test.
Insulin Tests
There is a way to test the amount of insulin in your bloodstream. It is known as the insulin serum test. Unfortunately, the test is too expensive. Furthermore, its usefulness in medical work is limited. Therefore, it is very seldom used in diagnosing or assessing diabetes.
The accuracy of insulin test is also questionable. Insulin very quickly is reduce to half and much has been removed from the body even before going into circulation. Other than this, the tests cannot separate injected insulin from that produced by the body. Rather than use insulin tests, findings on the levels of c-peptide are more often done as they can give better information on the functioning of beta cells, the cells that produce insulin.
The Perfect Treatment for Diabetes and Weight Loss – Video Guide
Urine Glucose Tests
Urinary glucose tests, still being used as reagent measurement tests, were at one time used by diabetics at home as the usual way to measure sugar levels. With the arrival of the accurate home monitoring systems, urine glucose tests have been sidelined to be used only from time to time.
The urinary glucose tests have some disadvantages. The result takes time, some hours after sugar has been filtered by the kidney into the urine, and the urine taking some time to be collected in the bladder before it is ready to leave the body to be tested. The test is not sensitive enough to give specific values. So, a negative result can only inform you that your level of blood sugar is less than 10.0 mmol/L (180 mg/dL) and is safely under control. Furthermore, urine glucose tests, different from blood glucose monitor, are not able to show low blood sugar.
see Hypoglycemia – Low Blood Sugar Management
Blood testing is generally accepted for self-monitoring of blood glucose levels (SMBG). Although that may be so, urine glucose test strips are still in use by diabetics who do not have the money for the more expensive blood monitoring supplies. Another reason for their continued use come from patients who refuse blood test to avoid discomfort or for some other reasons. If your insistence on using urine glucose tests id due to financial problems, you can approach your healthcare team to enquire about assistance programs offering free supplies for blood sugar testing.