Many people who are suffering from diabetes or irregular sugar levels, often ignore the need to check their blood sugar. When you are suffering from sugar problems, it is imperative to check sugar levels frequently. However, the question which arises is, when to check blood sugar? For some people, checking blood sugar often would constitute checking the blood sugar levels every couple of hours, for others, it would be checking twice a day.
If you are suffering from type 1 diabetes, your doctor may recommend you to check your blood sugar levels even up-to 8 times per day. However, if you are suffering from type 2 diabetes, the doctor would generally recommend you to check your blood sugar levels twice per day.
There are also a few other factors on which the blood sugar level checking frequency depends, which we would be highlighting below.
- Medication which you are consuming
If you are on insulin medication, you would have to check your blood sugar levels multiple times per day. When you are injecting external insulin in your body, the blood sugar levels in your body can change frequently, due to this reason, it is important for you to check your blood sugar levels, at-least 5 to 6 times throughout the day. The general time period after which you have to check your blood sugar levels is 2 hours after injecting insulin. - Type of diet
If you have recently changed your diet, then you have to again opt for a more frequent check rather then reducing the frequency. Once you are changing your diet, it is a good idea to check 2 hours after each meal to get a clear idea about the impact of your new diet on the levels of sugar in your body. - Blood sugar level at diagnosis
The frequency of checking the blood sugar would also be dependent on the exact sugar levels which were diagnosed in your body earlier at the time of detection of diabetes.
If you were diagnosed with a blood sugar level of more then 400 mg/dL when you were first diagnosed with diabetes, then you would be required to check your blood sugar levels every 2 to 3 hours as compared to a person who was diagnosed with a blood sugar level of just 250 mg/dL who would just be required to check twice or thrice per day.
Due to this reason, the answer to the question when to check blood sugar would also be dependent on the diagnosed blood sugar levels in your body when you were first diagnosed with diabetes.
So, if you are trying to find the frequency at which you have to check your sugar, it depends on the type of diabetes which you are suffering from like a patient of type 1 diabetes would be checking it up-to 8 times per day but a patient of type 2 diabetes would be checking it only twice per day and also, it depends on a variety of other factors which we have discussed above.