WHY IS GLUCOSE

MONITORING

IMPORTANT?

Regularly monitoring your glucose levels can help you take better care of your diabetes. It helps you learn how food, activity levels, stress, medicine, and insulin affect your glucose levels.

Are Singaporeans with diabetes

doing enough to monitor

their glucose?

More than half (51%) of people with diabetes admitted they do not monitor their glucose at home due to inconvenience, while 46% didn’t think it was necessary.¹

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In a person without diabetes:

Body cells gets “fuel” (blood glucose) it needs to function.
Blood glucose levels are normal and does not pile up in the bloodstream.

In a person living with diabetes:

Blood glucose levels become abnormal and “piles up” in the bloodstream.³
Prolonged high sugar levels in the bloodstream can damage large and small blood vessels.⁴

If poorly controlled, diabetes can lead to serious complications.

2 in 3

individuals with new kidney failure
had diabetes⁶

1 in 2

individuals who had a heart attack
had diabetes⁶

2 in 5

individuals who had a stroke
had diabetes⁶

Half of the

disease burden

of blindness and vision
impairment is due to diabetes⁶

9 in 10

individuals who had a lower
limb amputation had diabetes⁶

Start monitoring your glucose and improve your lifestyle in various ways!

Food: In an era of information overload, continuous glucose monitoring can help you tackle the “To eat or not to eat” dilemma by monitoring changes in your glucose levels according to the changes in your meal components⁷and using that information to drive your decision.

Exercise: While exercise is necessary, over-exercise or even not doing enough, can lead to counter effects on diabetes management. Continuous glucose monitoring can help you understand if the exercise routine is suitable for you by predicting an overall direction in which your glucose levels are going. Thereby alerting you if your levels are going down due to over-exercise (hypoglycaemia)⁷.

Medications: A regular account of your glucose levels also helps your doctor get a wide range of information to work with, while understanding if the prescribed medications are working for you. If any medication requires alterations or replacement, they need not wait for an extended period of time⁷.

With disorders that involve strict glucose management, there is no one solution that fits all, since no two individuals react to lifestyle interventions in the exact same way. Every individual and every physiology are unique⁷.

When living with diabetes, if there is one gospel truth you need to believe in, then it's your own glucose levels. So when in doubt, just #AskYourGlucose and put an end to your dilemmas.