New Dario Glucose Meter: Blood Glucose Monitoring System

Turn your Smart Phone into a Smart Blood Glucose Meter!

The Dario Smart Blood Glucose Monitoring System integrates with your smartphone directly allowing you to monitor and track your blood glucose and other important elements, on your phone. This all-in-one system from LabStyle Innovations was launched internationally in 2013 and has been under review by the FDA since then. Dario was given the go ahead by the FDA in December 2015 and it hit the U.S market in mid May 2016.This system is a sleek plastic device that’s about the size of the normal cigarette lighter with a cartridge of 25 strips housed on top and a lancet built into the bottom.

Technical specifications

Blood sample size: Minimum of 0.3 microlitres
Time to process and display results: 6 seconds
Memory: Limited to phone/device memory
Batteries: not required
Averages: 7, 14, or 30 days
Hematocrit range: 20 to 60%
Measurement range 0.6 to 33.3 mmol/L
Weight: 40 grams
Operating temperature: 50° to 113°F (10° to 45°C)
Storage temperature: 36° to 90°F (2° to 32°C)
Altitude: up to 3,400 meters
Dimensions: 104 x 21 x 11mm.

Explore the Features of the Dario Blood Glucose Monitoring System

All-in-one Glucose Monitoring System

There are two main things that make the Dario Blood Glucose Monitoring System stand out from other systems. The first reason is that it turns your smart phone into the glucose meter. The second is that the test strip and lancet holder are combined into one, convenient, easy to use and well-designed device. It is ideal for keeping things discrete because nobody would actually guess that it’s actually a glucose meter.

The lancet/needle

The lancet that is housed on one end of the all-in-one device can be accessed by simply snapping off the orange piece. You can also set the needle’s depth, and then pull down the back piece in order to load the needle before pressing the button (orange button) to release it.

Test strips

Test strips are stored on the opposite end of the device. Therefore, there’s no need to carry around several pieces. Moreover, the cartridge that contains 25 test strips simply snaps into place and you just need to remove the white piece you’ll find at the end. The device comes with two test strip cartridges and each cartridge contains 25 test strips.

Meter attachment

The Dario Smart Blood Glucose Monitoring System turns your smartphone into a blood glucose testing meter by simply plugging in a very small attachment into the phone’s headphone jack. The meter attachment is also conveniently stored in the compact all-in-one device.

The meter

The packing clearly explains how users can download the app and set it up on their phones. You can test your blood sugar by simply plugging in the attachment and opening the app. The device will prompt you to carefully insert a new testing strip before placing a drop of blood on the strip. The meter will count down by first filling in a circle before it displays the glucose level. The device uses a color coding system to show if the glucose level is within range, high or within the borderline. It will then take you to a new screen where you’re required to indicate whether it’s a bedtime, pre-meal or post-meal reading and then enter additional information related to physical activity, insulin, carbs and even tags.

App-Tracking and Analytics

The Dario app is easy to use and very intuitive. It logs important data and then displays it in a clear and meaningful way to the end user. You can also set up your own personal profile which mainly includes the type of bolus/basal medication you use, your blood glucose thresholds and hyper/hypo warnings. Moreover, you can set reminders, track food, and sync fitness apps.

Logbook and Charts

The app is designed to automatically store all readings in the logbook. You can also choose if you want to view it as a chart, timeline, or list. The chart graphs up the last 14 days and you can share your logbook as a CSV or PDF file with your phone contacts or even by entering an email address.

On-Demand Sharing

The app also lets you chart more including carbohydrate intake, calories and insulin doses and the results can be shared with anyone such as your doctor or family. Moreover, the statistics tab generally gives you a summary for a day, or the last week (7 days), month (30 days), or 90 days. This summary tells you the number of readings you had, the highest or lowest reading and then breaks the data down by how many readings were in range, average or below and then by how many hypers or hypos you had based on your custom settings. You can also click the summary box to see all the readings that fall into that specific category.

Emergency Hypo Alerts

This is an additional safety feature that once enabled on your device; Dario sends a text message to 4 people with your current blood glucose level and a link to where you are using your device’s GPS coordinates. This feature is ideal for people who have or had hypo problems in the past because they can go anywhere at any time with peace of mind.

What are the Benefits of Dairo Smart Blood Glucose Monitoring System?

This is one of the latest blood testing meters and everything in the system fits perfectly together. Therefore, instead of carrying around your pouch with separate pieces (lancing device, test strips, meters, etc), all you really need is one compact device and your phone
The device is great when it comes to logging everything making your data super convenient to share.
You don’t have to worry about charging your meter because the device will work as long as your phone does not run out of charge.
The Dario Smart Meter is very small and compact. The case dimensions are 104mm x 21mm x 11mm. This includes the lancing device, test strips and the meter itself.
The device is compatible with both android (OS 4.12 or higher) and iOS devices (OS 6.1 or higher)

Drawbacks

The device does not sync with other diabetic devices.

Is the The Dario Smart Blood Glucose Monitoring System for me?

If you’re looking for a system that is compact and allows users to log readings directly to their phones, this device is a great option!

For the Latest Bloodless Glucose Meter Options – Click here!

Exenatide For Type 2 Diabetes

Exenatide is an injectable type 2 diabetes medication that is used along with exercise and diet in order to control the blood glucose level. It stimulates the pancreas to produce insulin efficiently when your blood glucose level is high. Exenatide also causes a significant decrease in appetite by slowing the emptying of your stomach. However, Exenatide should not be used to treat type 1 diabetes.

Using medication and making lifestyle changes such as exercising, dieting and quitting smoking will help you improve your health and manage your diabetes. This will also decrease the chances of having a stroke, heart attack and other diabetes related complications including nerve damage, kidney failure, gum disease, and eye problems. Your health care providers will advise you on the best way you can manage your diabetes.

When to Avoid Exenatide for Diabetes.

You should not use Exenatide if you are on dialysis or if you have severe kidney disease, diabetic ketoacidosis or if you have slowed digestion.
Exenetide should not be used together with Bydureon and short-acting or fast-acting insulin.

Is Exenatide Safe? You should tell your health care provider if you have:

High triglycerides
A history of kidney transplant or kidney disease
A history of gall stones or pancreatitis
Digestion problems
A history of alcoholism

Birth control pills should be taken at least 1 hour before taking this medication. You should also tell your doctors if you are pregnant, plan on becoming pregnant or become pregnant while using Exenatide.

Exenetide is not approved for use by people younger than 18 years.

How should I use Exenetide?

Exenatide immediate release, which is also known as Byetta, comes as a liquid (solution) in a prefilled injection pen for injecting subcutaneously.

Exenatide extended release (Bydureon) (long-acting) comes in powder form which is mixed with liquid in a prefilled injection pen or a vial to inject subcutaneously.

Exenatide immediate release (Byetta) should be injected twice per day within one hour before breakfast and dinner. It should not be injected before meals and your doses should be at least six hours apart. The doctor might start you on a low dosage and may switch you to a higher dosage of Exenatide if your blood glucose control does not improve after using the initial dosage for one month. The doctor might also adjust the dosage to make sure you have the best results.

Exenatide extended release solution should be injected once per week, on the same day each week without regard to meals. Use Exenatide exactly as instructed by your doctor.

Diabetics who use Exenatide immediate release need to purchase needles separately. Your doctor will tell you the needles you should use to inject the medication. Always look at your medication before injecting it. Exenatide should be as fluid, colorless and clear as water. Do not use Exenatide in smaller or larger amounts or for longer than prescribed. Exenatide is injected under the skin and your doctor or pharmacist should show you how injections are used and how used syringes and needles should be disposed. Exenatide (Byetta) comes in a prefilled dosing pen with a user manual showing detailed instructions for using the injection pen.

Never share a cartridge, syringe or injection pen with anyone else since this can allow diseases or infections to pass from one person to the other.

Exenatide Dosage Information:

What should I do if I miss a dose?

If you’ve not yet eaten a meal, take the missed dose immediately. However, if it’s almost time for your next dose, or if you’ve already eaten, skip the dose you’ve missed.

What should I do if I overdose?

Seek medical attention immediately. Exenatide overdose can cause nausea, vomiting and signs of low blood sugar such as feeling shaky, dizziness, headache irritability and hunger.

What are the side effects of Exenatide?

Stop using Exenatide and seek medical help if you have:

Low blood sugar: sweating, irritability, feeling anxious and shaky, dizziness, hunger and fast heart rate.
Kidney problems: Difficult or painful urination, little or no urination, swelling in your ankles or feet, short of breath or feeling tired.
Pancreatitis: Severe nausea and vomiting, severe pain in the upper stomach spreading to the back, or fast heart rate.
Feeling jittery and weak
Constipation, diarrhea, heart burn.

Seek emergency medical help if you notice any signs of allergic reaction to Exenatide; rapid heartbeats, hives, difficult breathing, feeling light headed, itching, and swelling of the face, throat, tongue or lips.

What drugs that can affect Exenatide?

Your doctor might recommend that you stop using:

Birth control pills
Antibiotics
Blood pressure medication
Pain medication
Oral diabetes medicine or insulin
Warfarin (Jantoven, Coumadin)

Exenatide might make it difficult for the body to absorb oral medication. Therefore, it is vital to tell your physician about all the medication you are taking including herbal products for Diabetes, vitamins and over-the-counter medicines.

How To Help a Diabetic Child Live a Normal Life

How do I help my Child with Diabetes?

Having childhood diabetes is a tough road to have to travel, for both the Child and for the family who loves that child! It will be a real shock for you at first, however you and your family will learn to adjust to living with Diabetes. Thankfully you can make it a little easier by planning ahead and speaking openly to your child and others about their disease. The child has nothing to be embarrassed about, and this issue should not be hidden. In fact, hiding it can be a lot more dangerous than letting everyone know, plus being open will make your child feel more normal rather than as if they have a bad secret to keep. You should still encourage your child to strive to achieve their highest goals – there are so many celebrities, rock stars, Olympic athletes and sports men and women who live with diabetes.

Plan Ahead

Every day has to be planned ahead to include meals, snacks, testing, and injections. For small children there are risks all over the place in terms of food that they cannot have. Because of this, it’s important to let your child have some planned treats occasionally so they don’t feel left out. The truth is, what’s good for your diabetic child is also good for other children.

Diabetic Kids – They’re Not That Different

Children should eat a healthy, balanced diet, stay hydrated with non-sugar sweetened beverages and get plenty of activity each day. The only difference is that your child will need to monitor their blood sugar, and take breaks to either give themselves insulin or take medication. Oftentimes this means an adult will need to assist them.

Help your Diabetic Child by Talking to Teachers

Teachers and administrators need to know everything they can about your child’s condition. Some schools today do not have nurses on staff. Sometimes, if your child is not on a pump and you can’t leave work to administer insulin injections, the teacher will be the one to do it and it’ll be up to you to train them how to do it appropriately. Plan to spend a day or two at your child’s school so that you can go through every procedure, and watch them do it as well so that you can feel assured.

School Lunch Ideas for Kids with Diabetes.

There are so many choices really, for school lunches for Diabetic children. Actually, it’s probably no different than what an ‘ideal’ lunch box for anyone should look like! You need to pack fun and healthy foods that will give them enough energy to get through the day – and to help manage their blood sugar levels. Here are a few examples :

Hard cooked eggs
Rice or pasta, with some grilled chicken or fish
Some cubed ham or turkey, with some dipping sauces
Hummus with some pita bread
Salads with some grilled chicken
Baby carrots
Cubes of low fat cheese.
Yoghurt with some sliced pear
Crackers
Seedless Grapes
Vegetable sticks like celery, carrot or cucumber, with some hummus to dip in
Wrap some thin sliced roast beef, around veges, or breadsticks

Dealing with Other Children, when your child has Diabetes

If your child has diabetes, the best way to deal with other children is to make them part of helping your child stay safe and healthy. Offer to teach your child’s class about diabetes. Bring a fun interactive presentation and make your child feel special. A nice party with appropriate and healthy food to top it off will help. This will certainly make your child feel just like all the other children in their class

Set a Good Example for your Child with Diabetes.

Don’t eat foods in front of your child that they cannot have. Don’t have food around the house that your child cannot have. Live a healthy life along with your child, and let your home be your child’s safe place away from temptations and the feeling of being left out. It’s not right to have those things around or at the dinner table if your one of your children can’t have them.

Most children with diabetes will live long lives and maintain their health as long as they’re taught how to care for themselves appropriately. Pay attention to their meals, calculate and teach them to calculate their carbohydrates, and ensure that they get their insulin on time in accurate dosages every single day!

More information here about the Recent FDA Approval on the Bloodless Glucose Meter.

Stress and Diabetes

Can Stress Cause Diabetes?

Actually having diabetes in itself, is a major source of stress. Many diabetics have much higher rates of anxiety and depression, and learning to deal with this and reducing stress in your day to day activities, is vital.

Your body is essentially a hormone factory. Whenever you are stressed – whether it’s good or bad stress – your body releases different types of hormones to help you out. For example, it will release adrenaline to give you more energy. Along with these, your liver, muscles and fat will also release glucose. If you have chronic stress you can end up with a situation where your body is releasing too much hormone, and too much glucose, too often.

Diabetes and Stress is not a good scenario. If you’re chronically under stress it can make it difficult to control your diabetes. If you are worried about things such as paying the bills, taking care of your children, passing tests, and other life situations, you could be harming your health more than you know with the added additional and frequent releases of hormones into your blood stream. Like drugs, you can actually get addicted to these hormones too.

Who Is in Control?

In Life, the Truth, and Being Free , the author Steve Maraboli states, “You must learn to let go. Release the stress. You were never in control anyway.” In many cases this is true, but in others you really do have some control over the stress in your life.

The trick is to figure out which things you have control over and which things you do not. A good way to judge is to determine who must do the change or action to make it different. If it’s not you, you have no control over it, and you must let it go. If it is you, then you have to face it and do what it takes to change.

Even if it’s something you have no control over, you do have control over your reaction to the situation. Learn to take time to assess a situation, determine who is in control, and then control what you can. If someone is being bossy or demanding, just react differently to it than you normally would. Take a deep breath, count to ten and move on. You can control your thoughts and your actions in a way that reduces your stress.

If you do have direct control over something such as your weight and what you eat, then it’s time to face the facts that only you can truly make a change here. If your poor eating habits are causing you to be unhealthy, instead of letting it add stress to your life, work on creating new habits one day at a time. Each meal or each day that you make the best choices for yourself and your health, you’ll be less stressed about that issue.

Stress and Diabetes: Steps You Can Take to Reduce Stress

* Learn coping skills – Read books about developing coping skills or, if you can, seek some professional help through a counselor or life coach.

* Meditate – This isn’t hokey, and it’s not strange; meditation and prayer are proved to keep you calmer, long after.

*Exercise – Moving around a little every day releases feel-good endorphins that can help you feel more at peace during and after exercise.

* Try something new – Sometimes it helps to break out of your everyday life to let go of stress. Join a local group, try a new hobby, take a class, volunteer.

* Breathe and count – During a stressful event, teach yourself to check your breathing. So many people literally hold their breath at all times of the day. Count to three (or ten if you need it) and breathe normally and mindfully.

* Relax – Take time each day to just relax, read a good book, watch a TV show or documentary and just be.

By incorporating these things into your life and being aware of who exactly is in control of your life, you will go far in reducing the stress in your life and at the same time, reducing the effects of stress on diabetes.

Exercise can help ease stress from diabetes. Read MORE

Atkins Diet for Diabetes Type 1

A significant number of studies have shown that a low-carb diet for diabetics can be highly effective not only for healthy weight loss, but also for improving numerous measures of risk for diabetes and heart disease. A research by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine reported that a low fat diet does not have any advantage over the Atkins low carbohydrate diet.

In fact, the study shows that the low carb diet actually has various significant advantages. This news is very important especially because most conventional doctors still believe that low carb diets are dangerous despite substantial evidence to the contrary.

What is the Atkins diet and how does it work?

The Atkins diet is popular across the globe and numerous books have been written about the diet since its original promotion by Dr. Robert C. Atkins, a physician who wrote a bestselling book about the Atkins diet in 1972. Initially, the diet was demonized and considered unhealthy by most mainstream health authorities largely due to its high saturated fat content.

New studies show that saturated fat is not harmful and since then the Atkins diet has been studied extensively and shown to lean to greater improvement in blood sugar, triglycerides, HDL (good cholesterol) and actually leads to greater fat loss compared to low fat diets.

The reason why a low carb diet is effective for boosting various health makers and weight loss is that when you eat more protein and reduce carbohydrate intake, your appetite goes down and you end up eating fewer calories without even having to think or work on it.

Phases of the Atkins Diet

The Atkins diet is divided into four main phases:

Phase 1: Induction

Eat less about 20 grams of carbohydrates per day for two weeks. Kick-start the diet and weight loss by eating high protein, high-fat with leafy greens or other low carb vegetables.

Phase 2: Balancing

Gradually add more low-carb vegetables, nuts and a small amount of fruits to your diet.

Phase 3: Fine-tuning

Add more carbohydrates to your diet in case you don’t want to lose weight.

Phase 4: Maintenance

Eat as many carbohydrates as the body can tolerate without gaining weight.

Foods you should avoid on a Low Carb Diet Plan for Diabetics.

Grains such as rice, barley, rye, wheat and spelt.
Sugar including fruit juices, soft drinks, ice cream, candy and cake
Trans fats that are found in processed foods. Such foods usually have the word ��hydrogenated’ on the list of ingredients.
Vegetable oils: Canola oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil and soybean oil.
High-carb vegetables
Low-fat and diet foods that are high in sugar
High carb vegetables including turnips and carrots (induction phase only)
Starches such as sweet potatoes and potatoes (induction phase only)
High carb fruits such as apples, pears, bananas, grapes and oranges (induction phase only).
Legumes including beans, chickpeas, and lentils ((induction phase only).

Foods to include on your Low Carb Diabetic Diet Menu.

Your diet should be based around these healthy foods:
Meats: Pork, bacon, chicken, beef lamb and others
Sea foods and fatty fish: Sardines, trout and salmon
Eggs: pastured or Omega-3 enriched
Low-carb vegetables: Spinach, asparagus, broccoli, kales and others
Full-fat dairy: Cheese, butter, full-fat yoghurt and cream.
Nuts and seeds: Macadamia nuts, sunflower seeds, walnuts and almonds
Healthy fats: Coconut oil, avocado oil, avocados, and extra virgin olive oil.

Sample day’s menu for people on the Atkins Diet for Diabetes Type 1

This is what you might eat during a day of the first phase of the Atkins diet:

Breakfast: Scrambled eggs, cheddar cheese and sautéed onions. Some of the acceptable beverages include herbal tea, water, tea and coffee.
Lunch: Chef Salad with bacon, salad and avocado dressing.
Dinner: Asparagus, baked salmon steak, and arugula salad with cucumbers and cherry tomatoes along with any allowable beverage.
Snacks: You should have two snacks on a typical day. The snacks may include Atkins diet products such as granola bar, or chocolate shake or simple snacks such as cheddar cheese and celery.

Health benefits of the Atkins diet

The Atkins eating plan can improve or prevent serious health conditions such as type 1 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure. It’s essential to keep in mind that can help you shed excess weight can also reverse or reduce the risk factors for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. In fact, most diets that can help you lose excess weight, (not just low carbs diets) can improve blood sugar level and blood cholesterol.

Some studies show that people who follow the Atkins diet had improved triglycerides, which suggests better heart health. However, there are no major studies that show whether the benefits increase how long we live or whether they hold up for the long term.

However, you should always check with your physician or diabetes management team before starting on a new eating plan like the Atkins diet, especially if you have serious health conditions such as kidney disease and diabetes.

Have a look here at the SUPERFOODS you should include in you Diabetes Diet!