More on Dexcom vs. Navigator
Spent the whole day yesterday with both devices... my Dex sensor ran out last night so it's off me for now.
First of all, the number one thing that yesterday did was make me realize just how much I came to absolutely hate the the question marks on the Dex. I am referring to the "???" entry when the Dex isn't sure if the sampling is reliable. In fact, I had so much quiet resentment built around this feature that it all came out in a huge rush of relief throughout the day, because with the Nav, there is no such thing - you always get a number.
The Nav also seems more accurate in many instances, although the Dex seems more likely to catch falling blood sugars faster. That is, on a downtrend, the Dex is more likely to be closer to fingerstick readings than the Nav. Now, I'm not entirely sure if this really matters, since fingerstick readings are themselves not exactly what matters to your body ("cell starvation" does). The Nav deals with this issue with the arrow.
The arrow really is a rather neat feature, and it saved me from a major swing yesterday after lunch. I was looking at the Dex and could swear that I was going to hypo when my blood sugars were around 110 or so. The graph on the Dex was a bit misleading in showing a downtrend, and a fingerstick of course at that point adds no new information (it showed 110 too, woopity-hey). The Nav, however, showed that I was stable with the arrow pointing right. I decided I'd follow the Nav's data rather than what my body was saying and what the Dex graph seemed to indicate, and instead of pre-treating a hypo, just hedged my bets, ate about 5 grams of carb and waited.
The reason I try to pre-treat hypos is because I fall so fast when I do; like I showed a while ago, I easily drop 100 points or even more in 15 minutes. Since it takes 10 minutes or so for the body to start absorbing even the fastest acting carbs, when I sense a fall coming, I have to treat even if I may be at 140 at the time. Usually this works well and I "catch" the hypo before it happens (eating 30g of carb at 140 to, say, stabilize at 120 a bit later, dropping no lower than 90), but sometimes, due to other factors, my body sends me signals that are very similar but in fact have nothing to do with blood sugars, and it can be very confusing.
Well, lo and behold, the damn Nav was right. I dropped to 103, then slowly rose to 117. This was confirmed with fingersticks. The Dex graph also stabilized, so in retrospect everything was fine, but because I had been steadily and slowly dropping beforehand, I would have previously loaded on carbs and ended up in the 200's.
The point is that the rate-of-change arrow made the determination between "I'm just tired, stressed and a bit a hungry from the cold" and "I'm about to drop into the 30's in 20 minutes" that little bit easier... and it was correct. I'm going to focus a lot of attention on the little arrow in the coming weeks because it seems rather ingenious if it really is reliable.
Another point that was made over and over yesterday - the Nav is eons better when it comes to range. With the Dex, I have to carry the thing all the time - not only on my body, but on the right side of my body (the side where the transmitter is), otherwise it misses readings ("Y" indicator). I mean, it has become a habit for me to allocate a certain pocket on my person to the Dex depending on which upper arm I stuck the sensor.
With the Nav, I could just as easily leave it on my desk and go into a nearby office and come back a bit later to see it was happily registering the signal. I am going to play with this a bit to see how far it goes, but it most certainly goes farther than the 5 feet or less the Dex gives me normally. At night this is even more crucial because the Dex detests the idea of sleeping on the transmitter and loses connection, whereas the Nav seems to not care whatsoever. In fact, it seems like I might be able to place the Nav receiver on the nightstand rather than next to my head at night, something I could never do with the Dex. I'll try that next.
With that said, the Nav alarms, with all their variety, can't do one simple thing: give me both a noise and a buzz on a high bloodsuagr at night, then just shut the frick up after I acknowledge it. It takes a couple hours for bloodsuagrs to start coming down after a bolus shot, and the damn thing will only allow me to mute it for 1 hour, and even that requires quite a bit of menu-driven operation at 3AM. Why not just let me say "OK, got it, dealt with it, now shut up till the morning"?
The alarm isn't as loud as the Dex, either. That's not so good for nighttime warnings. May have to keep it near my head anyway.
First of all, the number one thing that yesterday did was make me realize just how much I came to absolutely hate the the question marks on the Dex. I am referring to the "???" entry when the Dex isn't sure if the sampling is reliable. In fact, I had so much quiet resentment built around this feature that it all came out in a huge rush of relief throughout the day, because with the Nav, there is no such thing - you always get a number.
The Nav also seems more accurate in many instances, although the Dex seems more likely to catch falling blood sugars faster. That is, on a downtrend, the Dex is more likely to be closer to fingerstick readings than the Nav. Now, I'm not entirely sure if this really matters, since fingerstick readings are themselves not exactly what matters to your body ("cell starvation" does). The Nav deals with this issue with the arrow.
The arrow really is a rather neat feature, and it saved me from a major swing yesterday after lunch. I was looking at the Dex and could swear that I was going to hypo when my blood sugars were around 110 or so. The graph on the Dex was a bit misleading in showing a downtrend, and a fingerstick of course at that point adds no new information (it showed 110 too, woopity-hey). The Nav, however, showed that I was stable with the arrow pointing right. I decided I'd follow the Nav's data rather than what my body was saying and what the Dex graph seemed to indicate, and instead of pre-treating a hypo, just hedged my bets, ate about 5 grams of carb and waited.
The reason I try to pre-treat hypos is because I fall so fast when I do; like I showed a while ago, I easily drop 100 points or even more in 15 minutes. Since it takes 10 minutes or so for the body to start absorbing even the fastest acting carbs, when I sense a fall coming, I have to treat even if I may be at 140 at the time. Usually this works well and I "catch" the hypo before it happens (eating 30g of carb at 140 to, say, stabilize at 120 a bit later, dropping no lower than 90), but sometimes, due to other factors, my body sends me signals that are very similar but in fact have nothing to do with blood sugars, and it can be very confusing.
Well, lo and behold, the damn Nav was right. I dropped to 103, then slowly rose to 117. This was confirmed with fingersticks. The Dex graph also stabilized, so in retrospect everything was fine, but because I had been steadily and slowly dropping beforehand, I would have previously loaded on carbs and ended up in the 200's.
The point is that the rate-of-change arrow made the determination between "I'm just tired, stressed and a bit a hungry from the cold" and "I'm about to drop into the 30's in 20 minutes" that little bit easier... and it was correct. I'm going to focus a lot of attention on the little arrow in the coming weeks because it seems rather ingenious if it really is reliable.
Another point that was made over and over yesterday - the Nav is eons better when it comes to range. With the Dex, I have to carry the thing all the time - not only on my body, but on the right side of my body (the side where the transmitter is), otherwise it misses readings ("Y" indicator). I mean, it has become a habit for me to allocate a certain pocket on my person to the Dex depending on which upper arm I stuck the sensor.
With the Nav, I could just as easily leave it on my desk and go into a nearby office and come back a bit later to see it was happily registering the signal. I am going to play with this a bit to see how far it goes, but it most certainly goes farther than the 5 feet or less the Dex gives me normally. At night this is even more crucial because the Dex detests the idea of sleeping on the transmitter and loses connection, whereas the Nav seems to not care whatsoever. In fact, it seems like I might be able to place the Nav receiver on the nightstand rather than next to my head at night, something I could never do with the Dex. I'll try that next.
With that said, the Nav alarms, with all their variety, can't do one simple thing: give me both a noise and a buzz on a high bloodsuagr at night, then just shut the frick up after I acknowledge it. It takes a couple hours for bloodsuagrs to start coming down after a bolus shot, and the damn thing will only allow me to mute it for 1 hour, and even that requires quite a bit of menu-driven operation at 3AM. Why not just let me say "OK, got it, dealt with it, now shut up till the morning"?
The alarm isn't as loud as the Dex, either. That's not so good for nighttime warnings. May have to keep it near my head anyway.
posted by Blinkered at 5:45 AM
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