- Blood Glucose Monitoring Device - Fred Kidd
Diabetes is a disease that afflicts approximately 6.4% of the world’s population, and yet seems to glean countless hours of TV commercial time. For thousands of years, the unfortunate victims of diabetes were doomed to wasting away to a painful death. The etymology of the term “diabetes mellitus” is of Greek origin, "diabetes", along with the Latin word "mellitus" which translates to “honey-sweet siphon,” meaning that people who suffered with it would have many urinations a day, and because there was so much unabsorbed glucose in the urine, bees would swarm the puddles because of the sweet odor.
Types of Diabetes
There are several forms of diabetes, but the three most prevalent are:
- type 1 diabetes (formerly juvenile diabetes), in which the pancreas is unable to produce insulin that the body’s cells need to burn glucose for energy
- type 2 diabetes (formerly adult onset diabetes), in which the patient’s body is resistant to insulin absorption, or the pancreas simply cannot produce enough of it for the body’s needs
- gestational diabetes, in which a woman who may never have had diabetes before develops it during pregnancy
Type 2 diabetes is by far the most common, and the target audience for all those commercials.
Insulin and Diabetes
The discovery that made life possible for diabetics came in the early 20th century, when a group of scientists headed by Dr. Fredrick Banting at the University of Toronto isolated the hormone called insulin produced in the pancreas. This benefited type 1 diabetics the most, but because insulin is a protein derivative, it must be injected under the skin. If it were ingested by mouth, as in pill form, the body would view it as just another protein and begin the digestion process, which would destroy the hormone’s life-giving usefulness.
Type 2 diabetics, on the other hand, may still be able to produce insulin, and therefore can be put on a medication in pill form. In many cases, if the patient merely adjusts to a carefully planned diet, the need for medication can be eliminated.
In the past, testing a person’s blood glucose level was impossible without a trip to the hospital. The best home testing method was to put a reagent strip coated with chemicals that would react to a sample portion of urine, turning the strip a certain color. The strip was then compared to a color chart to obtain an approximate range of blood glucose readings, giving the patient a snapshot of how much unabsorbed glucose there was in their urine.
Blood Glucose Monitoring
This method, though helpful, did not give the patient’s current glucose level, but the level that exists after the body disposed of it. The advent of true blood glucose monitoring was a godsend to diabetes patients. The patient simply places a small drop of blood on the reagent pad at the end of the strip, and that reacts with the glucose in the blood to produce micro-currents of electricity which are interpreted by the monitor into a blood glucose reading.
This reading is very near, if not spot on, to the actual level of glucose in the patient’s blood, and one which they can use to adjust their diet, exercise, or medication, especially in the case of a low blood glucose reading, sometimes called a low blood sugar.
Source:
worlddiabetesfoundation.org, "Diabetes Facts" (accessed Feb. 6, 2010)
