Blood glucose checks are one of the best tools to help you manage diabetes. Frequent checks and good record-keeping give you, your parents, and your whole diabetes care team the best picture of where you are in your diabetes care.

One reason to do checks is to find out how often your blood glucose levels are in your target range. Your target range is a personalized blood glucose range that you set with your doctor and your parents. Your range is probably slightly different than other kids with diabetes you may know. That's because it's based on your body, your lifestyle … YOU. Your target range will change as you grow, and if your diabetes treatment changes.

What is diabetes record-keeping? It starts with talking to your doctor or diabetes educator. Together you'll work out a schedule of how often and when you should check your blood glucose each day. Three or four times a day is pretty normal for kids taking insulin shots. Probably more often if you're on an insulin pump. If you're sick, or changing your schedule or diabetes treatment, you'll need to check more often. For example, if you join a sports team at school, you may have to check more often for the first few weeks of practice, maybe an extra check before and after practice. These extra checks will help you (and your parents) figure out if your food and insulin need to be adjusted to balance a higher level of exercise.

Once you know how often and when to check, then you stick to the schedule and check at those times each day. You'll need to keep a blood glucose daily log book. This could be a fancy book you bought, or simply a spiral-bound notebook that you carry around with you. Either way, it'll have a row for each day of the week, and columns for the time, what your blood glucose level was, how much insulin you took, and any other comments (like whether soccer practice was extra-long that day, you had a cold, or you forgot to eat your morning snack).

The most important thing is to remember to write down your results every time you check. Then, take your log book with you when you go see your doctor, educator, or other member of your diabetes care team. They will be able to help you answer questions about your diabetes from the information in the log book (assuming you remembered to write your checks down!)

(Click here for more information on recordkeeping.)

Putting the pieces together: What does it all mean?

What does all this mean to you? A lot, actually. You can use diabetes record-keeping to help you answer lots of questions about your diabetes. Here are a few examples that could probably be answered with good diabetes record-keeping:

• " Why do I wake up with low blood glucose almost every night at midnight?
  
• " Why do I go low sometimes when I play soccer or basketball, and sometimes I don't?
  
• " How much insulin will my body need to take care of a hamburger? A slice of birthday cake? A salad?
  
• " Why do I wake up with low blood glucose on Saturday and Sunday but not weekdays?

Accuracy in Checking

So you're checking as often as you're supposed to, and you're writing everything down in your log book. That's about it, right? Not quite. You should also keep an eye out for anything weird. This could be a sign you're getting an inaccurate reading from your meter. You should also do a glucose check with your diabetes educator from time to time, just to make sure everything's okay.

Here are a few common problems that can cause inaccurate readings:

• Hands are not clean & dry (you forgot to wash them, there's powdered sugar on them from that doughnut you just ate, or you used an alcohol wipe and the alcohol is interfering with the meter)
  
• Blood drop is too small
  
• Codes on strips and meter do not match
  
• Dirty meter