hi there my name is Christel Oerum and I am the founder of Diabetes Strong today we're going to
talk about our Dexcom G6 and whether or not it's actually accurate and what you can do about it
if you find it's not accurate I wear a Dexcom G6 I love that product it's brilliant it helps
help me manage my diabetes but it can also be incredibly frustrating
there's nothing more annoying than when our tech is inaccurate or just doesn't work
right because I mean I absolutely love that I open my phone I can open it I can see where my blood
sugars are right there so right now it's not wacky but believe me, I've been through enough wacky
sensors to know how irritating how frustrating it is so let's first talk about how do you know
whether or not your Dexcom G6 is actually accurate or not so let me share this with you so this is
not something I've come up with this is actually directly from Dexcom's own website
this is what they called their 20 rule this tells you when you should calibrate your Dexcom G6
to make it more accurate or at least to make it more similar to what your meter says remember
just because your meter says something doesn't mean that that's necessarily more accurate
let me walk you through it so what you have here in the green pillars
are your meter values so let's say that while and the white columns are the
Dexcom G6 values let's say that and I was in this situation this morning I measured my blood
sugar with my meter it was 99 so that's actually over here in the orange box it was 99 however my
Dexcom kept telling me that I was super low not super low I was saying like that was 72
milligrams per deciliter I actually pulled up this and this is why I want to talk about it
today I pulled up this one and I was like okay so my meter says 100 milligrams per deciliter
and then I look here and I'm like well my Dexcom is claiming that I'm 72
this one according to the Dexcom website if my blood sugar if my reading on my
G6 had been 80 or higher it would be fine but given it was 72 that actually tells me that
the meter and the Dexcom readings a little bit too far apart so I calibrate it
this I highly recommend that you bookmark this that you put it in your wallet take a
copy whatever you do and have it with you because I think there's a lot of times where we get very
frustrated because our readings are not the same between our meter and our Dexcom remember they
shouldn't always be the same let's talk about that in a second but this is a really really
cool way for you to easily go in and say okay so my meter says 220 milligrams per deciliter
and my Dexcom says 180. That feels like it's inaccurate right but if you go in it's actually
within the accuracy level for your Dexcom G6, it goes from 170 uh 76 to 264. Remember there's going to
be more variability if you're out in the outer ranges especially if you're in the high range
but I think generally having a guideline to knowing is this accurate or not can be really
helpful for you to know when you can actually go in and do a calibration okay again you can
find this on the Dexcom site I will leave a link to it down below in the comments so that's the first
step that is seeing okay is it actually accurate you know or am I going crazy because sometimes
I have very little patience with my devices and I might end up overreacting and calibrating in
a time when I actually shouldn't thing is, is your meter actually is should your meter and your CGM
actually be the same no not all the time there are situations where our Dexcom is wacky
especially the first 24 hours after you insert a new sensor you most likely will see readings
that are a little weird so it is recommended that you do finger sticks during that period of time
also if your glucose levels are changing rapidly remember Dexcom is measuring your blood sugars
in the fluid underneath your skin whereas when you do a finger stick it measures in your blood
the fluid is a little bit lacking all right time lacking in that sense so if your blood sugars
are rising really quickly you most likely see a higher reading on your your when you
measure on your finger than if you see it on your Dexcom nothing wrong with that that doesn't mean
the devices are off or broken or inaccurate it just means that they measure in different places
should you calibrate no I would not recommend that because again it is accurate for the fluid okay
so if it's rapidly going up or down I would not calibrate and just have a little bit of
understanding with your device also so if your device for example if your Dexcom has an arrow up
it's telling you it is increasing like 30 to 60 milligrams per deciliter over the next half hour
so it's already giving you that indication another time where there can be.. where your sensor can
be off can for example be pressure highs or lows for that matter so that means that if you wear it
on your stomach for example and you sleep on your stomach that can put pressure on the sensor that
can give you a faulty reading is that optimal no not at all but that's just the case okay so those
are some of the cases where the readings might be off and there's a reason for that another thing
could be sometimes we don't have the best practice for measuring our blood sugars with our meters we
have to remember to wash our hands with water and soap we have to remember to dry them completely
have to remember to look at our test strips once in a while and see they're not expired
because they can actually do that or that they're not stored too hot or too cold
so there are some different things where it's actually not the Dexcom that's a fault it's
either us not doing things right or it is our meter that's actually not quite there generally
you shouldn't need to calibrate your Dexcom G6 sensor I personally don't calibrate it a
whole lot but it does happen when it happens it's important that you have a good meter
meter that you trust I often do one to two finger sticks just to see you know that I
don't have a wacky reading for some other reason I will sometimes wash my hands again
simply to make sure that actually you know that reading that I'm getting from my meter is accurate
I then measure my blood sugar and I calibrate
right away the general guideline is calibrated within five minutes I usually calibrate right
away because my goal is to get the Dexcom to be more accurate right not to sit around wait
they also say don't if you have a like a calibrating error or a sensor error sorry
sensor area on your G6 don't calibrate during that wait until it prompts you to do the calibrations
and when I've had like really really wacky sensors so sometimes they can be extra wacky if it's a
bleeder if it bleeds when you insert it I think I've had in the time I've used the Dexcom p6 which
I've used pretty much since it was released here in the US.. I've only had a few sensors that
completely malfunctioned on me and they would be super inaccurate and then it would come at
a sensor error I don't think I've ever taken one off because it was too inaccurate it would
be because the sensor realized hey I'm wacky this is not working and it's giving me an error
but again the steps is always think about the situation
measuring your blood sugar if is very far apart think about your situation
it's because I'm going high low is it because it's within the first day
you might still choose to calibrate even though it's within the first day I've done that and
it can help or is it because I'm like putting pressure on the sensor are there other reasons
and then again make sure that that reading that you get from a meter is actually
accurate because if not then you're just feeding your Dexcom you know faulty information but
that is how you figure out if your Dexcom is accurate and what you can do about it
hope you enjoyed this video hope to see you again here on the channel please subscribe and let
me know what your experiences with calibrating your sensor thank you so much for watching bye