Glucose is a sugar that you get from food and drink. Your blood sugar levels go up and down throughout the day and for people living with diabetes these changes are larger and happen more often than in people who don't have diabetes.

You can do blood sugar level check by doing a finger-prick test , or by using an electronic blood sugar monitor called a flash glucose monitor or CGM. You can do this several times a day — helping you keep an eye on your levels as you go about your life and help you work out what to eat and how much medication to take.

Find out your ideal target range. Not everyone with diabetes needs to check their levels like this. Everyone with diabetes is entitled to this check.

High blood sugar levels increase your risk of developing serious complications. However you manage your diabetes, stay in the know about your blood sugar levels.

If you take certain medication, like insulin or sulphonylureas, checking your blood sugars is a vital part of living with diabetes. It can help you work out when you need to take more medication, when you need to eat something or for when you want to get up and move around more.

Routine checks can help you know when you might be starting to go too low called a hypo or too high called a hyper. It can help you and your healthcare team spot patterns too. Do you write your results down? You might find that helpful. But importantly, it will help you stay healthy and prevent serious diabetes complications now and in the future.

By complications, we mean serious problems in places like your feet and your eyes. This happens because too much sugar in the blood damages your blood vessels, making it harder for blood to flow around your body.

This can lead to very serious problems like sight loss and needing an amputation. Knowing all the facts and speaking to other people can help — contact our helpline or chat to others with diabetes on our online forum.

Watch our video and follow our simple steps on how to test your blood sugars in the right way and safely. New meters come on the market all the time, so it can be tricky choosing the right one.

If you have sight problems, you may not be able to use some meters so your healthcare team can suggest alternatives. Some people can get meters on prescription. But if you choose to buy your own meter, you might not get a prescription for the test strips it uses.

Chat to your healthcare team. If this happens to you, take it up with your GP practice. Finger-prick devices pierce the skin with a needle so that a drop of blood can be taken for testing.

The needle is called a lancet. You can adjust the device to change how far it goes into the skin. Lancets come in different sizes and thicknesses or gauges. A higher-gauge lancet is thinner so is normally less painful, but it might not always give you enough blood.

More and more people with diabetes are choosing to use a flash glucose monitor to check their sugar levels. This is a blood sugar test without a needle. Instead it uses a sensor you wear on your skin and you an do the test without pricking your finger.

The main brand is called the FreeStyle Libre. You may have to replace the transmitters of some CGMs. You may also need to reconnect the CGM, transmitter, and receiver or smartphone if your CGM is not working correctly.

Skin redness or irritation from the sticky patches used to attach the sensor may occur for some people. A CGM costs more than using a standard glucose meter, but it may be covered by your health insurance. You might be able to get financial help for diabetes care from your health insurance or other resources.

Check with your health insurance plan or Medicare to see if the costs will be covered. An artificial pancreas , also called an automated insulin delivery system AID , mimics how a healthy pancreas controls blood glucose in the body.

A CGM, an insulin pump, and a software program that shares information between the CGM and insulin pump make up the artificial pancreas. The CGM estimates glucose levels and wirelessly sends the information to a software program on a smartphone or insulin pump.

The program calculates how much insulin your body needs, and the insulin pump delivers the insulin when glucose levels rise higher than your target range. On the other hand, if your glucose levels fall lower than your target range, the artificial pancreas can lower or stop the amount of insulin given by the insulin pump.

The artificial pancreas is mainly used to help people with type 1 diabetes keep their glucose levels in their target range. NIDDK has a long-standing commitment to funding research to better understand diabetes and improve the lives of people with the disease.

NIDDK-funded research helped scientists learn that glucose levels in the fluid between cells could be used to estimate blood glucose levels. NIDDK also supported the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial, which showed that people with diabetes could use blood glucose monitors at home to closely control their blood glucose levels and reduce their risk of health problems.

NIDDK conducts and supports clinical trials for many diseases and conditions, including diabetes. Trials look for new ways to prevent, detect, or treat disease and improve quality of life. Clinical trials—and other types of clinical studies —are part of medical research and involve people like you.

When you volunteer to take part in a clinical study, you help doctors and researchers learn more about disease and improve health care for people in the future. Researchers are studying many aspects of CGMs, such as how CGMs could be made more sensitive, reliable, and comfortable to wear. Researchers are also studying how they might be used to manage different types of diabetes or other medical conditions.

Find out if clinical studies are right for you. Watch a video of NIDDK Director Dr. Griffin P. Rodgers explaining the importance of participating in clinical trials. You can view a filtered list of clinical studies that use CGMs and are federally funded, open, and recruiting at www.

You can expand or narrow the list to include clinical studies from industry, universities, and individuals; however, the National Institutes of Health does not review these studies and cannot ensure they are safe. Always talk with your health care provider before you participate in a clinical study.

This content is provided as a service of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases NIDDK , part of the National Institutes of Health. NIDDK translates and disseminates research findings to increase knowledge and understanding about health and disease among patients, health professionals, and the public.

Content produced by NIDDK is carefully reviewed by NIDDK scientists and other experts. NIDDK would like to thank: Jenise C. Wong, M.

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