2 OVERDO BLOOD SUGAR TESTING!

Surprising NEW STUDY! Docs recommend fewer painful jabs

MORE than 10 percent of people suffering from type 2 diabetes are testing their blood sugar levels more than once a day — and it’s too much!

That’s the conclusion of researchers who say 14 percent of type 2 patients are buying enough testing strips to check their sugar levels two or more times daily.

While checking levels is key to preventing diabetes’ most horrific health tragedies — blindness, amputation of limbs and wrecked kidneys — major medical groups like the American Academy of Family Physicians, the Society of General Internal Medicine and the Endocrine Society now say less is better.

“Patients who only take metformin — the most commonly prescribed blood sugar lowering medication — don’t have these risks,” the study says. “So most don’t need to test at all, much less multiple times daily.”

The recent research examined patients who don’t take any diabetes medicine or who took noninsulin drugs like metformin — and they had the least amount of changes in their daily blood sugar levels.

“There are two sides to this,” says Lisa Harris, a registered nurse at Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center.

“Sure, some patients test just to test because their doctor said to do it. But if no one is actually looking at the blood sugar logs, and the patients themselves don’t know how to interpret them, then yes, that’s a waste.”

Patients with consistently healthy levels over a period of a few months can take a break from testing, she says. “I’d tell them, ‘Just keep doing what you’re doing, and periodically, we’ll spot-check, testing frequently for a few days just to see that things are still on track.’”

But she says she “wouldn’t want an 80-year-old woman taking metformin for type 2 diabetes whose levels are in a healthy range to needlessly be poking her fingers every day.”