The first study I want to talk about today is from July 2017, the Journal of the American

Medical Association, and the title of this study is glucose self-monitoring in non-insulin

treated patients with type 2 diabetes in primary care settings. By the way, this is a randomized controlled trial. And while this study

falls into that category of it will probably not change enough physicians practice, because it is

ingrained in our head and should be that when we look at self-monitoring of blood glucose in type 1, type 1 diabetics,

it's absolutely necessary.

I don't know how you could do long and short-acting insulin without that self-monitoring

of the glucose.

But when it comes to type 2 diabetics, particularly type 2 diabetics that are not receiving insulin,

how important is it to self-monitor blood glucose? And when I tell patients, or one of my

residents or another doctor colleague hears me telling a patient that I don't really care if they don't

self-monitor their glucose daily or just check it, you know, once a week maybe good enough for me

or if they're having symptoms of hypoglycemia. Go ahead and check it or just try and figure out

how your blood sugar reacts to certain meals

and carbohydrate loads.

I think those are really good reasons to check a rapid finger stick.

But as far as me needing to see a diabetic log of a type 2 diabetic as opposed to just checking

hemoglobin A1C, it really has not been important to me for those that are not

on insulin. And you get these stares from patients because they've been told different by other

physicians and then physicians look at you. You know when people don't talk, but they feel something

deep inside? It reminds me on the nurses station this last week in the

hospital, one of those really rude patients was leaving and said, I'm never coming back to this

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