[bigtunacan]

Your last point listed here is such a big deal too. It shouldn't matter if these things are 100% effective; they need to be released and patients need to be informed that manual testing still needs to be done. If for no other reason than to help reduce the number of type 1 diabetics who die in their sleep from low blood sugars.

For anyone here not familiar with this phenomenon; it is referred to as "Dead in Bed Syndrome" This is where your blood sugar suddenly drops while you are sleeping and you don't notice the drop because you are sleeping; you then progress into a coma and then die.

To this day I almost never am able to sleep straight through the night because of the sheer dread I have that this will happen to me (In fact I'm posting this at about 3:30am where I am at, because once again I'm up in the middle of the night).

In well controlled diabetics about 55% of all severe low blood sugars occur while you are sleeping. And in type 1 diabetics about 6% of us will die in our sleep by age 40.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1826245 http://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes-complications/dead-in-bed... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2551657/

[Someone]

I found that 6% unbelievably high. A check confirms that. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10097898:

"It appears that such deaths occur in 6% of all deaths in diabetic patients below age 40 years."

So, it's not that 6% of diabetics will die in their sleep before they are 40, but of those that die before they are 40, 6% die I their sleep.

That makes the risk per hour of dying in your sleep about a tenth of that of dying while awake. I would guess that is relatively large compared to non-diabetics, but probably nowhere as freaky as you portray it it be.

Further evidence: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8542738 shows 16 such deaths in Norway in a ten year period, with 224 other deaths (during the day, or at night, but not matching the criteria for death in bed syndrome)

Also, http://www.fhi.no/eway/default.aspx?pid=240&trg=List_6673&Ma... shows about 20 type I diabetics per 100.000 Norwegians. With 5.000.000 Norwegians, that gives about 10.000 type I diabetics, of which about two die each year of this cause.

[bigtunacan]

Thanks for the link. I've seen the statistic listed several other places and it was shown as 6% of type 1 diabetics under age 40.

The importance of someway to reliably provide continuous monitoring of BGLs is still critical and could help prevent a lot of deaths as well as contribute to the overall well being of diabetics.

[coldpie]

Yep. I actually have two alarms on my phone, one for wakeup, and one for 2 hours after I go to sleep. I've been doing this for years. Most nights I just solve the math problems unconsciously and go back to sleep. But some nights, I can't solve the math problems or otherwise feel low and I know it's time to check the BG.

[bigtunacan]

I really should set an alarm for a middle of the night check as well, but so far shear dread seems to have been pretty effective. :(