Nowadays, maintaining your blood sugar is the most important aspect of most of the aged individuals out there, so that they could also prevent meeting hours with their doctors. Along with maintaining your blood sugar, it is essential to maintain and balance out the glucose content in your body. This is why a glucose monitoring system is needed for you to manage and record the data.
Your Glucose blood levels depend not only on your diet plans but also on your sleep patterns, hormonal changes, medications, that control your blood levels. Through this article, we’ll guide you on which of the Glucometers (CGM or BGM) are the better option for you while discussing their differences, benefits and other pros. and cons. Let’s get into it.
What is CGM & BGM
To keep it simple, the monitoring of your blood glucose levels in a continuous manner is provided by the Continuous Glucose Monitor a.k.a CGM. Whereas, the Blood Glucose Monitor is known for testing out your glucose level at that present time & are not monitored continuously throughout the day. This leads us to a confusion of which one we should pick.
Each of the Glucose Monitors has their own set of benefits and disadvantages, that needs to be cleared & analyzed properly. The analysis of your glucose levels always varies with different time periods. In this article, we’ll directly compare both of these Glucose Monitors & decide which one is more preferable.
Benefits of Continuous Glucose Monitor and Blood Glucose Monitor
Before we head on to our comparison of these Glucose Monitors, we need to know that these two are used for monitoring the blood sugar or the glucose level. They do the same thing but in a very different manner which is why we are here to differentiate and decide the better one for you. Let’s explore these Benefits & compare:
| Benefits | Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) | Blood Glucose Monitor (BGM) |
| Duration | The CGM allows you to measure glucose levels continuously day and night. This lets you inform the fluctuation of the blood sugar. | The BGM also allow you to measure the glucose levels but for a snapshot of time, which means they only measure the glucose level for a certain point of time. |
| Data | This type of monitor is capable of transferring & gathering data and can translate into analytical information which can be very helpful for you to understand. | On the other hand, the BGM is also capable of gathering data but most of these monitors doesn’t provide you with analytical readings unless you visit a doctor who can let you know the perfect readings. |
| Management | Continuous Blood Monitors are very good at managing the data so that you can access them any time you need. This minimizes the user to research less & easily rely on them. | While the blood sugar monitors aren’t, they just provide you with the numbers and prefer you to get the analysis of these readings from your doctor. |
| User-Friendly | CGM’s are very User-friendly devices, after providing you with all the details regarding your 24/7 glucose levels, they also provide you alarming systems so you would never miss a thing. | BGM’s are less user friendly, even if they provide you with a certain number of glucose levels in numbers. They rarely have the alarming feature. |
| Usage | The CGM uses a round-shaped sensor which is applied to the upper arm for the rest of the day. The best part is it’s painless & no need for your blood to test. It just fits in and you are good to go. | The BGM uses test strips, which can be a painful experience, as every time you test you will have to prickle your finger and place the blood on the test strip. This will let you analyse your glucose level. |
| Cost | The cost of CGM is very expensive per sensor. Each sensor’s lifetime is not more than 14 days & you need to purchase them every 14 days. This makes them quite expensive. | The cost of BGM is cheap, besides the monitor itself, the test strips are cheaper & disposable. Test strips are used one at a time. Here BGM leads when compared to CGM. |
After analyzing the aspects and nature of each of the Benefits between CGM & BGM, you can easily notice that the CGM is more beneficial than BGM but at cost production, the Blood Glucose Monitors are a good affordable option for anyone to select.
Our Opinion
CGM is very efficient and effective in terms of saving your time so that you can fix your lifestyle, but it costs you much more than you expect. But if you completely rely for the sake of your health and lifestyle, you would never be disappointed with the CGMs. They assure you of less risk of blood infection & save your time.
There are several health benefits from using this device. Either of the diseases like Hyperglycernia can be reduced with its usage. Our Opinion of preferring CGM is due to its user-friendly experience which delivers very well through these devices. Whereas, Blood Glucose Monitor or BGM is quite a basic form to test glucose level & could create a big hassle.
These Benefits we compared also plays their role as their pros & cons. within each of the aspects we discussed.
Conclusion
Better patient care is more important than taking risks from these devices. It’s unfortunate that there are less option in the market which provides you the same features at low cost. Its better you research your options. Thus, we prefer that CGM is better for you than BGM. No matter where you are or what you do, this device will keep up with your needs.
