I Have the Data.. Now What?

The other day I was working with a member of Keeping it 100 when it came up..

"We have all of this information at our fingertips from our meters and CGMs. What do we do with it all?"

Does this sound familiar?

You go to your endocrinologist appointment every 90 days where you see pages of pages of reports that they've downloaded from your pump and CGM.

As they glance through it, they're making changes to your insulin to carb ratios, basals and correction factors. But you ask yourself, "what are they seeing that I don't see? Where are these changes being stemmed from?"

But as someone who did not go to school to be an endocrinologist, asking "why?" can feel pretty.. uncomfortable.

Here's the thing.. We are lucky enough to live in this age where technology is so abundent, that we have this information sitting right in front of us. So why not use it to our advantage?

But how do we use this information to draw patterns and make changes on our own or come more prepared to our doctors visits?

It starts with looking at the right data. Inside of Keeping it 100, we look at these four core points:

⇢ Patterns

⇢ Time in Range

⇢ Standard Deviation

⇢ Average Blood Sugar

With this data, comes asking the right questions because Albert Einstein said, "If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes."

When it comes to blood sugars, all we need is to ask the right questions to narrow down the variability. So let's use patterns as an example: 

When you look at "Patterns" on your reports, use the WHO WHAT WHERE WHY HOW lining of question to zoom in.. 

⇢ WHERE is this pattern in my day?

⇢ WHAT is influencing the pattern? (Insulin management? Behavioral patterns?)

⇢ HOW can I break down the variability?

⇢ WHO do I need support from in the process?

When we are the investigators of our own management, we can take ownership like no other - and we get to be the ones in the driver seat. 

For a more intensive training on utilizing the data, check out the recording inside of our free Facebook Community!