I'm a nurse, so know about this from a human care standpoint. We
stopped using dipstix for home blood sugar monitoring since the home
blood glucose machines are more accurate and most folks can figure
them out. With urine dip stix, you dip the stick in the urine, it
measures the amount of glucose, ketones and protien spilling over
into
urine. There's a color scale that gives you the approximate blood
sugar.
I had talked to my vet about getting a home glucose machine and
monitoring blood sugar that way, it's a simple thing, you get a pin
prick of cappillary blood, don't have to stick a vein or anything
tricky and put a drop in the machine and the results are there in 20
secs. The strips are expensive.
My vet said that I could do that but is concerned that if folks just
used the glucose level to monitor cushings they'd be buoncing the
horses feed up and down constantly and messing things up more.
I don't see the harm in using either the blood glusoce or urine dip
stix as a way to monitor how the feeding program and meds are
working,
but can understand my vets concern that folks would have the urge to
be constantly changing thier program before giving things a chance to
work, blood sugars vary greatly throughout the day and it's a complex
mechanism so folks would have to have a clear understanding of how
sugar gets metabolized, when the peak and durations are after a meal
etc. and if they're doing the testing over a period of time, then
call
the vet and review the results. Stress and activity also alter
glucose.
In human medicine, folks are on a very rigid amount of calories a day
and take the calories in at the same time every day, the glucoses are
monitored at specific times of day according to when they ate and or
took their meds because it will vary.
