January is National Blood Donor Month and while not everyone with diabetes may be eligible to donate their blood, it got us thinking of just how MUCH blood people with diabetes give to their diabetes care.
According to a quick search, the human body contains 120,000 (!!) drops of blood. Depending on your type of diabetes and your individual treatment plan, your doctor may recommend anywhere from 2-10 blood glucose (BG) checks per day. We know that everyone is different and the number of BG checks will vary person to person.
The simple fact is, no matter how many times you are checking your BG, you are actively giving your blood to your diabetes care. So how much have you given?
Let’s do the math!
To keep it simple, we are going to assume that each BG check generates 2 drops of blood. That means you can multiply 2 by the number of BG checks per day/week/month/year and get a pretty good idea of how much blood you’ve given. Don’t want to do the math yourself? That’s ok, we broke it down for you below! Simply find your number of BG checks per day and take a look at your results. If you use Glooko, you can easily find your average readings per day by going to my.glooko.com and checking out the Summary page.
It really adds up! And since this is for 2 drops per BG check, we know these numbers may still be on the low side.
Let’s go one step further: take the number of drops per year and multiply that by the number of years since your diagnosis. This number represents just how much blood you have given to your diabetes care. Scott Bissinger from our Marketing team calculated that he has given approximately 46,720 drops of blood to his diabetes care since his diagnosis 8 years ago. That’s almost half of all the blood in the human body!
We salute all PWDs and the blood you have given for your diabetes management. Share your number with us on Twitter using #DropsForDiabetes and tagging us @GlookoInc!
