Shoot Up or Put Up

Meters, meters everywhere

It’s fast approaching the end of 2009 and every form of media is crammed with lazy, poorly composed “end of the year” reviews. And, of course, your soaraway Shoot Up is no exception.

But forget those boring articles, TV clip shows or back-slapping awards ceremonies you see on the television. Who cares about comedy awards, or Baftas or even the Oscars, when you have Shoot Up’s soaraway Blood Glucose Meter of the Year award? Yes, I’ve poured myself into my dinner suit to write this article live from the glitzy surroundings of our kitchen table! Woo!

2009 has been a controversial year for blood glucose meters (actually, it hasn’t; I’m just trying – without much success – to add a tiny degree of dramatic tension to the proceedings…) with a whole range of new meters coming on the market, some of which I’ve bothered to test.

Anyway, the first that must have a mention (if only a dishonourable one) is of course Menarini’s GlucoMen LX, which was almost universally despised by anyone who’s had the misfortune to use one. Nasty, tacky and cheap, the GlucoMen LX inspired nothing but revolted disdain in this reviewer. Hopefully Menarini will try harder next time and I hope they forgive me for getting my horrible review to be the second result in Google’s search results for their product.

Moving swiftly on, the Accu-Chek Aviva Nano is certainly worthy of mention for its sexy, sleek looks and useful functions. However, it was badly let down by Accu-Chek’s crappy looking test strip that just makes the whole lot look ugly. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a perfectly good test strip – but it needs a serious redesign to sex it up.

But, in my view, this year’s winner is the pretty wonderful Abbott Freestyle Lite. It looks pretty sexy, has some of the best test strips on the market and two great features. The first is the ability to add more blood to a sample if you don’t squeeze out enough first time around, which saves wasting a strip. And also stops the utter, utter misery having to repeat a test after you’ve spent 5 minutes trying to get blood out of freezing cold fingers. The second worthy feature is a little LED that lights up the test strip when you’re testing in the dark. A simple addition – but one that’s bloody marvellous.

So there we have it – congratulations to Abbott and their joyful Freestyle Lite. Here’s to 2010 – cheers!

You can see all our blood glucose meter reviews here.

While ancient diabetics like Alison and me (Alison is especially ancient) are at least moderately clued up about diabetes, teenage diabetics are often thought of as a neglected demographic with little decent information aimed at them.

Attempting to redress this balance, Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals have recently recorded and made a whole load of podcasts for young diabetics available for download from their website.

They must be good as diabetic god Sir Steve Redgrave says they’re wonderful  on the hospital’s press release.  However, being a Redgrave atheist, I downloaded them for myself and had a listen.

I was half-expecting them to be somewhat patronising, but was pleased to hear that they’re not (however, saying that, I am in my thirties and what I think isn’t patronising might differ wildly from what a teenager might think is patronising, but I digress).

I started off with the wildly depressing podcast “Diabetes, Sex and So On”, which details the nightmarish and sorry tale of a diabetic who didn’t control their glucose levels during their pregnancy and so gives birth to a crippled baby who then promptly dies. Cheerful stuff.

However things looked up from there, with the “Nights Out” podcast being an entertaining and somewhat sordid story of a bunch of lads getting seriously boozed up on beer, vodka and Red Bull and going out clubbing. Inevitably the diabetic in the party has a hypo and starts getting aggressive and mouthy with a bouncer; everything gets fractious and they all get arrested, receive a mild beating from the local constabulary and spend a night in the cells. All good wholesome stuff!

This particular podcast did however contain my favourite practical (and somewhat earthy) diabetes tip. If you’re out clubbing, try and pull so you’ve got someone to take back to your room. Said pullee (if there is such a word) can then make sure you’re okay if you have a hypo. If only I used that line back when I was single…

Anyway, the podcasts continue with a range of useful experiences and tips in a very accessible format. Diabetes information can generally be a bit dry but, aside from a safe-sex message that was shoehorned into one podcast, I thought they were a good attempt by Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals to put across useful information in a non-patronising way. Good for them!

Not a Maserati GranTurismo. Oh no.

I recently got my hands on Accu-Chek’s newish Compact Plus GT and took it out for a test drive. The “test drive” thing is relatively apt as, for some reason, Accu-Chek have added the suffix “GT” to the meter’s name. I always understood that GT referred to cars and stood for Grand Tourer (or Gran Turismo if you want to go for the Italian – like the Maserati GranTurismo – which is still high on my Christmas wish list). Unfortunately, if the Compact Plus GT were a car it would be big clunky ugly minibus and not the sprightly Maserati above.

The Compact Plus GT is designed to be an all-in-one meter – with finger pricker, test strips and said meter all rolled into one. The meter element isn’t particularly exciting in itself; it has all the features you’ve come to know and love on any modern meter – a 500 test memory, a pretty straightforward user interface and a bright display for night-time use.

Of slightly greater interest is the relatively innovative test strip drum. Rather than sticking in a strip every time you want to test, you put a drum of 17 tiny strips into the machine in one go. A handy dial round the back of the meter tells you how many strips you have left in the meter and the drum incorporates a bar code which automatically calibrates each new set of strips. A switch on the front of the meter then spits out a test strip whenever one is needed. The strips themselves are tiny, very slurpy but require a positively vampiric sample size of 1.5 µL. The attached finger pricker uses an air-pump instead of the usual spring to fire the lancet into your finger. But, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve not noticed any difference between this and a normal finger pricker. Buy, hey, ten out of ten for effort in trying to reduce wear and tear on our ravaged, pepper pot fingers.

All in all, the Compact Plus is made up of some good components – the meter’s okay (but nothing world-shattering), the finger pricker is acceptable and the strip system is very good. However, combined, they form a pretty ugly, clunky bit of kit; which doesn’t take up any less space than my usual meter and assorted kit and just doesn’t really offer anything greater than I have already.

Some people might like the all-in-one nature of the Compact Plus which makes it very easy to grab and shove in a bag as you leave the house; but sadly I just don’t think the sum of the parts makes it a better system than anything else out there. Pity really.

So, in summary:

Sample size – 1/5
1.5 µL – vampiric

Test time – 2/5
Five seconds – not wildly quick, but not disastrous

Test strip calibration – 5/5
No calibration by user required

Test strip slurpiness – 4/5
Pretty damned slurpy!

Memory – 4/5
500 readings – which isn’t too bad

Sexiness – 1/5
I would say it’s an ugly duckling; but “duckling” implies small and cute.

Beeping – 5/5
Can be turned off. Thankfully.

4am test – 3/5
Bright, easy to read display makes it a bearable meter at 4am. But no light on the test strip – boo!

TOTAL – 25/40

Check out our other blood glucose meter reviews or have a look at the manufacturer’s web site.

I was having a look at the Accu-Chek Compact Plus recently as part of a forthcoming review (hurrah! I hear all you blood-glucose-meter-review fans cry!) and my attention was drawn to the finger pricker, lancet delivery device or whatever you want to call it.

Normally when I review a meter I don’t usually bother with the finger prickers, as they’re all pretty much of a muchness. If you’re interested (which I assume you’re not) I use a pricker that came with the Wavesense Jazz as it’s teeny-tiny and stupidly simple to use. Anyway, the inescapable fact of it is that to get a blood sample to test your blood glucose, you have to shove a sharp bit of metal in your finger, causing it to bleed out a bit of your precious gooey life force onto a test strip. There’s simply no avoiding the whole metal-in-finger thing.

However the finger pricker which came with the Compact Plus claimed to be considerably less painful than other finger prickers. Being quite simple, I was blinded by Accu-Chek’s science but essentially it seems it uses an air-driven pump to shove the lancet into your finger rather than the conventional spring. Apparently this means the lancet wiggles around less as it carves its way through your flesh and is thus less painful.

Intrigued, I gave it go.

“Ow!” I said as the lancet thrust its way into my bloodied little finger.

Yup, you’ve guessed it – I noticed absolutely no discernible difference between the Accu-Chek, it hurts just as much as a normal device. Oh well.

I know that finger pricking doesn’t really hurt all that much (unless, of course, you’re a complete wimp) but after doing it a zillion times a day, day-in day-out, it does get somewhat tiresome. So any improvement on the whole pain thing is good in my book – so ten out of ten for Accu Chek for effort; one out of ten for effectiveness.

Not shagging other meters

Lifescan’s OneTouch Ultra2 is my current meter of choice and I don’t really know why.

Like a long-term relationship between partners who don’t love each any more, yet can’t be bothered to go to the effort of breaking up, I’m almost completely ambivalent about it. My Ultra2 isn’t really too bad, certainly isn’t abusive and hasn’t been sleeping around with other meters, so I just trundle along with it every day. There’s just no need to get another meter.

On paper at least the Ultra2 is perfectly fine, at 5ul the sample size is okay, but not exactly market-leading. The test time of five seconds is bearable but, again, nothing spectacular. It has a back-light, the colour of which – through lots of association – I instantly associate with night-time hypos (very odd that – a colour being associated with a physiological action; I guess it’s like ersatz synesthesia . Possibly.)

Anyhoo, it’s quite nice to look at, is relatively small and is pretty simple to use. The infernal beeping can be turned off and it does pass the 4am hypo test pretty well. It’s got a pretty big memory for your readings and can be hooked up to the obligatory PC software for further analysis, which is nice, but something even I (as a dedicated computer geek) can never, ever be bothered to do.

So there we have it – the Ultra2 is a perfectly fine meter, it’ll never set the world alight but it does what it’s supposed to.

However, having written this review, I’ve realised it’s a relationship I no longer want to be in, so as soon as I’ve updated my prescription I’m leaving the Ultra2 forever and running off with the sexy, young thing that is the Abott Freestyle Lite – wish me luck!

Sample size – 3/5
0.5μL – fine, I guess.

Test time – 2/5
5 seconds – meh.

Test strip calibration – 0/5
Nope, no automatic calibration

Test strip slurpiness – 5/5
Equal with the best on the market

Memory – 4/5
500 readings – not too shabby

Sexiness – 3/5
A little plain-Jane but bearable

Beeping – 5/5
Can be turned off

4am test – 3/5
No worse than any other meter without a test strip light

Total – 30/40

Check out the manufacturer’s web site or read about our reviews.

She probably won't be coming to the premier. Sorry.

Forget this summer’s latest CGI-laden action-adventure, bloody zombie gore-fest or the latest chick flick featuring four women who can’t get a boyfriend and then moan about the poor unfortunate saps when they do finally get one. No, forget all that – because this summer’s massive blockbuster is undoubtedly Sugar Drop – the first part of screenwriter Tom Craig’s Bitter Sweet Trilogy.

Since the invention of celluloid the world has been waiting for a mash up of the horror and diabetic genres and, finally, Tom has delivered to a grateful world with the beautifully filmed story of a hypoglycaemic man trapped in a lift without access to Lucozade, Fruit Pastilles or even Mar Bars. As his hypo gets gradually worse are his hallucinations the result of low blood glucose or are they something more sinister?

Tom Craig is a member of Type One club (Yay – lucky him!) and wrote the trilogy’s screenplays based on personal experience (though I suspect he doesn’t have hallucinations about mysterious blond women and scowling kids in red frocks – would be cool if he did though).

As hinted at the by the whole “Trilogy” thing, Tom is planning two more films. The second, as yet untitled, film is about a man going blind who decides to spend his remaining sighted time destroying the beauty of the world around him. While the third will be loosely based on the story of American Edwarda O’Bara, who has spent the past 39 years in a diabetic coma.

So plenty of cheerful knockabout japes to come! Anyway, here at your soaraway Shoot Up we love things that are a) diabetic; b) British; c) very, very cool, so have a look at the trailer yourself at http://www.sugardropmovie.co.uk/ and see what you think.

• http://www.sugardropmovie.co.uk/
• University of Derby press office

Horrible, nasty, plastic, vile, repulsive, tacky

Much like a Russian bride I once tried to buy via the Intermaweb, on paper the Menarini GlucoMen LX looks great. But also much like Irena (the aforementioned Russian bride) the reality is just not like the description.

Shortly after Irena arrived in the United Kingdom I noticed that unlike her cheerful smiling pictures I saw on the seedy web site on which I found her, she wasn’t in fact very smiley in person at all. Rather sullen in fact. With a penchant for hitting the vodka. Before breakfast.

Although I tried my best, sadly I had to end things with Irena after I took her to meet my parents. She spent the whole of Sunday lunch swearing, trying to kick the dog (referring to our elderly King Charles Spaniel as “that bloddy Siberian devil”) and – finally – puking a foul-smelling vodka and chicken mix into mum’s pot-porri. Last time I heard Irena had returned to Moscow, where she eventually married a local Mafia boss and was happily settling into the life of a gangster’s moll. Good luck to her!

And it was much the same with the GlucoMen LX (no, really). On paper it does look good. A small sample size, test strips which didn’t need to be calibrated and a fairly good 400 test memory. However, it just looks and feels utterly horrible. Encased in semi-see-through plastic (much like Irena when she was feeling “cекси”, as she put it) the GlucoMen looks tacky and just feels like it will fall apart the minute you breathe on it a little too heavily.

Such poor looks would be forgiveable if the meter had a range of mind-bogglingly useful features. But, perhaps needless to say, it doesn’t. It has the usual range of average results analysis and so on but while the layout and navigation is pretty straightforward it just doesn’t feel particularly intuitive or particularly nice to use.

When there are a multitude of sexier meters out there (in fact, every other glucose meter, ever) there is absolutely no reason to saddle yourself with this vile piece of design. However, if forced upon you by a particularly cruel diabetic clinic or evil insurance company it’ll just about do.

So, top tip for the day – never expect things to be as good as described on the web. Especially if you’re checking out Russian brides.

Sample size – 4/5
0.3μL per sample – pretty good

Test time – 3/5
4 seconds – quick, but not the quickest

Test strip calibration – 5/5
No need to calibrate. Yay!

Test strip slurpiness – 3/5
Averagely fine.

Memory – 3/5
400 records – not bad, not bad.

Sexiness – -5/5
Scores minus points for its utter hideousness

Beeping – 5/5
Can be turned off.

4am test – 2/5
Not great, but not entirely a disaster either.

Grand total – 20/40

Check out our other blood glucose meter reviews or go to the manufacturer’s site

The Freestyle Lite - with a really rubbish reading

While this tragic world of ours is filled every day with calamity, conflict and catastrophe there are perhaps a few rays of sunshine that poke through the heavy gloom, which give us something to live for and stop us from bashing our owns heads in with a handy paperweight.

My personal happiness list includes waking up next to my wife (ahhh!); roast chicken and the guitar solo from Iron Maiden’s Hallowed by thy Name. With these three things in place I’m sorted and life is good.

But now, having used Abbott’s Freestyle Lite blood glucose meter for the best part of a week, there is now another bright ray of sunlight in the gloomy slough of despond that is diabetes – as it is, in fact, a bloody good meter.

First impressions of the Freestyle are great – it’s absolutely tiny, sleek and looks pretty cool. If only it’d had been in black rather than utilitarian blue it would have scored full marks on the sexiness scale, but we can live with it.

The sample size is a tiny 0.3μL but this is slightly let down by the longish testing time of five seconds – if it had been 3 seconds I would have been ecstatic (well, perhaps not ecstatic exactly – it is only a meter after all and everything’s relative).

Speaking of the test strips, they’re a bit odd. Rather than sucking up your bloody gore through the bottom of the strip as with pretty much every other meter out there, you aim your finger at the side of the strip instead. Once you’ve worked this out (of course, I never read the manual and so it took me a while) the strips are just as good as any other with pretty good “slurpiness”.

The only slight downside with the Freestyle’s strips are that you don’t actually get to see your blood being sucked in – it’s all hidden away under a black section of strip. I find seeing your life-blood being drawn in is useful feedback to ensure you’re actually doing things correctly.

However the strips do have a great, great feature which more than compensates for this minor gripe. As you know, with most strips and meters, if you don’t put enough blood on the strip the meter will churn away as usual and then display an error message asking you to repeat the test. Nothing is more infuriating – after you’ve struggled to get a tiny drop of blood out of stone-cold fingers – than the meter moodily rejecting your sacrificial blood offering. But with the Freestyle Lite, if the meter detects you haven’t put enough blood on it lets you know and gives you another 60 seconds to squeeze another drop out. This is intensely good – it saves a tonne of frustration and stops you wasting test strips, which I guess is a boon if you actually have to pay for them (God bless the NHS!)

The Freestyle Lite has all the usual meter accoutrements – averages over 7, 14 and 30 days; it can be plugged into a PC to produce fancy graphs and the irritating beep can thankfully be turned off.

But I’ve left the best for last – this is the first meter I’ve tested that actually passes the 4am hypo test because – wait for it – it has an internal LED that lights up the test strip! Halle-bloody-luiah! This simple addition allows you actually see where your blood is on your finger, instead of having to randomly stab the test strip around in the pitch dark. Once you’ve successfully sucked up enough blood the meter automatically turns off the strip light and turns on the meter backlight. Bloomin’ marvellous! Why this isn’t a feature on lots of other meters I don’t know, it’s just so handy.

So all in all Abbott’s Freestyle Lite is a very good, sexy, well thought out meter – so much so that once I’ve got my prescription sorted out it’s becoming my regular every-day meter; so this particular ray of sunshine is sticking around!

Sample size - 5/5
0.3μL

Test time – 3/5
5 seconds

Test strip calibration – 5/5
No coding required.

Test strip slurpiness – 4/5
Very good, but not seeing blood being sucked in is disconcerting

Memory - 3/5
400 results – enough to be going on with

Sexiness – 4/5
Petite and cool looking – though if it was black it would be cooler!

Beeping 5/5
Beeping can be turned off

4am test – 5/5
With a lit up strip and automatic backlight it’s the acme of meters when faced with a 4am hypo.

Grand total: 34/40

Read about our reviews, or check out the manufacturer’s web site.

Yawn!

Boredom comes in many flavours. Waiting for trains that have been delayed yet again by damp leaves or suicidal cows on the line are boring. Watching the end of documentary on geese farming in Essex while you wait for that new comedy to come on the TV is boring. Impatiently waiting your turn in a dank, dripping, seedy Bangkok bordello is boring.

But with the new Bayer Contour blood glucose meter I’ve found a brand new flavour of boring.

Up front the Contour is a perfectly fine meter – it tests your blood and spits out a result, which is I guess what we’re all after in a meter; but the Contour seems to do it without the slightest interesting feature to raise it up above the morass of other meters currently available on the market that fight for the attention of the pancreatically-challenged populace.

Looks-wise Contour is okay, it’s certainly not as sexy as the funky Nano, but it’ll do. I guess. It’s similar in a way to those Toyota Corollas which come in that hideous watery light-blue that seem to be driven exclusively by old age pensioners. It’s not entirely offensive to the eye but it hardly sets the world on fire with an eruption of thrilling colour and design.

In terms of features, the Contour has everything you would expect from a modern meter. On the plus side, it has a reasonable memory for your results and it doesn’t need to be calibrated with each new set of strips which is always a welcome addition.

On the minus side at 0.6μL the Contour needs quite a large sample size which is a bad thing as I prefer to keep my blood in me rather than smeared all over multitudinous test strips. The test time of five seconds is also relatively sluggish but just about acceptable.

Perhaps a redeeming feature is that the Contour can be used in two modes – what I like to call “Idiot Mode” and “Clever Mode”. Idiot Mode does nothing but take your blood and spew out a reading which I suppose is handy if you can’t be bothered faffing about with extra features and functions. However, the “Clever Mode” where you can turn on pre and post meal markers and note unusual readings isn’t really all that clever in that these are functions common to pretty much every meter out there; but at least you have the option to turn them off. Clever Mode also includes an alarm which can remind you to do a test after a meal – again mildly handy for the negligent diabetic.

The Contour generally performs as well as any other meter when it comes to using it in the pitch dark – in other words not very well, meaning you have to turn on the bedside light and wake up your slumbering wife – though I did find the smooth buttons harder than some to use.

So all in all, the Contour is certainly not a bad meter – it does most things reasonably well – but with other meters out there that offer so much more this meter’s going to be confined to the boring bottom of my boring spares drawer.

Sample size - 2/5
0.6µL, hmm somewhat vampiric

Test time - 3/5
5 seconds – slightly sluggish, but acceptable

Test strip calibration - 5/5
No calibration needed. Yay!

Test strip slurpiness - 4/5
Yum, nice n’slurpy

Memory - 4/5
500 readings

Sexiness - 2/5
Dull as a train spotter at Reading station

Beeping - 5/5
Can thankfully be turned off

4am test - 2/5
Smooth buttons difficult to find in pitch darkness, backlight is fine but no light on the test strip

Grand total – 27/40

Read about our blood glucose meter reviews or check out the manufacturer’s web site.

The Nano and a reflected Tim

Along with being potty-trained, you learn disappointment at an early age. I remember when I was delightful young nipper (I was young once, honest) waiting in giddy anticipation for Christmas Day. Being small I didn’t give a flying damn about the togetherness of family, I was sleeplessly waiting for Father Christmas to deliver the latest LEGO airport model.

As you all know, the LEGO airport was the epitome of cool for the 1980’s small boy. It came with a full terminal building, landing lights, air traffic control – the works. The mere thought sends the hair up on the back of my neck even now.

However, as I ripped off the wrapping paper I uncovered a LEGO digger. My heart sunk, it was pretty damned cool but it just wasn’t the airport I wanted. For the first time ever my tiny frame encountered the terrible feeling of disappointment.

Forward-wind 25 years and one failed-pancreas later and that feeling re-occurred as I spent a week testing the Roche Accu-Chek Aviva Nano. I ordered my Aviva Nano via the Intermaweb and was, again, giddy with anticipation. Here was a meter that looked and sounded cool. Shiny and black like Michael Knight’s KITT car, but without the cheesy wise-cracks and flaky plotlines.

I unwrapped the box and was delighted. Delighted, that is, until I put a test strip in. The test strips work well enough but they look seriously clunky and ugly compared to the Aviva Nano itself. It was like a country yokel with straw in his hair attending an Ambassador’s ball. In this case the test strip was the yokel and the meter the dinner-suited posho sneering at the unwelcome guest.

Getting down to actual business I did actually like the Aviva Nano an awful lot. First off it’s utterly tiny and should really carry a warning about accidental swallowing it’s so petite. The three buttons are hidden round the sides and top of the meter giving a nice, sleek minimalist look to the device.

While it doesn’t have a backlight, the figures on the screen glow with a cool, slightly eerie blue which is easy enough to see in the dark for your unscheduled 4am hypo. The buttons I liked a moment ago can be difficult to find in the dark but it’s certainly no worse than any other meter. Needless to say, the Holy Grail of a meter that lights up the strip itself doesn’t happen here (will it ever, I wonder?)

The Aviva Nano has a reasonable memory and can display your averages over the last 30 days or so but doesn’t do anything more fancy like drawing graphs, etc., not that graphs are all that useful.

Results can be marked as pre-food or after-food using a cute apple icon and the meter can be set to beep to automatically remind you to test one or two hours after a meal; alarms can also be set for particular times which is surely a boon for the forgetful or negligent. These alarms are actually relatively useful and a moderately innovative idea. It seems Roche have actually put a reasonable amount of thought into what might be useful for the diabetic-on-the-Clapham-omnibus instead of churning out another meter with the same features as every other one on the market. Good for Roche.

After a week’s testing, I liked the Aviva Nano – it’s a small, neat, relatively sexy meter – if only they could do something about the clunky test strips it could become my regular every day meter. And you can’t get better than that!

So, finally, in summary:

Sample size > 2/5
0.6μL – quite a large sample in these modern times. Boo!

Test time > 3/5
5 seconds. Mmmm, okay I suppose. Nothing special.

Test strip calibration > 2/5
Yes, each batch needs to be calibrated. Boo!

Test strip slurpiness > 4/5
Very good, but yokel-styling raises a grimace each and every time you use one.

Memory > 3/5
500 tests

Sexiness > 4.5/5
Oh baby; sleek, petite and sexy with funky lighting. Pity about the vile test strips.

Beeping > 5/5
Can be turned off, yay! But can also beep usefully at you to remind you to test if required.

4am test > 3/5
Glow in the dark figures are nice, buttons can be fiddly in the pitch dark.

Total > 26.5/40

Read about our blood glucose meter reviews.