Review: Sinocare continuous glucose monitor

Why a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM)?

Even as someone who does not suffer from diabetes, knowing your glucose is a good way to learn your body. Every body reacts a bit different to certain foods, it is then good to know if your body deals nicely with your current diet. Although there are many factors to oversee, your blood glucose level is an important indicator for diabetes and can affect your health. According to the WHO, 1 in 12 of the adult people have diabetes. An early indicator to diabetes, is pre-diabetes which is a form heightened blood glucos. The CGM is a perfect way to keep track how your blood glucose varies throughout the day, due to drinking or eating but also resting giving your body a moment to normalize the blood sugar.

The types of CGM on the Dutch market

Now you might think of getting one, but which one should you get? That is the same question I had couple days ago. On the Dutch market, mainly the Freestyle Libre 2 and the Dexcom G7 are available. They have always been considered over the last year, but the cost of the Freestyle is about 5 euro per day and the Dexcom is about 9 euro per day. The Freestyle CGM being a tad out of my budget for diagnosing my blood sugar. However recently, Sinocare launched their iCan CGM sensor which came to an average cost of about 3 euro per day. This was a price that got me intrigued.

The Sinocare iCan CGM

Specifications of i3 CGM

Are the main take-aways. The specs are very similar to its competitors but a little bit better! Since this is a product you need to buy about 24 per year, costs was a huge factor for me. The combination of these two convinced me to try this device.

Unboxing

The box is nicely designed, and the components consists of:

1. Sensor appplicator
2. Sensor It was easy to take them out and the instructions were straightforward.

   Usage

   Although I wanted to monitor it, I got it as a present for my aunt. She has type-2 diabetes and actually has a need to monitor her blood glucose. Although she was the user, I will still go over the process as I helped her. After downloading the included app, the setup was quite easy to follow. You have to click the sensor into the applicator, charge up the applicator by turning the wheel and place it near your abdomen. The application was quite easy and pain free.

Experience after a week

After a week we spoke again and she was quite happy and statisfied with the product. No longer did she have to prick daily in her finger to only get one single measurement per day. She also gets 480 measurements a day for 3 euro. If you would calculate the equivalent cost using glucose strips, it would be about 100 euros a day! The process is also much faster, the time you take to apply the CGM is the same as using the blood strip once. Saving the time and achieving a much more accurate trend of the blood glucose over the day. The main usage I suggested her was to see how her blood sugar varies after eating various food. This such that she can learn what foods to avoid at what moments of the day. This can severly improve her health, as having too much or too little blood sugar is bad for the body.

Will I buy one now?

I think the experiment was succesfull, Sinocare came to market with a competitive product. It is priced after a new user discount of 25% at €43,50. I will try one soon and post an update with my personal thoughts.