Perhaps the two things diabetic children hate the most about their disease is poking their fingers for blood to test their blood sugar levels and giving themselves insulin shoots. Now there's a way to lessen the pain of getting the blood.
Fingertips are packed with nerves. That's a good thing except for diabetic children who have to poke their fingers with lancets to get the blood necessary to check their blood sugar levels.
Recently doctors in Manchester, England, did one of those obvious studies that should have been done long ago. They had diabetic children poke themselves in both their fingertips and their forearms. Blood from both sites was collected and tested.
They found that the blood sugar levels from both sites were just about the same. More significantly, 61% of the children said getting blood from their forearms was painless. Another 19% said that although the forearm poke wasn't painless, they found it significantly less painful than the finger pokes.
Archives of Disease in Childhood, 6/04.
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