When you think about it, blood glucose meters need to be shockingly precise. Let's take a real-world example to illustrate this.
This morning, my glucose levels were 6.7mmol/L. What does that mean? Let me dust off my high school chemistry and bust out a calculator.
The internet tells me that glucose has a chemical composition of C6H12O6, which would give 1mmol of glucose a mass of about 180mg (0.18 grams).
A reading of 6.7mmol/L means that in a litre of blood, there would only be about 1.2 grams of glucose.
For perspective, a litre of water is 1000g. I don't off hand know the density of blood, but I imagine it's not too far off.
My meter was able to tell this from a drop of blood.
That's pretty wild. Can someone check my math on this?
Jonathan Lamothe /
npub1jq…rh8px
2024-02-18 16:56:48
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npub1jqx33d75rxq8z79cg0xn00y0q6uwk4e59x0h35jhl7mdthzxarus3rh8pxPublished at
2024-02-18 16:56:48Event JSON
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"content": "When you think about it, blood glucose meters need to be shockingly precise. Let's take a real-world example to illustrate this.\n\nThis morning, my glucose levels were 6.7mmol/L. What does that mean? Let me dust off my high school chemistry and bust out a calculator.\n\nThe internet tells me that glucose has a chemical composition of C6H12O6, which would give 1mmol of glucose a mass of about 180mg (0.18 grams).\n\nA reading of 6.7mmol/L means that in a litre of blood, there would only be about 1.2 grams of glucose.\n\nFor perspective, a litre of water is 1000g. I don't off hand know the density of blood, but I imagine it's not too far off.\n\nMy meter was able to tell this from a drop of blood.\n\nThat's pretty wild. Can someone check my math on this?",
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