Analyzing your urine is one of the easiest and most effective ways to know your health status. A good way to test an individual’s urine is with urine strips. Urine strips are strips of paper with embedded patches that are sensitive to glucose. As soon as this tool is immersed in the urine sample, the color of the pads will change color and indicate the amount of glucose present in the urine.
The test will then be used to obtain a rough estimate of blood glucose levels, or commonly known as blood sugar. However, urine glucose strips impose many disadvantages on your glucose calculation. This is why many people abandoned this urinalysis method and switched to blood glucose testing, which provides more accurate glucose counts.
The new strips at this time provide more accurate glucose counts, one of the best benefits of this tool is detecting the first signs of diabetes and monitoring the body’s sugar levels. Before, glucose test strips were used to measure glucose levels in the human body, this tool helped people with diabetes to monitor their health and adjust the level of their insulin intake. The strip is also commonly used for domestic diabetic pets such as cats and dogs.
However, the problem with glucose strips is that many people have difficulty reading the device. The color changes in the pad can be very subtle; those who are not good at distinguishing colors may read the results incorrectly. This often leads to false readings and will lead to confusion as to how much medication the patient needs.
Second, this type of urine strip does not display information about current blood sugar or glucose levels. Rather, it shows your glucose levels hours before when your body excretes urine. You may have a slightly high glucose level in your reading, but that was when you haven’t urinated yet. You may have dramatically increased your glucose for hours and that can be very dangerous.