Springer Health+ IME: Podcast to Practice
Oct 2, 2026 · 16 min · 9 segments
A CGM Roadmap to Personalized Diabetes Care Join Dr. Kristen Flint and Michelle in this compelling patient-physician conversation. Together, they discuss Michelle’s healthcare journey, the day-to-day…
Another challenge that's come up in some of our visits is managing the CGM alarms.
The CGM has a lot of built-in alarms, which can be really helpful depending on what the patient's situation is.
For me, the most helpful alarm is the one that reminds me the sensor is expiring soon and needs to be replaced.
The least helpful alarm for me is the lost signal alarm.
So I have to keep my phone in the same room as I am, which is usually fine.
But when I'm at work, if I leave my phone on my desk and go to the cafeteria, the lost signal alarm will go off, which is really embarrassing.
I also used to get a lot of false alarms for low blood sugar overnight, but I figured out how to troubleshoot those.
Still, I can see how if a patient is using insulin injections or an insulin pump, signal loss alarms and low blood sugar alarms would be life-saving.
Alarms can be really useful in certain scenarios, but false alarms can be frustrating and scary.
In the beginning, I checked a finger stick for every low alarm.
Then you explained to me about compression alarms.
If you roll on the sensor overnight, it compresses the catheter so the CGM doesn't see your real blood sugar anymore and falsely reads it as being low.
Now, if I wake up to a low alarm overnight, I know that first.
I need to listen to my body and monitor for symptoms of hypoglycemia.
But if I don't have symptoms, I just wait a few minutes to see if the CGM reading comes up on its own.
Sorry, suggesting that it was just a false alarm due to compression.
And when we talked about this in clinic, we ultimately turned off all of the optional alarms because you don't use insulin or other medications that lower your blood sugar.
Now the only alarm that could go off is for an urgent low less than 55 milligrams per deciliter.
Well, at first I was worried because it feels like taking on risk when you turn off optional alarms, but I felt better after talking to you about what my true risk of hypoglycemia is since I don't take insulin or other medicines that lower my blood sugar.
Another challenge that's come up in some of our visits is managing the CGM alarms.
The CGM has a lot of built-in alarms, which can be really helpful depending on what the patient's situation is.
For me, the most helpful alarm is the one that reminds me the sensor is expiring soon and needs to be replaced.
The least helpful alarm for me is the lost signal alarm.
So I have to keep my phone in the same room as I am, which is usually fine.
But when I'm at work, if I leave my phone on my desk and go to the cafeteria, the lost signal alarm will go off, which is really embarrassing.
I also used to get a lot of false alarms for low blood sugar overnight, but I figured out how to troubleshoot those.
Still, I can see how if a patient is using insulin injections or an insulin pump, signal loss alarms and low blood sugar alarms would be life-saving.
Alarms can be really useful in certain scenarios, but false alarms can be frustrating and scary.
In the beginning, I checked a finger stick for every low alarm.
Then you explained to me about compression alarms.
If you roll on the sensor overnight, it compresses the catheter so the CGM doesn't see your real blood sugar anymore and falsely reads it as being low.
Now, if I wake up to a low alarm overnight, I know that first.
I need to listen to my body and monitor for symptoms of hypoglycemia.
But if I don't have symptoms, I just wait a few minutes to see if the CGM reading comes up on its own.
Sorry, suggesting that it was just a false alarm due to compression.
And when we talked about this in clinic, we ultimately turned off all of the optional alarms because you don't use insulin or other medications that lower your blood sugar.
Now the only alarm that could go off is for an urgent low less than 55 milligrams per deciliter.
Well, at first I was worried because it feels like taking on risk when you turn off optional alarms, but I felt better after talking to you about what my true risk of hypoglycemia is since I don't take insulin or other medicines that lower my blood sugar.
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