Day 28 of My Medtronic MiniMed 640g Trial... Getting Back On Track

This week I was really excited to be able to get back onto the athletics track as part of my rehabilitation process, getting ready to start Winter training after some achilles problems. It was also my first chance of having a go at running whilst wearing the Medtronic MiniMed 640g and Enlite sensor.

For those who are new to 'sensoring' they're clever little devices that a worn on the skin with a filament located underneath the skin's surface. Then via bluetooth signal the sensor device feedback glucose levels to the MiniMed 640g insulin pump. Other people with diabetes who know me, know that I've never had reason to rave about wearing a sensor before for two main reasons. The first is that they always used to be big and bulky in size and the second reason is that the information from the sensors never told me anything that I didn't already know about my glucose levels. For example I never had any unexpected readings whilst I was asleep or at certain times of the day. So whilst i appreciated their use for other people, I didn't know if they were for me.

But it seems that not all sensors are created equal, because with the Enlite sensor there's something else to add to the device called Smart Guard (SG). What this is able to do, is to not only feedback what glucose levels are doing at a certain point in time. But they can also predict and at what speed glucose levels are moving. They can alert the insulin pump to suspend delivery of insulin until glucose levels start rising to safe levels again. Before I started the trial I had heard that the pump or Smart Guard could do this and I wondered especially about what this could mean regarding avoiding hypos in sport. So this is where the trial really begins!

Me A Training Wearing The Enlite Sensor And MiniMed 640g Pump

Over the 7 years that I've been wearing an insulin pump I've tried numerous different sensors from numerous different pump brands, but I can hand on heart say that I completely forgot I was even wearing one with the Enlite. Which might not seem like a big thing, but I assure you that it is because other people tend to wear the different types of sensors available, just for day-to-day life. And I wouldn't mind if it was big and bulky under my clothes if that's all that I did with it. But it's not, because sprinting is one of the highest impact sports that you can do. Which means that you can't have a big sensor with its extra weight attached to your stomach when you're sprinting. It also means that the adhesive has to be very good, so that it doesn't pull or move because if it did whilst I was running it would completely ruin my focus! So make sure you check back in with the blog and my new you-tube channel to see how the Enlite Sensor and Smart Guard fare being put through their sporting paces!