Sarah Howard
Sarah Howard has worked in the diabetes research field ever since she was diagnosed with T1D while in college in May 2013. Since then, she has worked for various diabetes organizations, focusing on research, advocacy, and community-building efforts for people with T1D and their loved ones. Sarah is currently the Senior Marketing Manager at T1D Exchange.
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If you use a CGM, do you usually hear and wake up to its alerts while you are sleeping, as opposed to sleeping through the alerts? Cancel reply
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I will wake up eventually, maybe not the first or second alert, but my phone with Dexcom is too loud to keep me or my husband asleep. This makes me sure that my BG is in no way low or possibly dropping before I go to bed. Sleep is an important factor in my health with epilepsy. Who knows what they will find about glucose and certain neurotransmitters.
Turn off some alarms but severe low always wakes me up
My CGM works with my pump, so at some point my pump vibrates and I wake up
I have my alert set very loud since I am a sound sleeper. I am always awoken when it sounds. The irritating aspect is when my CGM says I’m reading 60 and I test with strips (always the gold standard) and strips read 100.
Why not calibrate your CGM? Sometimes I do this more than once in a day. Sometimes I have to do it twice after comparing with my test strips. This helps prevent false alarms.
It REALLY depends on where I am and how/where I can position my pump. i.e. at home I always wake up to alarms (I have it set on the loudest volume available, and I position my pump under my pillow), but when I’m a hospital in-patient, the head of the bed is raised to prevent hypostatic pneumonia, which means I can’t place my pump under my pillow. This requires me to ‘pin’ my pump to my pyjamas [pajamas, for my American cousins] and only occasionally do I hear my pump alarming.
Turn my alerts off at night. My CGM is malfunctioning.
Donna, I hope you’ve got that CGM repaired. Have you calibrated it to avoid false alarms? Consulted with your medical tech team? Please believe me, waking up after a nighttime/early morning hypoglycemic episode with a bitten tongue, a headache, in a totally confused state is NOT worth the risk. Some call insulin shock “therapy.” Like electro convulsive shock “therapy” to “cure” “mental-illness” or “homosexuality,” this is NAZI medicine. If you have just one severe hypoglycemic episode resulting in loss of consciousness or status-epilepticus, I theorize it makes it easier to have another. I theorize this is as brain damaging as a football concussion.
I wake up about half the time, my husband hears it and wakes me up the other half the time. But, I do have all alarms on vibrate. If my phone app is not on vibrate and it alerts its very loud and startles me awake. But, I don’t like how loud it is so I usually have everything on vibrate to not disrupt my hubby as much as possible.
I set alarms only for severe lows so they do awaken me. However, now that I have Tandem with Control IQ and have figured out my ratios, I’m simply not getting night time alarms. Yay!
Almost always. On a couple of occasions, my husband heard it first. I use Libre 2 and find the alarm to be softened if turned over or on cloth
I have a CGM that does not alarm. I could upgrade to one that does but I don’t need the alarms. I always wake up with my glucose goes low. I don’t want the false alarms of CGMs that do alarm so I refuse to change CGMs. I’ve made it almost 65 years Type 1 so I am not concerned about the lack of alarms.
I use the Medtronic 670G system. CGM alerts come through the pump. When I sleep, I wear a pocketed t-shirt and keep the pump in the pocket. Since the pump is next to my chest, the vibrations always wakes me up.
I don’t always wake up. For me, night alarms are usually high alarms from delayed dinner carbs, so it’s not too bad if I miss it. Sometimes, I wake up enough to know it’s going off, but not enough to actually follow through with doing anything about it. I fall back asleep too quickly.
It is so LOUD!!
Type 1 teenager never wakes up. Me, the caregiver, will wake up, but sometimes I miss an alert and wake up to the next one.
Libre2 false alarms frequently at night so I often turn it off.
Libre2 definitely has a problem with false alarms!
I have the Abbot Freestyle Libre that has no alerts at all, and I kind of like it that way because I scan in the middle of the night when getting up for the bathroom.
I read about folks that are able to sleep thru Dexcom’s alerts, but I don’t understand how. They are the most obnoxious, terrible sounds Dexcom or FDA (I don’t know which or both) could have come up! They are so bad, I’ve turned off all that I can. I’d like Dexcom/FDA to allow me a real choice or load my own. As it is, their alarms make me want to throw the damn PDM/phone against the wall! They’re no good if they’re so terrible they don’t get used!
TomH, I can adjust my Dexcom. Get in touch with your medical tech team. Of course we want to avoid false alarms. But we need loud alarms, when bg is really falling low. Calibrate.
I really don’t know if I hear it all the time. I do get awakened often enough. Sometimes when my glucose goes low, the alarm keeps going off all night long, even after I have had a snack. With gastropareses, it takes forever for the sugar to get into my system, thus a lost night of sleep because of the incessant alarms.
You might do better with Baqsemi nasal glucagon. It gets into the system really fast w/o having to be digested through the usual means. Since you have gastroparesis, you certainly qualify to have it covered by your insurance even if your diabetes care provider who writes your RXs has to do a pre-auth. Check it out.
I always wake up with the alarms, that is why they are there. I don’t often feel my bg level so I really like the DexCom CGM with alarms. Yes, they are loud but they have a purpose. I’d rather be woken up in the night than not wake up at all.
I’ve shut off the high and low alarms but kept the emergency alert. Gastroparesis slows metabolism so much those went off constantly until slow absorbing food fixed things. Meanwhile those alarms disturbed everyone needlessly.
My pump alerts from the CGM are on vibrate. Most of the time the vibrating wakes me. If I’m very low I get the alarm which wakes me and my husband. I REALLY wish there was a “do not disturb” button for non-critical alarms. Waking at 3 am to an alarm that says “your sensor will expire soon,” (usually with at least 12-24 hours left!) or “order a new transmitter. Your transmitter will expire in 30 days” is very frustrating! Can we program it so those only come during waking hours please???
Just coming in to second this. T1 life is a series of unnecessary alarms. I want the critical ones, but I never need sounds for any of the others. (and by critical, I mean my sugars are crashing or too low – I honestly don’t care if I go high in the night. If I do, it’s usually due to an overcorrection snack on my part at bedtime to AVOID the critical low alarm. Sleep is too precious.
I agree with both of you.. I do not use a pump so do not correct for a high, during night.. During day I exercise if high.. Doing that for 68 years..
I always wake up EXCEPT… if my earphones are still attached to my phone though I’be taken them out of my ears. Then the alarm only signs through the ear phones. This has happened a few times & last night I finally figured that out.
I have Minimed 770g. Previous Minimed pumps never woke me and the only reason I now sometimes wake up is because the 770g can also send the alerts to my phone. I have the pump set to both audio & vibrate but they are both very weak. The phone is louder, although still not very loud, but it is also not under the blankets so it’s much easier to hear. I still sleep through it many nights.
The alerts are pretty annoying and I want to complain about them. Have to stop myself and realize that the cgm and pump are doing their jobs, saving my life.
I answered other because I do not use high and low alerts with my CGM. I struggle with insomnia and sleeping through the night is almost impossible even without alerts going off at all hours. I am fortunate to have a partner who can easily recognize overnight lows and I rarely go high enough to need an alert. If I lived alone I would definitely use the alerts
Fortunately, if the Alarm does not wake me it wakes my wife. But, she does not appreciate it.
My pump and CGM are paired. Both are set on vibrate. I might wake from the pump vibrating because of a low alarm before waking from the alarm sound. Once asleep, no sounds wake my spouse.
People complained about the alarms from Dexcom early on. The vibrations of my device on my bed was enough to awaken me. Now I never hear or feel the alarms.
My phone is set to do not disturb from 10pm to 6 am. The only CGM alarm that sounds is for an urgent severe low and that is so loud I couldn’t possibly sleep through it.
I confess I almost always shutdown my CGM when I go to bed after dealing with so many “compression lows” that weren’t accurate.
Although I do not use a CGM, I have had to set my pump to “vibrate” instead of sound alarm because other people heard it and I didn’t!
when this happened for me while awake, it was my first “alarm” that I had some hearing loss. Just a tip.
Pauline, “other people” should rush to your bedside to offer sugar cubes, or nasal inhaler to raise your bg.
I always wake up to alerts, but I use both my cellphone app and the separate receiver for my Dexcom G6.
I rarely wake up to the alarms, which is why I rely on Mimi, my DAD more than my G6, to alert me. She’s way more accurate with my low’s than it is.
Mimi is your Dad? Mimi, isn’t that usually a feminine name? Congrats on living in a modern family. 🙂
Mimi is her diabetes alert dog – hence DAD.
One reply was left out of the options…. No, my CGM does not have alerts!
I often hear them, check whether they require insulin or carbs or whether I think I can wait.
THE BIG PROBLEM IS that my wife always hears them, wakes up and can’t fall back asleep even if I set mine to vibrate.
I know that they are an important signal but I’d like to….um….stay married and I wish that my Tandem Tslim would give me a little more control over how I get info. I’d be fine with high voltage electric shocks, but the current noises seem designed for people who live in close proximity to train stations or the front lines of air wars.
funny
I remove my hearing aids at night, so appreciate vibration and loud alarms. Does diabetic neuropathy apply to auditory nerves?
During normal sleep cycles, I wake for low alarms, probably because I am also symptomatic. I don’t wake for others, normally. During times when I am sleeping poorly because of chronic cough, (about 1/3 to 1/2 of the time) I wake fairly often while coughing and am much more likely to hear all alarms then.
Christina, why are you putting up with coughs? Get a referral from your primary care physician to a pulmonologist. Maybe she’ll pump the excess mucous from your lungs (painless), and then prescribe an Acapella (small cheap green plastic device available from Glaxo-Smith-Kline) and show you how to use it. Only takes 15’ first thing in morning, last thing at night. Works for me. For time being have you tried gargling with 1/4 tsp baking soda and 1/2 tsp salt in 8 oz of very warm water? How about sugar-free cough drops with maximum menthol as active ingredient? Get tested for COVID. IT’S FREE!
I usually hear them even though I take out my hearing aids to sleep. Fortunately my husband has excellent hearing and will alert me when I don’t hear them.
I usually turn the alert sounds off at night. I’ve always naturally woken when my BG is too low.
I don’t use alerts
Always seem to awaken with TSlim X2. I DO NOT and will not use the *#(%)# phone as its volume wakes up the dead in a 17 county area. And we have enough zombies in politics already.
Now I wake up, but that’s only since switching from Medtronic to Tandem. The Medtronic went off so often (and usually with no action needed on my part) I ended up getting conditioned to turn it off in my sleep. Lucky for me the Tandem has the touch screen, so if it ever does go off, I really have to wake up. But it doesn’t go off all that often anymore with Control IQ, so it’s not a constant thing I learn to ignore anymore.
I always wake up. unless on rare occasions I have been drinking. Then my son, whose phone follows the alerts, wakes me up.
After a hemorrhagic stroke, I am deaf in one ear. Sometimes I miss alerts if I am sleeping on my good ear. Fortunately my husband can hear the alerts.
In the 2 years I’ve had the t-slim/g6 combo the alarms have gone off only 3 or 4 times. They woke me each time. I ate 1 triscuit (my SOP) to fix the low and went back to sleep.
I wake up on the “Urgent Low” screaming Dexcom app! I don’t always wake up on the “approaching low” alerts. I keep my pump on vibrate, so it is imperative I remember to take my phone off of Do Not Disturb or Silenced so I hear the alarms.