True Metrix Air Blood Glucose Monitoring Meter

There are some SERIOUS oversights and inaccuracies with this product – Because I tend to go into deep detail - because I have too, I tend to pick up on details that the entire industry (theirs) has not been able to detect. For instance, in page 5 of the user manual, it says, "Before using the meter for the first time, calibrate your meter with the control solution". AND because I have a decently working chemical knowledge of most things, the control solution (ought to be) a specific amount of supermarket glucose, dissolved in a specific amount of water, thickened with glycerine, salted with around 900 mg of sodium chloride, 200 mg of potassium, probably a little alkali in the form of sodium bicarbonate to make the solution slightly alkaline, and some preservative.

This is a synthetic version of blood with the same electrochemical properties and glucose content as blood.

It is as dirt cheap as anything to make, in industrial quantities, you could make it for 10c a liter.

But they do not include a 2 or 3 ml vial of the control solution with the meter.

So I got onto them, and told them, "There is a mismatch with the instructions, and your failure to include a TINY bottle of the solution in the packet".

The control solution - making this up a little bit to illustrate the point, rather than assert the issue of accuracy - if the solution has say, exactly 2 grams of glucose per 98 grams of water, then the meter and it's test strips should read the simulated blood as having a blood glucose level of 5.00 mmol/L.

Thus you cannot calibrate / check the meter - before you use it, because they don't include 1/100th of a cent worth of solution, with the $100 meter.

I told them to knock off this "drop shipper" standard of service, where all the meter manufacturers buy the slightly variated meters from the same factory in China.

The True Metrix meters, have similar / identical products / components / like the test strip containers and the parts of the meter, as the Freestyle meters.

AND because I am a nutter for accuracy - the Accu Chek (German) has given reliable results, and the China types give variable readings, and the Accu Chek, will read 5.6 mmol/L and from the same blood, the True Metrix Air reads 7.8 mmol/L.

This is not plus or minus 3% - it is a lot.

As a comparator, when my blood glucose drops to 4.5 mmol/L, I start to feel really tired, so it's time to suck on a bit of sugar (a level teaspoon of glucose in water), followed by some complex carbohydrates (lentlls) and when people get to 3.5mmol/L, they go into a coma and start doing clever things like dying.

My preferred range is 5 to 6 mmol/L, with Minus 1 - under very careful scrutiny - and to take action and Plus 1, controlled by pills and Plus 2 controlled by insulin.

So when the True Metrix meter is reading 5, does this mean my blood glucose is actually 2.2 mmol/L lower, or higher, than 5.0 mmol/L?

Am I heading into death territory or the blood glucose level is way out of the ideal range?

The https://www.trividiahealth.com.au/ uses a 1800 phone number for Australia AND it connects to the USA, ONLY in USA hours, to a foreign call center - and after you get through the 5 minutes of robot speech, finally the person I was talking too, offered to send out a set of testing solutions, and refused to tell me the formulations of the testing solutions - because I can make my own, minus the preservative, they express freighted 2 x 3ml containers of the testing solution to me.

BUT amongst all of the packaging, the little boxes, the labels and the instructions, NO WHERE does it say "If your meter and test strips are new, fresh and working properly, this low glucose and high glucose solution should show up on your meter as 3.0 mmol/L and 6.0 mmol/L (or similar).

There is NO calibrated scale to check your meter by. Or am I supposed to go delving into some library of fine print and details and web pages etc., because they are too slack to write it on the packet?

Why is it that all these people in all of these companies, NEVER read the fine print and check for errors and poor information or the lack of any information - and why do I - "The Customer" have to fight like cats and dogs with them, to make them sort out their issues?