Opinion: Time in range: a new way for people with diabetes to monitor blood sugar
Time in range, a new metric for people with diabetes, would have made no sense to those living with this disease 75 years ago because they rarely, if ever, knew what their blood sugar level was at a particular moment.
In the 1940s, measuring the amount of glucose in the bloodstream — essential knowledge for people with diabetes — was a laborious and indirect process. People had to add eight drops of urine to a teaspoon of Benedict’s solution, boil the mixture for at least five minutes, and then compare the color to a chart. That’s not the kind of thing that can be easily done, and it wasn’t very accurate.
