I have used many BG meters over the years. Enough to know that some of them are worthless! They are just random-number generators.
I have never owned a ketone meter!
I want to get one to test running stuff. Just curious how my body responds to runs when I don’t eat. I am curious to see if I am making ketones to feed myself during exercise.
Can anyone recommend a very good and accurate ketone meter?
I’ve only had to use it, I think, twice or three times in all the years I’ve had it but this one has been good for us.
Abbott’s product; Precision Xtra.
Not available to me on insurance (I tried with my endo’s help) but go to for me when I’m diagnosing a Dash pump failure.
The cost of the test strips is $1 each. There was a brief period last year while Amazon was working through what it couldn’t sell if it wanted to sell as a pharmacist in the US that the price went ballistic. I last bought in 2022 and the price is back down to $1 again now.
Test strips are normally out of date.
The actual Abbott sales seem to be to hospitals where they basically sell in quantities of thousands, probably for dollars 10s thereof. Abbott use to sell OTC but at this point I can’t find any Abbott OTC sales on Amazon; the 2022 sale was a split pack in a zippy. Kind of like the way our government buys coke.
Pepsi of course.
No one in this site should ever buy these. I have them coming out of my ears and would happily send a box or two to anyone who needs. At one point, i was getting 10 BOXES of these per 90 days…no idea why. I didn’t question it. But I finally said please put these ON HOLD.
Yes, I would love some, if you have extras!
My thought is - if I eat, my body is using those carbs for fuel. But what happens if I don’t eat?!? Does my body create ketones for fuel?
I have never done any testing for ketones, other than the pee strips. But I think those are pretty worthless as far as telling you anything useful.
When I was a child, I occasionally had ketones show up on the pee strips. But that was a totally different era. You could have high BG for hours and not really know it!
But I have never done a ketone blood test in a million years of T1D, so I think it would be a useful thing to look at.
It’s about time, Eric!
So what do I buy, the “Precision Xtra Blood Glucose Ketone Monitoring System”?
It’s both BG and ketones in the same meter, right?
Looks like I can get the meter from Abbot for $27, which isn’t bad.
Iwas mildly interested in a blood ketone meter. This Abbott device is reasonably priced but the test strips run $55 t0 $65 for 10 strips. That’s really steep.
The meter will test blood glucose as well, those strips are more reasonable at $35 per 100 at Amazon.
I’ve used Ketostix ketone strips over the years and never gotten more than half a color grade away from zero (theres like 8 shades it can turn).
Most recently I used them because I was smelling strange when cleaning up after ‘threshold’ TT type workouts. Never got positive ketones and my endo didn’t feel it was worth worrying about.
I can send you strips too. No need to buy! If you want some, send me a PM with address and I’ll make it happen.
Yes and the blood ketone levels go through the roof. Non-T1s who really are on keto diets (not the versions on those magazines on the food store checkouts) do, indeed, see such levels. For a T1 who is not on a keto diet those levels certainly indicate DKA however a T1 doing a keto diet sees those elevated levels too; i.e. it doesn’t matter whether you are a T1 or an other.
I’ve never pushed it; I’ve hit ketone levels that were pretty high by not eating and I’ve hit them through pump failure but I just feel scared to go to the “keto diet” level because my pump might fail and I might not notice…
How long does it take? Like if I don’t eat anything all day and run, is that enough to make my ketones jump up?
I’ve done pee tests after doing those types of runs, but I never saw anything on the pee tests.
Ketones give the smell of pear drops. My wife can recognise the smell instantly. It’s more difficult for us; I’ve never been able to smell it myself though I can certainly smell pear drops. (There are some things, like cilantro, that I can’t smell.)
I don’t know if keto-diet ketones smell the same. The actual smell make be something else, i.e. not a ketone. The Google AI reports that the smell is a breakdown product of ketones, which makes sense. If it is a breakdown product (as opposed to a synthesis product) that would suggest that the smell is the same for ketones however they are generated.
For me the smell starts somewhere over around 250mg/dl. This is where my body starts producing ketones based on blood ketone tests.
Someone is watching out for you…lol. Not a cilantro fan.
Cilantro is kind of odd. Some think it tastes like soap, others love it. It appears the soap taste is the result of genetics. The OR6A2 gene causes some to be more sensitive to aldehydes that give cilantro its taste. Those less sensitive to aldehydes love the taste and smell, others can’t stand the soapy smell that overrides everything else.
That is interesting, I didn’t know that. When recipes call for cilantro usually replace with parsley.
It’s not a taste one can acquire. You like it or you don’t. If someone had their dirty mouth washed out with soap, and had the gene variant that may be enough to cause them to vomit 
You can definitely overdo cilantro in a recipe. A little bit can taste good but too much will make it taste soapy.
Wow, I just thought I couldn’t smell it but I didn’t know about the soap thing. I can just about taste it and I like the taste; for me it’s very mild sort of peppery. I like parsley too and it has a different taste for me, but still mild. I can’t tell the difference between flat-leaf parsley and cilantro at a vegetable stall. I don’t find coriander (i.e. the seeds) to have a particularly notable taste either and we grow cilantro ourselves so the seeds are fresh 
Here’s a scientific study:
What I found telling is the line, “It is suspected, although not proven, that cilantro dislike is largely driven by the odor rather than the taste.”
This line I found curiously funny, “Here, we report on a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of cilantro soapy-taste detection.” Hum, that would be a GWASoCSTD?
Now, what were we talking about?
Hi Eric,
I’m eating VLCD and am fairly regularly in “nutritional ketosis” which is deemed blood-ketones (BK) of >0.5mmol/L (9mg/dL if same conversion as BG?). I’ve been up to 3.5mmol/L on occasion. All of this is (definitely) in context of having IoB, always! The BK levels, like others, are subject to circadian rhythms and other internal/external influences, including insulin (dose dependent). I can dose for bolus which knocks the BK back a bit, but within an hour or few it returns to some equilibrium.
My understanding of pee tests are it’s what is excess/unused that’s excreted. If your body is using what’s produced then nothing is excreted. I think (and happy to be corrected) the same applies to BK, in that higher levels above some equilibrium indicate over-supply of which is subsequently excreted by breath, sweat, urine.
For the record, I’ve never been in DKA. Diagnosed 1999, “keto” since 2017(ish).
Thanks @Vit.Caffeine! That’s interesting.
I’m not sure if I will ever see elevated ketones, but I want to at least check it out.
The circumstances for me would be very rare - a long run when I have not eaten anything before, and have not taken in any carbs during the run. That does not happen very often. But I am curious to see if those circumstances ever give me ketones.
@Eric, you’d also likely see elevated BK if you fast for a reasonable time.
