The present invention reuses an accelerometer, or, more precise, sensed accelerations of a body sensor for user control of the body sensor. This is achieved by detecting predefined patterns in the acceleration signals that are unrelated to other movements of the patient. These include tapping on/with the sensor, shaking, and turning the sensor. New procedures are described that make it possible to re-use the acceleration sensing for reliable gesture detection without introducing many false positives due to non-gesture movements like respiration, heart beat, walking, etc.