Normal Blood Sugar Level Ranges
Understanding blood glucose level ranges is key to both diabetes diagnosis and diabetes self-management.
Even if a person with diabetes has a meter, test strips and is testing successfully, if they do not know what their blood glucose level means, this testing is useless.
Furthermore, recommended blood glucose levels do have a degree of interpretation for every individual. There is no hard and fast guide, just generic advice.
Normal blood sugar ranges
For the majority of healthy individuals, normal blood sugar levels are as follows:
- The normal blood glucose level in humans is about 4 mM (4 mmol/L or 72
mg/dL) - The body, when operating normally, restores the blood sugar level to a range of about 4.4 to 6.1 mmol/L (82 to 110 mg/dL).
- Shortly after eating the blood glucose level may rise temporarily up to
7.8 mmol/L (140 mg/dL) or a bit more in non-diabetics. - The American Diabetes Association advises a post-meal glucose level less than 10 mmol/L (180 mg/dl) and a pre-meal plasma glucose of 5 to 7.2 mmol/L (90-130 mg/dL).
Blood sugar ranges for people with diabetes
When being tested for diabetes, blood sugar levels will normally be taken after around eight hours of fasting. During this blood sugar levels are put into the following categories:
- Normal: 70 to 100 mg/dl (5.6 mmol/l)
- Prediabetes or Impaired Glucose Tolerance: 101 to 126 mg/dl (5.6 – 7 mmol/l)
- Diagnosis of diabetes: more than 126 mg/dl (7 mmol/l)
