All very knew to me

[Apples30]

Hi everyone
I had routine bloods and it’s shown a reading of 89mmol. I am obviously confused what this reading is although I realise it’s not normal ! How do you convert this into a different easier way to learn what your blood sugar is ? ie 4.5 etc

 

[Antje77]

Hi everyone
I had routine bloods and it’s shown a reading of 89mmol. I am obviously confused what this reading is although I realise it’s not normal ! How do you convert this into a different easier way to learn what your blood sugar is ? ie 4.5 etc

Hi @Apples30 , welcome to the forum!

The 89 is likely your hba1c, which tells you something about how high your blood glucose has been on average over the past couple of months. It's a lab test.
It's measured in mmol/mol (millimol per mol).

The 4.5 etc. you mention is the current blood glucose, usually measured with a fingerprick.
Blood glucose is measured in mmol/l (millimol per liter).

Here's a converter (use the mmol/l, ignore the %)
https://www.diabetes.co.uk/hba1c-units-converter.html
If your hba1c was 89 your average blood glucose must have been around 13.8

To make things even more confusing, not all countries use mmol/mol and mmol/l, some of them use % for hba1c and mg/dl for blood glucose.
This is why, when using Google you'll often find numbers which do not make sense when you're used to 'our' units.

Here's a chart with all 4 measurements. The top and bottom rows are the ones you use, the middle two rows are what they use in the US.

Good luck, and don't hesitate to ask more questions!