Am I only just diabetic?

Since a non-diabetic blood glucose rarely moves far from 5mmol/l, 7.9 is well into the diabetic range.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "just". Unless you'd been eating lots of carbs, shortly before the test you did, your BG is above normal
Hana

Paul, this is not meant in any way to be unkind or clever, but I have a feeling that like me you are trying to avoid the issue, believe me, we have all done it. I'll tell you what my GP said when I asked him if I was just a bit diabetic, yes dear, he said, in the same way that someone can be a little bit pregnant . Val

Paul, I had a diagnosis reading of 18, but have now struggled down to an HbA1c of 6.9. Diabetes isn't trivial, but it is only as serious as you let it be. It can even have it's funny moments, as you will learn from this forum, and it puts you in touch with some great, friendly and helpful people who are eager to share their knowledge with you. Good luck with whatever means you chose to gain control of your figures
Val

The others have said it already.

I'd like to add something about how diabetes is measured and what constitutes good enough control. There is a school of thought that these cut off lines are pretty arbitary because they had to draw a line somewhere.

They have to draw a line somewhere and this has been drawn a bit lower from time to time. Many people think that pre-diabetes may well be diabetes in a year or so time, as they put the level for diagnosis a bit lower. This is likely to happen as they get around to applying what they have found out about the damage caused by unacceptably high blood sugar levels.

Please correct me if I have got the figures wrong, anyone, as I have not checked before posting, but the damage starts when you are running an HbA1c of over 6%. This is why many of us aspire to get a level of control that takes us in to the 5% club with an HbA1c of under 6%. The research has shown that reducing the numbers reduces the risk of complications and the closer to normal the fewer complications - I'm actively working on becoming "average" :wink:

The HbA1c is a fairly blunt instrument - it is an average. You may have been running sugar numbers at much higher levels.

I was diagnosed with a fasting blood sugar level very similar to yours, perhaps a little higher. At first I thought, this is just a one off, but I had 3 fasting tests in a 2 week period, followed by an HbA1c of 7.8% (the actual numbers would have been running a lot higher than that). My last HbA1c was 6% and I did that on lifestly/diet alone 8) I have just started on metformin because I'm impatient.

The good news is that you can do an awful lot to improve your sugar numbers by managing your diet. Whatever dietary approach you take you need to reduce your consumption of starchy carbohydrate - the stuff the NHS says is really good for diabetics :roll:

I found http://www.bloodsugar101.com about the most useful and informative thing I read before I found my way here. It told me there were things I could do to manage my diet and reduce the numbers so that I can avoid the complications - which are the consequence of high sugar numbers. It is am American site but the information is clear and well writen and they now have the UK equivalent numbers on there too (Americans measure blood glucose differntley).