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Am I Pre-Diabetic?

D

Dave4000

Member
Messages
5
Type of diabetes
Don't have diabetes
Treatment type
I do not have diabetes
Hi, this is all new to me and I would appreciate some advice from people in this group. I am overweight and in the obese category. I am 62 and concerned about being pre-diabetic, after feeling dizzy, faint and suddenly very tired on several occasions over the last few months when out shopping.
So, I purchased a kit from Boots to test my blood sugar and the results over the last 2 weeks are:-

First thing in the morning after fasting for more than 8 hours: Lowest reading 6.3 Highest 7.0 mmol/L

Last thing at night more than 2 hours after a meal: Lowest 6.3 Highest 8.5 mmol/L

I mentioned these readings to a paramedic at my local practice during a health checkup for the episodes of feeling faint etc and I was told these levels are perfectly normal.

Just as a second opinion please could someone on this forum advise if I am worrying unnecessarily or whether I should be concerned about the sugar levels?

Thanks in advance
Dave
 
Hi @Dave4000 and welcome to the forum :)

We can’t diagnose or give medical advice on the forum, a few random finger prick tests won’t really tell you anything anyway, that’s just a snapshot in time. The best thing to do if you are concerned is to make an appointment at your GP surgery and ask for an Hba1C test. This test tells you what your glucose levels have been like for the past 3 months.

In any case if I was in your shoes I would also want to get to the bottom of the dizzy episodes, there are lots of different reasons for those type of symptoms

Good luck:)
 
Dave4000 said:
Hi, this is all new to me and I would appreciate some advice from people in this group. I am overweight and in the obese category. I am 62 and concerned about being pre-diabetic, after feeling dizzy, faint and suddenly very tired on several occasions over the last few months when out shopping.
So, I purchased a kit from Boots to test my blood sugar and the results over the last 2 weeks are:-

First thing in the morning after fasting for more than 8 hours: Lowest reading 6.3 Highest 7.0 mmol/L

Last thing at night more than 2 hours after a meal: Lowest 6.3 Highest 8.5 mmol/L

I mentioned these readings to a paramedic at my local practice during a health checkup for the episodes of feeling faint etc and I was told these levels are perfectly normal.

Just as a second opinion please could someone on this forum advise if I am worrying unnecessarily or whether I should be concerned about the sugar levels?

Thanks in advance
Dave
Click to expand...
Hi and welcome. The first thing I need to say is that we won't and can't diagnose anything on here.

On the face of it each of those readings you got look OK. There is an acceptable inaccuracy in most fingerprick tests of 15% (with one in 20 tests outside that) - ie a "true blood glucose value" of 6.0 could be recorded by the tester as being anywhere between 5.1 and 6.9 and that would be OK. The highest and lowest values don't therefore necessarily tell you all that much - you really want to know where you are most of the time. If you've two weeks' worth of fasted readings and they are all between 6.3 and 7.0 that looks to be fairly steady.

The NHS will usually want an HbA1c blood test before making a diagnosis. The best way to get one (although at 62 you've probably had one and they may have said nothing about it) is to go to your GP and either ask for the most recent reult, or for a new test.

The other thing is that many things affect BG, not only food - stress, illness, exercise, ambient temperature for a few examples. This is because your liver is responsible for regulating blood glucose levels and it will add glucose from stores to your blood stream when it thinks you need it.

The real benefit of testing for people like me with T2 is that it helps establish which foods affect my blood glucose most, and therefore which to remove from my diet. Eating pastry (as one example) would ensure my levels are unacceptably high at the +2 hour mark - so I don't eat it anymore.

The thing is, the effects you're reporting - being dizzy, faint, and very tired - could be down to any number of causes, not only blood glucose levels. And if it was me, I would take those effects as a sign of me having low blood glucose, rather than high. So my advice would be to go along to your GP and get yourself checked over.
 
Thank you for your excellent explanation. I have just seen the nurse practitioner at my GP about the funny turns and they are doing blood tests for various things including an HbA1c. I also had an ECG and had been monitoring my Blood Pressure over the last week at their request. I should receive the results of the HbA1c in about 2 weeks.
The reason I bought the BG tester was because I thought the episodes I had could have been due to low blood sugar. I researched when to take BG finger prick tests and have been doing so for the past 2 weeks at various times throughout the day and tracking what I eat, how many carbs I’ve had and how that’s affected my BG levels throughout the day. The highest reading I’ve had so far is 9.2 which was 20 mins after eating some Fruit & Fibre cereal with semi-skimmed milk.
I had only had 600 calories the day before as I am currently on the Michael Mosley 5:2 diet and had a BG the next morning of 6.7, having not eaten anything for 12 hours.
I guess the internet is dangerous in that I read on a UK diabetes site that anything between 5.5 and 6.9 after fasting was Pre-Diabetic as was a reading between 7.8 and 11 at 2 hours after a meal.
Hopefully the HbA1c test results will be normal and as I loose weight and become through exercise, my numbers will drop to the 4.0 to 5.9 range.
Kind regards Dave
 
Dave4000 said:
Hi, this is all new to me and I would appreciate some advice from people in this group. I am overweight and in the obese category. I am 62 and concerned about being pre-diabetic, after feeling dizzy, faint and suddenly very tired on several occasions over the last few months when out shopping.
So, I purchased a kit from Boots to test my blood sugar and the results over the last 2 weeks are:-

First thing in the morning after fasting for more than 8 hours: Lowest reading 6.3 Highest 7.0 mmol/L

Last thing at night more than 2 hours after a meal: Lowest 6.3 Highest 8.5 mmol/L

I mentioned these readings to a paramedic at my local practice during a health checkup for the episodes of feeling faint etc and I was told these levels are perfectly normal.

Just as a second opinion please could someone on this forum advise if I am worrying unnecessarily or whether I should be concerned about the sugar levels?

Thanks in advance
Dave
Click to expand...
Another vote here for a proper MOT, which it seems like you're already in the process of getting, so good on you.

A bad night's sleep can drive blood glucose up in the morning, so when it comes to judging someone prediabetic or not... The HbA1c really is the way to go, because it is more telling. You're throwing away teststrips anyway, as you're currently not testing effectively, to be honest... Like I said, morning glucose could be affected by just about anything (nightmares, restless night, getting up for a wee.... Get the idea?), so one isn't very telling, a lot of them would maybe be. But if you want to know whether your body can handle what you put in it, test before a meal and 2 hours afterwards. If a meal was very carby and your body managed to get your blood sugars back into a decent range afterwards, it's still doing what it should. Also, low blood sugar episodes aren't part and parcel of being diabetic. They can become that once a person is medicated with insulin or gliclazide etc, but before that, hypo's aren't indicative of diabetes. Hypers are. There are conditions that can cause low blood sugars though, so it's not ruled out.

But honestly?

Fatigue, dizziness and feeling faint, in combination with obesity? Could be a ridiculous amount of things. So I'm glad you're getting checked for everything, because none of those symptoms are something you should have to live with.

I hope you get your answers soon!
Jo

PS: Silly question, did those episodes start before or after you started the Mosley diet? If your body's not used to fasting, it could freak out a little. Also, if you've been watching the carbs, you might be a little dehydrated and lacking in some electrolytes, which can cause something called keto-flu. No idea if that's the case, and I still 100% am behind the bloodwork and other tests. Do let us know how you get on?
 
Thanks again for an excellent reply, this is all very helpful.
I have been testing before meals and 2 hours after each meal to see how my BG levels are affected throughout the day, as well as a few tests 20 mins after eating to see how much my BG levels were affected by different food types. I didn’t want to post every test result and focused on posting just the fasting levels as they seemed to be outside the normal range (4.0 to 5.9) according to the internet, which as we all know is a great source of unreliable information. Which is why I thought I’d ask some people who actually know about this sort of thing. Hopefully my HbA1c results will show that I’m normal and I won’t worry about this anymore. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t end up going down the path to Type 2 diabetes and do whatever I can to loose weight and get fitter in an attempt to improve my chances.

Kind regards Dave
 
I tried the 5:2, couldn't hack it because of hunger, and also didn't lose anything sustainably. All this was in the years before diagnosis when I was having a raft of diabetic symptoms with an HbA1c in the mid-40s.

I don't think there';s a lot of point testing 20 minutes after eating. Your blood sugar will rise if you've eaten carbs, mine will, just about everybody's will. This research paper shows BG impacts on non-diabetic people after eating meals. You'll see their levels rise and fall a lot:

Continuous Glucose Profiles in Healthy Subjects under Everyday Life Conditions and after Different Meals - PMC

This study investigated continuous glucose profiles in nondiabetic subjects. Continuous interstitial glucose measurement was performed under everyday life conditions (2 days) and after ingestion of four meals with standardized carbohydrate content ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

The example I use all the time is that a small milky coffee (it's the lactose in the milk) will take me from 5.2 to 9.6 in 40 minutes. Back to 5.2 by one hour. It's exactly what you would expect. Lactose digested into simple sugars, transported in the blood stream to the liver and elsewhere, and metabolised - used as fuel or stored. So your cereal with semi -skimmed milk (semi is higher in lactose than full, btw) probably took you a lot higher than 9.2, being almost totally carb. You just got a snapshot at 20 minutes.

The issue however, is how well your system dealt with it.

Always check stuff found at random on the internet. A lot of people are trying to sell you something, some are just plain confused, some lie, some are malicious. On here we expect information to be either personal experience, or have a valid reference - and something posted on Reddit doesn't count.
 
Dave4000 said:
Thanks again for an excellent reply, this is all very helpful.
I have been testing before meals and 2 hours after each meal to see how my BG levels are affected throughout the day, as well as a few tests 20 mins after eating to see how much my BG levels were affected by different food types. I didn’t want to post every test result and focused on posting just the fasting levels as they seemed to be outside the normal range (4.0 to 5.9) according to the internet, which as we all know is a great source of unreliable information. Which is why I thought I’d ask some people who actually know about this sort of thing. Hopefully my HbA1c results will show that I’m normal and I won’t worry about this anymore. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t end up going down the path to Type 2 diabetes and do whatever I can to loose weight and get fitter in an attempt to improve my chances.

Kind regards Dave
Click to expand...
You're asking the right questions, but right now, we can't really help overmuch, not without test results and a diagnosis to work with. If your bloodwork comes back (pre-) diabetic, there's oodles of support and knowledge here, to get you back into healthier ranges, though I think you may have done enough research on that yourself already. And diabetes or no, with a low carb diet or intermittent fasting, you could well tackle the obesity, which'll reduce other risk factors as well (cardiovascular stuff for instance, all those lovely things us big people get to deal with.). Whatever is going on, it's good that you're taking care of yourself. And if we can help, we will. For now I'll just be keeping my fingers crossed it's something which is nice and easily solved. ;)

Hugs,
Jo
 
So, I received the results of my blood tests and they are:
Haemoglobin A1c level - IFCC standardised 39 mmol/mol.

Does this tell me if I’m pre-diabetic or normal?

Kind regards
Dave
Dave4000 said:
Hi, this is all new to me and I would appreciate some advice from people in this group. I am overweight and in the obese category. I am 62 and concerned about being pre-diabetic, after feeling dizzy, faint and suddenly very tired on several occasions over the last few months when out shopping.
So, I purchased a kit from Boots to test my blood sugar and the results over the last 2 weeks are:-

First thing in the morning after fasting for more than 8 hours: Lowest reading 6.3 Highest 7.0 mmol/L

Last thing at night more than 2 hours after a meal: Lowest 6.3 Highest 8.5 mmol/L

I mentioned these readings to a paramedic at my local practice during a health checkup for the episodes of feeling faint etc and I was told these levels are perfectly normal.

Just as a second opinion please could someone on this forum advise if I am worrying unnecessarily or whether I should be concerned about the sugar levels?

Thanks in advance
Dave
Click to expand...
 
For T2 diabetes 42 - 48 is considered pre diabetic, anything over 48 is considered diabetic
So your result of 39 is a normal HbA1c
 
Just to add, the range that @lovinglife quotes above is that used in the UK. In the USA they consider that pre-diabetes starts at a lower level than that.

But since (in the UK) all that a GP will normally does to treat a pre-diabetic is to just mention that their blood glucose is a little high and suggest diet and exercise, it makes little difference whether you are 'officially' pre-diabetic or not.
 
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