Blood test

@bettybeemer_ ,

Everything you ever needed to know about converting your glucose numbers..............

http://www.diabetes.co.uk/hba1c-to-blood-sugar-level-converter.html

Are you in the US?

Ok - In the UK we are usually given our a1c numbers as a percentage. Some people get it from thier docs in mmol - so you need to clarify the units.

Here in the UK, diabetes is diagnosed with an a1c of 6.5% or above, this is your average blood sugar level over 3 months.

So if you put some numbers into the converter I gave you, 7% would be 53mmol/mol.

86mmol/mol equates to 10% and your target of 69mmol/mol would be 8.5%.

As clear as mud????

bettybeemer_ said:

Ok. I understand that. Thank you.

The only thing that is confusing me is that on the blood sugar tester I have at home it gave me a reading of 7 mmol/l. As far as I can work out, that is 42 mmol/mol. It shows it as mmol/l on my meter at home. So that is 6% at 42 mmol/mol. Is that right?

Click to expand...

Whilst both tests are expressed as 6.1, 8.4 or whatever, they are using different measures - a bit like kg and pounds. When I weight myself in the morning, I could be 47 or 103, depending whether I choose to talk kg or lbs.

I appreciate it's all very confusing, but hopefully @urbanracer 's link will help a bit too.

bettybeemer_ said:

Ok. I understand that. Thank you.

The only thing that is confusing me is that on the blood sugar tester I have at home it gave me a reading of 7 mmol/l. As far as I can work out, that is 42 mmol/mol. It shows it as mmol/l on my meter at home. So that is 6% at 42 mmol/mol. Is that right?

Click to expand...

Whilst both tests are expressed as 6.1, 8.4 or whatever, they are using different measures - a bit like kg and pounds. When I weight myself in the morning, I could be 47 or 103, depending whether I choose to talk kg or lbs.

I appreciate it's all very confusing, but hopefully @urbanracer 's link will help a bit too.

bettybeemer_ said:

Ok. I understand that. Thank you.

The only thing that is confusing me is that on the blood sugar tester I have at home it gave me a reading of 7 mmol/l. As far as I can work out, that is 42 mmol/mol. It shows it as mmol/l on my meter at home. So that is 6% at 42 mmol/mol. Is that right?

Click to expand...

Hi @bettybeemer_

It's important that you think about your home blood test differently to you a1c results. The a1c is an average that effectively inludes all the highs and lows over approximately 3 months. Your meter at home is giving you an instantaneous check so the figures are not directly transferable

You'd need to do some averaging to get anywhere close to the true a1c figure, add up all your readings for a week and divide by the number of instances. The resulting mmol/L average is what you'd work with to convert to your a1c as a percentage. The longer the period you average over, the more accurate your estimate will be.

But in principle, I think you've got the gist