Can you estimate your HbA1c from finger prick readings?

I don't have the best brain for maths but I'm wondering if there is a way to get an idea of your average levels by knowing roughly what your daily patterns are from having measured at home.

Does anyone know if it can be done from several finger prick readings, perhaps looking across different days and calculating as if it happened everyday with a similar pattern?

For example, let's say a fasting of anywhere between 4.8 and 5.2, let's call it 5.0.

One meal a day with before being 5.4;
1h being 8.5;
2 hour being 6.5,
3 hour being 5.5
and between meals being between 4.5 and 5.5, call it 5.0.

Then the other two meals being
before 5.5;
1h 7.5;
2h 6.0
and
before 4.8;
1h 6.7;
2h 5.5.

And before bed being 5.5 - 6.5, call it 6.0.

And just use those figures to make an average reading. Is anyone good at maths?

P.S. I will get an actual HbA1c soon anyway but it would be interesting to try to predict it before I get the real thing done.

I've measured overnight a few times since I am often up (was up a lot peeing while pregnant) and now up with baby.

What I have never known is what level I should aim for before bed and what level is better to have overnight (not taking insulin but I am breastfeeding a couple of times through the night).

The times I have measured I am usually in the 5s somewhere - sometimes mid 5s if I was high 5s or 6s after a late dinner. By morning, after 8 hours of fasting, I can sometimes be back in the high 4s but will creep up into the low 5s if I don't eat breakfast until 11am or so.
Other times I am in the low 5s when I wake and it drops back into the high 4s if I don't eat breakfast until 11am.

Maybe they are all just imagined because my metre could give half a mmol either way for no apparent reason and most of the fluctuations in my morning fasting levels are all within half a mmol usually. So maybe they are all the same difference. That's why I would call it around 5.0 mmol.

My fasting before a glucose tolerance test was 5.1 while I was pregnant (and I ate a lot and late the night before because I didn't want to feel hungry... imagine! ha ha).

My follow up fasting at 2 months postpartum was 4.4 mmol, but that was after probably 14 hours of fasting and I'd been breastfeeding during that time.

In reality, I'm probably somewhere in the middle if I don't over eat or have to breastfeed.


If I had to guess my HbA1c, I'm thinking somewhere around 5.5%. Could be more or maybe it's not quite there yet, if I am lucky. That means an average of 6.2 mmol I think.

I think I see 4s more often than 8s, and I think I see 5s more often than 6s, and 6s more often than 7s. The 8s are because I'm playing around with some carbs again. Obviously sensitive to them. In the past 6 months I did see 3 or 4 times a 9.0 and a 10 mmol but I know how to avoid that now usually. I've likewise see 3.4 and 3.6 just a couple of times as well.

Robbity said:

For what it's worth I can usually get a reasonable "guesstimate" from my 3 monthly averages on my meter using our diabetes.co.uk converter. And from experience I know that this figure is always slightly lower than my actual HbA1c test results.

Using Libre sensor software calculations my predicted HbA1c figures were way below actual results.- misleadingly putting me well into normal figures.

However all these are simply general guides and not an exact science, and my pre and post meal figures are the ones I prefer to take most note of as these give some inducation of how what I'm eating affects my glucose levels. Though again other factors come intro play - medication. pain, stress, etc will also have an effect on levels.

But after nearly 6 years I probably know equally well how I'm likely to be doing without guestimates from gadgets, and initially in the first coiuple fo months from diafnosis my levels came down to pre-diabetic without the use of a meter, simply by eating a reduced carbohydrate diet - but my meter has since been and continues to be a useful tool.

Robbity

Click to expand...

The link for the converter doesn't seem to work. It said "page not found".

Wait, I found this one. Is this it? https://www.diabetes.co.uk/hba1c-to-blood-sugar-level-converter.html

Cocosilk said:

I don't have the best brain for maths but I'm wondering if there is a way to get an idea of your average levels by knowing roughly what your daily patterns are from having measured at home.

Does anyone know if it can be done from several finger prick readings, perhaps looking across different days and calculating as if it happened everyday with a similar pattern?

For example, let's say a fasting of anywhere between 4.8 and 5.2, let's call it 5.0.

One meal a day with before being 5.4;
1h being 8.5;
2 hour being 6.5,
3 hour being 5.5
and between meals being between 4.5 and 5.5, call it 5.0.

Then the other two meals being
before 5.5;
1h 7.5;
2h 6.0
and
before 4.8;
1h 6.7;
2h 5.5.

And before bed being 5.5 - 6.5, call it 6.0.

And just use those figures to make an average reading. Is anyone good at maths?

P.S. I will get an actual HbA1c soon anyway but it would be interesting to try to predict it before I get the real thing done.

Click to expand...

I just calculated an average for these figures, just 10 of them, and got 6.14. That converts to a HbA1c of around 5.5%, which is what I guessed I might be just going on the feeling. So maybe the real one will come back even higher than that if that's what most of you found. Maybe I will be in the prediabetic range. Or on the dysfunctional end of "normal" but not yet diagnosable.