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Correlation in between HbA1c and Blood sugar readings taken at home

It just occurred to me that by donating blood within the three month period before an HbA1c, we are in effect invalidating our next hba1c score as we are artificially forcing our body to replace a large number of new red blood cells with new ones prematurely. If I remember protected the adult human body has about 10 pints of blood and when we donate we donate 1 pint. Based on this donating blood could result in an artificially low Hba1c that underestimates the true average glucose figure by as much as ten percent.

I am not advocating that we should stop being donors, but this is something to bare in mind in interpreting our scores.

Or put another way, if you are a blood donor, the best time to donate is immediately after you have given a sample for your HbA1c test.

Pavlos
 
@pavlosn The same thing occurred to me when I read on another thread about someone donating blood. It seems logical that if we replace a pint of blood with new blood, our average HbA1c will be less.
 
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