Diagnosed today by post

I shouldn't reply as I'm not an expert either, but the HA1C results can be reported either as mmol/mol (eg your 71) or as a %, which is what your 8.4% was. I know mine are 48 or 6.5%. So there must be a way of converting between the two via a formula that someone will know.

Hi and welcome @Michaelsnny

sorry to hear about your diagnosis. Always an unwelcome shock, even if expected.

here is a table that allows you to see how the HbA1c units compare with fingerprick blood tests, and with the American HbA1c % unit.
To make things even more complicated, here in the UK we used to use the % units but switched to mmol/mol a few years ago for our HbA1c units, and some UK docs and labs still give out figs in the % version.

When we do fingerprick tests (those of us who use a finger pricking tester (aka a glucometer) we in the UK use mmol/l units, which are shown on the bottom of the arc.



Your HbA1c reading of 70mmol/mol puts you squarely into diabetes I am afraid (as your doc has already diagnosed).
Anything over 48 is diabetic.
However, don’t despair, many people arrive on the forum with much higher readings, and get things under control with either diet and lifestyle changes, or the appropriate medication.
Has your doc specified which type of diabetes you have?

Languagelearner said:

I shouldn't reply as I'm not an expert either, but the HA1C results can be reported either as mmol/mol (eg your 71) or as a %, which is what your 8.4% was. I know mine are 48 or 6.5%. So there must be a way of converting between the two via a formula that someone will know.

Click to expand...

Actually i think the 8.4 is actually the fasting blood glucose, not an hb1ac.

Various converters here https://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes-tools/

Hi @Michaelsnny the test of HbA1c twice and the blood glucose number do confirm diabetes, which is the bad news, but frequent these days. In context your numbers are around 50% better than my initial diagnosis, and I obtained unofficial remission within a year, and official NHS remission a couple of years ago.

The good news is that you can effectively decide how well you wish to be. Diabetes can have horrendous consequences if not tackled, but can also be managed indefinitely by the choices you make. If you decide to do the best you can bu diet and lifestyle you can either get numbers that are indistinguishable from someone never diagnosed with diabetes, or very close.

A start you might be willing to make is to remove sugar from you diet in all forms, and replace bread, rice, pasta, potatos, cereals with lower carb equivalents e.g courgettes, any greens, broccoli, asparagus, green beans, cauliflower, beansprouts. So practically where you might have eaten steak and a baked potato, you could have steak and 6 or 7 low carb vegetables. Or where you had a curry with rice, have the curry with cauliflower rice, or curry with coconut pancakes.

If you were eating fruit, a swap would be low sugar varieties, being raspberries, strawberries, blackberries and a few blueberries. Nuts are ok, apart from cashews (quite high carb).

All meats, fish, shell fish are great as they contain no carbs.

Drinks are all teas, coffee waters (tap, still, sparkling)

It's worth taking a look at below:

https://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/basic-information-for-newly-diagnosed-diabetics.17088/

Hello and welcome,

The diagnosis usually comes with a mixture of feelings many of them negative. The good news as above is that the news is really not as bad as the doctors think. You have choices and one of the choices is to change what you eat to reduce your blood sugar levels.

It sounds like you have a meter so start to test regularly. Before a meal and two hours after you start the meal. If the reading increases buy more than 2 the meal was not good for your body. The meal had too many carbs.

I suspect it will be a lot more difficult to reduce your carbs as a vegan- a lot of what I eat now is based on meat or fish or eggs. These all have no or very low amounts of carbs.

The good news is that as your levels are not extremely high you may be able to come back to the n normal ranges without going g very low carb- you will find that you will have to reduce your carbs but if you can tolerate more carbs than some of us can it will make it easier.

I follow very low carb but (and it's a big but) everyone is different and your meter will let you know what foods you can tolerate. I'm pretty sure that if you reduce your carbs you will see a reduction in your blood sugar levels but I think it is a great idea to look at your own readings so that you know that this is what your body needs. I really believe in the LCHF way of life but for me the advice here was good but it was backed up by the evidence of my meter. As a vegan it may be more challenging so finding the levels of carbs you can tolerate is probably worth spending some time on.

Having said that (wow out was long) welcome and good luck- ask any questions you like and read around.