HB1AC and monitoring

Welcome to the forums.

As a T2, your problem is carbohydrate, your body does not process it correctly and vainly produces more and more insulin to attempt to reduce your blood sugar levels,

Processed foods tend to contains a lot of carbohydrates so may be best to avoid, but though red meat may have health issues it doesn't have any carbs.

Most of the T2s posting here reduce their blood sugar levels to normal by reducing their carb intake to a level their bodies can cope with. Exercise reduces insulin resistance (the reason your body fails to cope with carbs) but reducing the carbs in your diet is a more direct solution to your problems.

Metformin doesn't have a massive effect on blood sugars, it reduces the amount of sugar produced by your liver, but looking at th the blood sugar levels on your meter will be massively helpful. Some T2s have bodies that can cope with 150g of carbs a day, others can only cope with 20g. Eat to your meter.

Here''s @JoKalsbeek 's massively helpful blog about T2 and diet. Good luck (64 isn't desperately high on the diabetic pathway so there's a good chance you can control it by diet.)
JoKalsbeek's blog | Diabetes Forum • The Global Diabetes Community

An hba1c of 64 corresponds to an average bg of 10.2mmol/L, high but I've seen much worse. Non diabetics keep under 8 most of the time.

Here's a link to bgs of diabetics and non diabetics
Normal and Diabetic Blood Sugar Level Ranges - Blood Sugar Levels for Diabetes

Good luck

sparrott said:

Good morning all,

In Sept 2020 I had a HB1AC of 59. The Doctor has expected this be lower after putting me on Metformin, 2 x 500 a day, 6 months earlier. I did explain to him that I was very hit and miss with the 2nd tablet of the day, at meal time, and told him I would be better and to try another HB1AC is 6 months. So I stuck to taking the 2nd Metformin religiously and had another HB1AC at start of Feb.. came back as 64! I have greatly reduced red meat/processed foods, between Sept to Feb, though have not been exercising as much as I was pre Sept. We spoke about this and the doctor suspected this may be a factor and said OK crack on with exercise and lets do another HB1AC in 3 months, I really don't want to take another Metformin per day.
I have purchased a Gluco Navii meter as I thought it may be good to have a look at my bloods a few times a week. I tried it out the other day, pre meal, and got a 6.6 and did a fasting one and got 8.5 this morning. So a few questions

Pre dinner - what reading should I expect?
A HB1AC of 64 .. does that equal an average of 6.4mmol over 3 months or is this a different type of reading? I think I may be confusing he 2?

Any help/advise/guidance is appreciated. Cheers Steve

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Hi, welcome to the forum. If your blood glucose is going up then something isn't going right. You say you've cut down on processed foods and red meat. - I have excluded processed foods (almost?) completely but eat meat - red, white, fish, whatever - at every meal. Normal ranges for BG are discussed here - www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes_care/blood-sugar-level-ranges.html - you'll see it depends on a number of things.

It might help people to advise you if you were to set out what you are eating - there are carbs in a lot of unexpected places and things like fruit are full of fructose. Good luck.

sparrott said:

Thanks to all for the very helpful info. Looks like my carbs are a bit too much ,, and I kind of thought that.

Just a quick question on mmol/L. I did a fasting one this morning and got 8.5, then just out of curiosity tried a different finger and got 9.3??? I didn't know what to think. Curiosity eh..

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Blood glucose meters are only required to be accurate within 15%, though most are more accurate than that. Those two figures are only 10% apart, not that significant.

sparrott said:

xfieldok. During the week I have a breakfast of Porridge with flaked almonds a few raisins and skimmed milk. Lunch is a vegetable based soup. Snack in the day 2 oranges, maybe 3. A Nature Valley bar. Dinner does tend to be red meat/processed foods free and is normally with around 40 grams of carbs, such as rice/pasta but rarely potato .. maybe once a week. Evening snack normally some type of crisp/twiglet/starch probably around 50 grams carbs. I'm pretty sure I'm seeing where my problem could be ... carbs. If anyone has a good substitute for the crisps etc??

All advice offered is greatly appreciated

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That's a LOT of carbs - porridge, rice/pasta, crisp/twiglet/starch, and probably the soup too - and quite a bit of sugar via the fruit. IIRC Nature Valley bars are around 65% carbs/sugar as well. This is the sort of thing we are urged to eat by the "Eatwell Plate" and which, speaking personally, did me no good at all. I think you might need to reset your views of what "healthy" eating actually is in your case - I certainly had to.