scottish-jim said:
I'm still a bit of a newbie regarding blood testing but I'm a bit confused :?:
The on-line converter on here
http://www.diabetes.co.uk/blood-sugar-converter.html says 60 = 3.33333 :shock:
Is that right ?
It can be a bit confusing.
The converter you've linked to is to change blood glucose readings such as those from a meter or a fasting blood test from the lab from one unit to another. ie from
mmol/l to mg/dl .
In the UK your blood glucose meters and laboratories use mmol/l but in the US and some other parts of the world they measure in mg/dl.
If you use the internet a lot you'll find mg/dl used on many sites so it's useful to be able to convert. (actually you just divide the mg/dl fig by 18 to change mg/dl to mmol/l and multiply to do it the other way round)
eg 126mg/dl is the same as 7mmol/l
60mg/dl is the same as 3.3mmol/l (ie hypo)
(NB this conversion only works for blood glucose not for cholesterol or any other tests. They have different conversion factors)
mmol/mol is a newly introduced unit used for the HbA1c measurement. HbA1c refers to glycated haemoglobin and is a measurement of your 'average' longer term glucose control. Until recently this used to be measured as a percentage.
The converter for that is here:
http://www.diabetes.co.uk/hba1c-units-converter.html
A HbA1c of 60mmol/mol is the equivalent of an HbA1c of 7.64%
There is a third converter on this site. This uses your HbA1c to produce an estimate of your average glucose levels over the last three months.
it is only an estimate and there are several such converters on the internet using slightly different formula for the calculation. The one on this site seems to produce a higher average than the one on the American Diabetes Association site which uses a formula derived from recent research
HbA1c to 'average' glucose
http://www.diabetes.co.uk/hba1c-to-bloo ... erter.html
ADA estimated average glucose converter
http://professional.diabetes.org/GlucoseCalculator.aspx
more about HbA1c:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycated_hemoglobin