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How does my A1C work?

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worldtraveller

Active Member
Messages
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I have a question?? Just so as you know, I am not asking for assitance in tweaking my low carb diet. I am just generally asking how A1C works. Here is goes

----A dieter, who went from 2000 calories a day to 1500 calories a day in 3 months, slowly lost 10 pounds. Remaining at 1500 calories a day for every, the dieter could pretty well be the same weight, give or take a little. If she/he wanted to loose more weight, he'd have to go down lower in calories..

----Now, compare this to an A1C............. If someone having a 100 carbs a day, dropped from A1C 5.9 to 5.7, and continued on with the same low carb diet forever, would the A1C slowly go down, or would it remain at 5.7, give or take a little? Or, like the diet, would they have to lower the carbs to go down?

How do the A1C work?
Thanks
 
I would advise the dieter to forget calories and concentrate on carbs. It is the carbs that are metabolised and it is a question of using the correct fuel. It is the carbs that affect A1c.

One also has to take into account how insulin resistant one is.
 
@worldtraveller the A1C is an average of your blood glucose over around 12 weeks. You need to understand the impact of what you are eating on your levels in order to answer your question. The only way to understand that impact is by using a glucose meter to test.
 
I can only speak for myself with carb levels and HbA1c. I started by reducing carbs to 100/day and monitored my blood sugars, which initially came down, but plateaued at six weeks so I reduced further. I continued in this manner til I found that 30 - 50g carbs per day keep my blood sugar levels and thus my HbA1cs at non diabetic levels.
 
Thanks for the input. Perhaps I shall rephrase the question. Suppose you were at the low end of being pre-diabetic. A co-worker asked? "Does your A1C continue to decline after a year or so if you stay on 100 carbs? Or would you have to get a stricter diet to get your A1C to go down?" How would you reply?
 

I would say that for the last year and a half I have eaten 30 - 50g of carbs per day and maintained my HbA1c in the mid 30s. Different people may have to maintain different levels of carbs to achieve this.
 
I really do not believe there is an answer to your question. Only personal experience can answer it. Finding the correct amount of carbs for yourself is trial and error, and using your meter to tell you by testing before and after meals. If a meal sends you up more than 2mmol/l (and preferably a lot less - the flatter the better) then there are too many carbs in that meal for your body to cope with. It also depends when the carbs are eaten. For most of us, breakfast is not a good time for carbs. I have none at all, a few more at lunch, and the rest at dinner. That is how my body works. It may not be the same for you. It is all trial and error, and testing.
 
It is a balancing act between the carbs you are consuming on one side and your insulin resistance and the amount of insulin you can produce on the other. If you were to find that 100g of carbs a day results in a satisfactory HbA1c then you would need to continue at that level to maintain it. Over time your insulin resistance and possibly your insulin production could change in which case you would need to adjust your carb intake to achieve a satisfactory HbA1c again. There is a limiting factor in reducing HbA1c in that if you have very low carb intake your liver will make glucose to keep your blood sugar in range.
 
I started out at an HbA1c of 122
I decided I needed to be radical and went keto, less than 20g carbs per day. Got my HbA1c down to 35 in 4 months. Staying keto for the foreseeable future.

It doesn't answer your question but we are all different. Counting calories for a T2 does nothing to improve their condition, counting carbs does.

We generally eat to our meters. Future HbA1c results tell us how we are doing.

Some people start with, say, 100g carbs
And find they need to reduce further. With T2 there is no one size fits all. It would be wonderful if there was.

Sorry, I don't think I have helped.
 
My guess is that most of us have for years eaten what our friends have eaten, pretty much. Some of our friendship group have remained lean and metabolically healthy, and some have not. How well we deal with carbs is such an individual thing, and some of us are just better at it than others. Not fair, but there you go. I do not think there is a chart that will predict what your HbA1C will look like in the future: as others have said, you need to figure that one out for yourself through experience, trial and error.
 
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