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Trying too hard

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RichardS

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8
I have just been politely told by my GP that I will not be getting an increase in test strips (50 per 2 months). Oh well - off to EBay.
He tells me that recent trials show that those who control A1c levels below 6 do less well than those with A1cs in the 6s. Does anyone know what studies these are?
Thanks
Richard
 
I can't believe what I have just read! Hba1C's in the 5's reduce your risk of long term complications.While Hba1c's in the 6's are good as well surely the lower you can maintain your Hba1c the better.
I'm sure one of our researchers will come along with a link once they read this.
 
Get your GP to look at the ADVANCE study. It completely refutes the ACCORD., which only shows how dangerous it is to depend on huge doses of medication. There are several studies which show that if you use diet to attain low HbA1c, it's perfectly safe.
Also, show him this one
http://diabetesupdate.blogspot.com/2008 ... l-and.html
It's now known that non-diabetics with HbA1c of more than 5 have similar health issues to diabetics.
The average HbA1c of a non-diabetic is 5.1% and it's thought that the ideal is about 4.5%.
Bernstein is now advocating even lower.
Certainly a GP isn't an expert, but YOU can be
 
Thanks all. I have ambitions to join the 5% club, and was very suprised at the GPs comment. Surely attempting to get your A1c in the non-diabetic range has got to be the way to avoid long term complications.
Very re-assured
Richard
 
Why would anyone think that an A1c of above 6 is better than one below? That's the most counterintuitive thing I've ever heard! or am i missing something here?
 
One of the good things (err, maybe the only thing...) about the new HbA1c measurement scale introduced recently is that the relevant numbers are completely different to those you see on your meter. I think one of the difficulties with the "old" scale is that because it was so similar to mmol/l, people often made the mistake of misinterpreting the numbers. It was easy to think that a result of 7% was reasonably good, when actually this translates to an average mmol/l figure of nearly 9, which is way off good.

And as for the actual number on whatever HbA1c scale is used, the lower the better as far as I'm concerned?
 
How do I know what my last two Hba1c readings were based on.

The first was in march/april, and the second was in June.

I did a conversion on the diabetes uk website, so I presume that this was the most up to date conversion.
 
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