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Type 2 Diabetes
What dictates the magnitude of your A1c?
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<blockquote data-quote="KennyA" data-source="post: 2434956" data-attributes="member: 517579"><p>When you do a finger prick test, that gives you a direct snapshot of where your blood sugars are now. Might be on the way up, the way down, or stable. The A1c test is different, and gives a picture of what your BG has been like for the past three months. it does this by using "the major glycated component of haemoglobin" attached to your red blood cells. That correlates pretty well with your average blood glucose over the past three months - because 90-120 days is about how long a red blood cell lives. About 50% of the A1c value comes from the last 30 days before A1c testing and only 10% from the first thirty days, so it's weighted towards more recent BG levels. It's not a perfect relationship - my finger prick testing averaged would predict an A1c of about 32, but my A1c is 36-38. Close enough for most purposes.</p><p></p><p>The driver for lowering blood glucose (for me anyway) was lowering carbs. As long as I don't eat a lot of carbs (for me a lot is more than about 20-25g a day), the number of times I eat doesn't matter. I don't usually want to eat several meals, because what I am eating (meat, dairy etc) means that I'm never really hungry. Twelve hours between eating is normal and 18 isn't unusual for me. Not an effort, if you're not hungry.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="KennyA, post: 2434956, member: 517579"] When you do a finger prick test, that gives you a direct snapshot of where your blood sugars are now. Might be on the way up, the way down, or stable. The A1c test is different, and gives a picture of what your BG has been like for the past three months. it does this by using "the major glycated component of haemoglobin" attached to your red blood cells. That correlates pretty well with your average blood glucose over the past three months - because 90-120 days is about how long a red blood cell lives. About 50% of the A1c value comes from the last 30 days before A1c testing and only 10% from the first thirty days, so it's weighted towards more recent BG levels. It's not a perfect relationship - my finger prick testing averaged would predict an A1c of about 32, but my A1c is 36-38. Close enough for most purposes. The driver for lowering blood glucose (for me anyway) was lowering carbs. As long as I don't eat a lot of carbs (for me a lot is more than about 20-25g a day), the number of times I eat doesn't matter. I don't usually want to eat several meals, because what I am eating (meat, dairy etc) means that I'm never really hungry. Twelve hours between eating is normal and 18 isn't unusual for me. Not an effort, if you're not hungry. [/QUOTE]
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