After losing 2 stone

[Austerity1]

After losing 2 stone I tried a blood glucose monitor - purchased from Boots - and did a blood prick test before breakfast today. After losing so much weight I was disappointed that my bg reading was 6.2 ie had hardly shifted. My HbA1c (6.3)was 49 three months ago. Should I do more tests? Any advice? I’m having a repeat HbA1c test tomorrow.

 

[Martin9]

Hi @Austerity1
I think you're getting a bit mixed up, 49 on an HbA1c test would represent an average of 7.9 m.mol/l blood glucose readings over the past 3 months so at 6.2 this morning it's a better reading than what you were averaging before. ...if u keep an average of 6.2 would give an A1c reading of around 37

 

[Austerity1]

Thanks.
That’s a relief. Do you know what 6.2 this morning on blood prick test would be on HbA1c equivalent?
It’s 3 months since I scored 49 on HabA1c.

Thanks very much!!!

 

[Martin9]

Well as I said above, your A1c result is an average of your blood glucose levels over last 3 months, but if the average was 6.2 your A1c would be around 37 a great improvement on 49 so well done

 

[Eddy Edson]

Thanks.
That’s a relief. Do you know what 6.2 this morning on blood prick test would be on HbA1c equivalent?
It’s 3 months since I scored 49 on HabA1c.

Thanks very much!!!

You can't tell from a single test - you need to do enough tests to get a good estimate of yr avg daily blood glucose levels over the last 2-3 months.

But as Martin says, if your average daily blood glucose over 2-3 months was 6.2 mmol/L then your HbA1c would likely be around 37 mmol/ml.

(It's not an exact relationship.)

I found this graphic v. useful when I was trying to get my head around things:

 

[Martin9]

Here's a useful converter...and you should be doing more tests to determine which foods spike your bloods more than others...

https://www.diabetes.co.uk/hba1c-to-blood-sugar-level-converter.html

 

[trophywench]

Yeah - the HbA1c bears no direct relationship to your meter readings since it's impossible to check your BG that way every second of every day for 3 months.

 

[Eddy Edson]

Yeah - the HbA1c bears no direct relationship to your meter readings since it's impossible to check your BG that way every second of every day for 3 months.

I reckon you can get a reasonable estimate of your avg daily BG if you test enough before & after meals to capture the lows and highs, assuming the intraday movements aren't too chaotic.

I suspect this estimate would usually be no worse than the estimate you get from an HbA1c test. Obviously, the only point of the HbA1c test is to estimate yr avg BG levels over the last 2-3 months, and it's not like there's an exact analytical relationship between HbA1c and BG. The formula used is just the best fit relationship generated from a bunch of data from one study, and while it's a reasonable fit, it's not precise.

The Wikipedia page reproduces a summary table from the study: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycated_hemoglobin So eg the best fit for HbA1c = 42 is avg BG = 7.0, but there's a 95% chance that it's somewhere between 5.5 and 8.5.