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Hba1c

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Chas

Chas

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Type 2
Besides food, drinks and lifestyle what else affects your Hba1c? Does medication etc affect Hba1c?
 
Certain types of anaemia can make a HBA1C, and an alternative test should be done instead.
 
All sorts of different drugs can affect it Chas, as do all sorts of different health problems whether you know you have got them or not. (eg an infection brewing) Human bodies are exceedingly complex machines. 🙂
 
Thanks, trophywench (I hate calling you that) I know diet is very important. I don't have confidence in my practice diabetics team so my doctor has recommended The Desmond Programme, do you know anything positive about it?
 
Ah well ! - just like any other course I've ever been on whether for work, in connection with diabetes, at school or for pleasure - it ALL depends on the people actually 'manning' the course. ie the teachers, and whether they are actually any good at teaching!

So they can be useful Dave, very useful in some cases. BUT the only way you can assess this, is to attend!
 
I think diabetes courses can also be affected by some of the attendees. I went for a Diabetes Xpert course when initially diagnosed and one woman dominated the process with loads of (what I thought at the time were) 'silly questions'. But over the years since, I have learned to give people a little more lattitude on the basis that no questions are actually silly. 🙂

Anyway, regarding the original question. Any sort of infection can also raise your blood glucose levels.

Also, something else which I pay attention to is giving blood just prior to an Hba1c test. I try to avoid that and give myself one or two months between the two events. I believe that it could result in a lower Hba1c result than would ordinarily be the case.
 
Thanks, Andy,
I feel the same way about some attendees at courses and yes you do have to give some latitude to them. Thank you for the feedback, I really appreciate it.
 
@Andy HB - I believe it's longer than a month or two after donating blood, it has to be at least 3 months if not 4, as the life of red blood cells is up to 120 days, and that's only 'ish'.

I was told this on my diagnosis with Type 1 simply because I got my blood donor card out of my purse (they were little blue folders which they stuck a small paper sticker into recording each donation in those days) to tell the hospital my blood group on admission and they all said the equivalent of - Oh good! last time you gave blood was April, it's now July, so your test results should be OK. I asked why they hadn't found my diabetes with all the tests they do when you give blood and was told that it isn't a test the donor service do! They still don't. I did write to them years ago suggesting that perhaps they ought, what if some poor other diabetic (or even me!) was needing my donation - not a brilliant idea to me giving them a pint of blood saturated with glucose that their body suddenly had to deal with on top of whatever was wrong with them to need the flipping transfusion. Clearly they thought it was OK and still do.

The point here being @Chas, because the body obviously has to make up the full however much blood is normally circulating after we donate the 'armful' if we then have an HbA1c test too soon after that, a lot less of them will have had a chance to get glucose molecules stuck to them (which is precisely what that test measures, Hb is the medical abbreviation for Haemoglobin. which simply means 'red blood cells') so the resulting answer will be less than had we had the test the week before donating the blood.
 
This is really interesting and thank you very much. Diabetes UK seems to be a library of information thanks to people like you and the rest of the members
 
This community is 'only' the online forum though Chas - Google (or whatever browser you use) for 'Diabetes UK' (NOT dot co dot uk!) to find DUK's invaluable website, too!
 
We can actually help repay something for what we each get out of DUK, by joining them as members Chas.

I've been a member for years and husband happened to comment the D/D had gone out of our bank account the other day, so it just happens to be fresh in my mind, that's all! They ARE the folk who represent us with Parliament and if anyone needs 'A Spokesman' - that's the first port of call.
 
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