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Philip39

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Philip39

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Type 2
does anyone know what the conversion table is for the blood glucose level i only know the old one which is 7 now i am told my level is 50 !
 
I still have to look it up Phillip - even though it's been years since they changed it - so it's a good job the conversion table is still available for me too!
 
Are the % figures the same as the mmol/l as given by the corrected meter?
 
No Jackie, they aren't, for the simple reason the meter and the Lab blood test for HbA1c are not measuring the same thing! It's like comparing 6 apples with 6 oranges and asking if they're the same!
 
Thanks Jenny
Corrected meter should read codefree meter, wretched autocorrect!

I get confused here, are the mmol/l readings as given by the meter a % of glucose in the blood?
I was told that a HbA1C reading of 44 mmol/mol equates to a mmol/l reading on the meter of 7.0
 
If you tested your blood with a meter a million times or more over a 3 month period and the average of all those million tests was 7.0, then yes that would be correct.

However when we test on a meter with a fingerprick, that is our blood glucose at that exact moment and tells us not a lot more. Half an hour earlier or later then the chance of it ever being precisely the same is negligible. All meters are allowed a tolerance of 10% anyway so the 7.0 could just as easily be 7.7 or 6.3 or something in between the two.

There needs to be only enough glucose floating around your bloodstream to match the amount your body is likely to need until you feed it again, hence there doesn't need to be that much going spare, just enough for a tiddly bit of safety margin. If there's more than enough for those needs, then the body stores a bit of it - it's emergency store - in the liver. Once the liver is full though, it can't use it so it does the only other thing it can - it makes body fat with it. We all need a bit of body fat of course - but there's a limit! And also to add to the grief - if there's still spare glucose - it becomes firmly stuck to our red blood cells which affects how well they perform for the rest of their lifespan. They live on average 120-130 days each. The more glucose that gets stuck, the poorer their performance so all bodily processes get more sluggish and 'slowed down/clogged up'.

This is why we have an HbA1c test and why the test is important - this test measures exactly how much glucose has physically adhered to the red blood cells over the last 3 months. Some of em will be 120 days old and ready to die off anyway, others will only have been born that morning so a sort of average is measured - less on the new ones and most on the old ones.

It makes perfect scientific sense actually not to measure them both in similar-sounding units of measurement - hence there is no direct comparison in the results and - should be! - less chance of confusion on the meaning.
 
Thanks Jenny,
Now I finally understand!
I asked the new diabetic nurse " where does the glucose in the liver come from, does it make it or does it extract existing glucose from the blood" and she said she didn't know!
 
The nurses in GPs surgeries only get a very small amount of diabetes training, Jackie. It must be hard when medical teaching uses terminology eg glucagon, glycogen, Glucogel, glucose and other similar sounding words for quite different things inside or outside the body!

Ancient terminology sometimes persists and sometimes disappears and both can be either helpful or a hindrance. HbA1c for instance was originally 'Glycosulated Haemoglobin' testing. Fine HbA1c is much easier to say and spell and to a medic, instantly tells them it's testing Haemoglobin which means 'red blood corpuscles' cos the abbreviation used for haemoglobin is Hb - but it's not very helpful and conveys very little to a person without any medical experience - ie you or me, initially. My GP likes using the old term - he isn't stuck in his ways really, but he finds it conveys the message to patients better - in 1972 when I started with this - it was still called that and it did signify a far different test pretty instantly, so I've consequently always been able to separate the finger prick test results. Plus I also know it doesn't convey everything either me or my doctor needs to know - in old numbers for HbA1c mine weren't massively 'out' - in the high 7s, 7.8 or something. Not that bad apparently! However my meter told a far different story. Every day for months and months, my meter tests showed I was ranging from HI (on a meter that result means over 33!) and LO (under 1.8!) - I damnwell KNEW I was ill though nothing physical so basically nobody was listening - and turned out in the finish I was in the throes of a complete mental breakdown from stress.

What has lasted though is one bad thing and one good thing. The bad - medical people still constantly refer to fingerprick blood tests on a meter as 'BM' tests. So we think B=blood - but what on earth does the M stand for? They are called BM after the firm that introduced the first testing strips to the world and their name is Boehringer Mannheim. I don't even know if BM still even make the things these days? Hence it's absolutely potty that they still use the terminology except to other medics.

The good - in the early days of the internet, when it was only known as the world wide web - some diabetic folk got together and formed an online group - Alt/support/diabetes - enabling patients worldwide to get together and discuss things - a few people I have known or still know now met on there - one individual in Australia is Alan Shanley, another is/was a chap whose handle is/was Trinkwasser and another is Pattidevans - Alan is still giving diabetes help via his Blog and it's very often quoted on here and even in the Lancet! - Test, review, adjust; testing on a budget; Painless pricks etc . Trink I haven't heard of for years and years. Patti was a very helpful member of the forum I first joined, and when the owner decided to close it she and another member there, started their own to replace it, which is still up and running though not as popular now as this one. Diabetes UK did then have a website, but nowt else - so I think - no I know! - we were pretty essential at the time.

Hey ho - we ALL continue to benefit, don't we!
 
I hated History at school, too! LOL
 
Hi Jenny,
Nearly fifty years ago when Noah was still building the ark I trained as a Home Economist before that term was hijacked by the cooking community.
One of the sciences I had to take was the science of food so I had a basic understanding of nutrition and digestion but had not associated the transformation of carbs to glucose during digestion as being a problem for us, and of course the GP didn't tell me either.
I also understood the place of haemoglobin and iron in the transfer of oxygen and carbon dioxide but not it's connection with glucose
Once that penny dropped things became a lot clearer but what to eat more difficult.
In this very cold weather I am hungry all the time and the quick fixes such as an extra sandwich or something on toast are no longer an option.
And what can I snack on?, Nuts and IBS are not happy bedfellows!
l wish all of this would just go away but I know it won't even when I get my glucose levels back to normal because I will never be able to eat exactly what I want to ever again.
 
Cheese. A nice mature cheddar. The answer to all the World’s ills, as well as snack deprived folk with Diabetes.🙂
 
Unfortunately cheese is on the I B S banned list along with the nuts and wholemeal bread.
 
what's cheese got that irritates - are you lactose intolerant?

But anyway - any protein works well as snack so the deli is your small bivalve mollusc - if you aren't allergic to shellfish!
 
Hi Jenny
IBS and diverticulitis react badly to high fat.
My consultant has restricted me to two slices of bread, no more than a matchbox sized piece of cheese, low fat spread, low fat milk nothing fried, no wholemeal , salad or vegetables and no nuts under any circumstances.
That teamed with my now diabetes diet makes finding anything to eat very difficult.
Although I have found I can get away with one slice of wholemeal bread and most vegetables if they are very well cooked
 
JMyrtle said:
Hi Jenny
IBS and diverticulitis react badly to high fat.
My consultant has restricted me to two slices of bread, no more than a matchbox sized piece of cheese, low fat spread, low fat milk nothing fried, no wholemeal , salad or vegetables and no nuts under any circumstances.
That teamed with my now diabetes diet makes finding anything to eat very difficult.
Although I have found I can get away with one slice of wholemeal bread and most vegetables if they are very well cooked
Click to expand...
I am in a similar position to you Jackie. Since I have altered my diet because of the diabetes I have found I get more problems with my IBS and GERD. I am under a consultant for Barrett's oesophagus, but not for the IBS. Luckily I haven't needed medication for the diabetes so far, as I understand some of them can badly upset digestion and mine is quite bad enough already
 
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