{"id":31358,"date":"2012-11-26T07:58:28","date_gmt":"2012-11-26T12:58:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=31358"},"modified":"2015-12-27T15:41:47","modified_gmt":"2015-12-27T20:41:47","slug":"a-good-a1c-just-got-harder-to-get","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=31358","title":{"rendered":"A Good A1c Just Got Harder to Get"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify\">For the last few weeks I\u2019ve been putting off getting my quarterly blood work done. The reason, as ridiculous as this may sound, was that I didn\u2019t want the effect of my post surgery high blood sugar to show up in the test.\u00a0 I had my surgery four months ago and my blood sugar was really <a href=\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/michael\/blogs\/insulin-pumps\/post-surgery-blood-sugar-high-but-not-worried\/30019\/\">affected for a couple of weeks<\/a>.\u00a0 But since Jess was going in for a blood test last week, I decided to join her.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">So, this morning I sat in front of my computer nervously checking to see if my results were in (i.e. How bad is my A1c?).\u00a0 I sat there, waiting to hit the Enter key and feeling the kind of pressure I used to feel when checking final exam results back in school.\u00a0 Why does diabetes make me feel like I\u2019m being graded?\u00a0 Maybe because, like many people with diabetes, I view my A1c as a test or a periodic review of how well I\u2019m keeping my diabetes under control. I know that there are other parameters, like how often you go low, but since I hardly go low (and this has been consistently true for a while) my A1c does reflect how high my blood sugar is most of the time.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">I have worked hard to keep my A1c under 7%, the diabetics benchmark, but I really strive for a \u201cnormal\u201d A1c of under 6%. I haven\u2019t been there for a long time but I always hope that I\u2019ll do better and I always hope I\u2019ll see my result in blue \u2013 the color of the normal range &#8211; and not in red.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Jess saw her test results first.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">\u201cYou won\u2019t believe what they did?\u201d she said, calling me over to her laptop. \u00a0\u201cThey changed the A1c range. They made it harder to be normal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">\u201cWhat?\u201d I said, not sure what she was talking about. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The \u201cnormal\u201d A1c range used to be 4.7%-6.4%, but n 2005 it was changed (I don\u2019t know who did it or why) to 4%-6%. Now it seems it has been changed again, lowering the \u201cnormal\u201d or healthy A1c range to 4%-5.7%.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The truth is that these changes don\u2019t have very much effect on me, since I\u2019m not in the \u201cnormal range\u201d under any of the criteria, and every A1c result correlates to an average blood sugar number which in my case is always higher than normal.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">But as I sat in front of my computer, about to hit the enter key, it did matter for some reason. Being \u201chealthy\u201d just got harder.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">I looked at my result \u2013 6.8% again, the same result I had last time. <em>I guess that\u2019s okay,<\/em> I thought to myself. I was afraid it would be over 7%.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">But I felt a little sad.\u00a0 Even though I\u2019ve been told a million times that I don\u2019t need to strive for an A1c below 7%, I don\u2019t ascribe to that school of thought. \u00a0I believe my A1c should be \u201cnormal\u201d and the chance of being normal is now very far away.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":53098,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1501],"tags":[817],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v22.9 (Yoast SEO v22.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Good A1c Just Got Harder to Get<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The \u201cnormal\u201d A1c range used to be 4.7%-6.4%, but n 2005 it was changed (I don\u2019t know who did it or why) to 4%-6%. Now it has been changed again, lowering the \u201cnormal\u201d A1c range to 4%-5.7%.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=31358\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Michael Aviad\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=31358\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=31358\",\"name\":\"A Good A1c Just Got Harder to Get\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=31358#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=31358#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/ASL-Social-Big-Square-3.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-11-26T12:58:28+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-12-27T20:41:47+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/9e0f6c9e8ec6bf77b78cd95c9bd446b6\"},\"description\":\"The \u201cnormal\u201d A1c range used to be 4.7%-6.4%, but n 2005 it was changed (I don\u2019t know who did it or why) to 4%-6%. 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