{"id":35382,"date":"2014-02-23T08:07:52","date_gmt":"2014-02-23T13:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=35382"},"modified":"2018-10-31T09:50:31","modified_gmt":"2018-10-31T13:50:31","slug":"what-do-your-a1c-test-results-really-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=35382","title":{"rendered":"What Do Your A1C Test Results Really Mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The hemoglobin A1c test, as we all know, is supposed to give a sense of your average blood glucose levels over the past three months. But here&#8217;s a question for you: have you ever tried to figure out what those average blood glucose levels actually are? Say you have an A1c of 6.5% &#8212; what, in mg\/dl, does that translate to?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Try searching Google &#8212; it&#8217;s hard to find an answer. To quote from a post I wrote a few years ago (<a title=\"see you later, glycolator\" href=\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/catherine\/blogs\/news-politics\/adascientificsessions2012\/27840\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">see entry from 4:45<\/a>), that&#8217;s partially because:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;Not only is there no one standardized definition as to the correlation between A1c and mean glucose levels (JDRF says 1% = 24.4 mg\/dl, ADA says 28.7), but different people have different correlations. For example, if you are a &#8216;high glycolator&#8217; (more glucose sticks to your hemoglobin than the average) \u00a0you can have a relatively high A1c but a low mean glucose. The speaker gave the example of a patient who had a 8.2% A1c, but a mean glucose of 159 mg\/dl (he was speaking using the generally accepted idea that 7% roughly equals a mean of 154 mg\/dl). Treat him more aggressively, and you\u2019ll end up with hypos. And if you\u2019re a &#8216;hypoglycolator,&#8217; it\u2019s the opposite.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Well, just this week, a new paper was published in the American Diabetes Association&#8217;s\u00a0<em><a title=\"Diabetes Care HbA1c\" href=\"http:\/\/care.diabetesjournals.org\/content\/early\/2014\/02\/04\/dc13-2173.abstract\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Diabetes Care<\/a><\/em> journal that provides a more solid answer to this question than I&#8217;ve seen &#8212; even though, as I must warn you, personal variability (as described above) means there&#8217;s still no precise answer. In the study, researchers wanted to find out what your average blood sugar would have to be in three situations &#8212; fasting, after meals and before bed &#8212; in order to achieve a particular A1c.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Here are their results:\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A1c test results of 5.5-6.49%\u00a0were associated with an average fasting blood glucose level of 122 mg\/dl.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A1c test results\u00a0of 6.5-6.99% were associated with\u00a0an average fasting blood glucose level of 142 mg\/dl.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A1c test results\u00a0of 7-7.49% were associated with\u00a0an average fasting blood glucose level of 152 mg\/dl.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A1c test results\u00a0of 7.5-7.99% were associated with\u00a0an average fasting blood glucose level of 167 mg\/dl<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A1c test results\u00a0of 8-8.49% were associated with\u00a0an average fasting blood glucose level of 178 mg\/dl.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The abstract only reveals two values for the post-meal and pre-bed glucose values:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">An A1c test result of 6.5-6.99% was correlated with an average post-meal blood glucose of 139 mg\/dl, and an A1c of 7.0-7.45% with an average post-meal reading of 152 mg\/dl (unfortunately I can&#8217;t tell from the abstract how long after meals these numbers were taken).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">An A1c test result of 6.5-6.99% was associated with an average pre-bed blood glucose of 153 mg\/dl, and an A1c of 7.0-7.49% represented an average pre-bed value of 177 mg\/dl.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">More information on the study is <a title=\"A1c and blood glucose values\" href=\"http:\/\/care.diabetesjournals.org\/content\/early\/2014\/02\/04\/dc13-2173.abstract\">here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":49809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","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>What Do Your A1C Test Results Really Mean?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The A1C test results are supposed to give a sense of the average blood glucose levels over the past three months. 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She has written for publications including The Best American Science Catherine Price is a professional journalist who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 22 years old. Her work has been featured in publications including The Best American Science Writing, The New York Times, Popular Science, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post Magazine, Salon, Slate, Men\u2019s Journal, Health Magazine, The Oprah Magazine, and Outside, among others. A graduate of Yale and UC Berkeley\u2019s Graduate School of Journalism\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?author=9\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What Do Your A1C Test Results Really Mean?","description":"The A1C test results are supposed to give a sense of the average blood glucose levels over the past three months. But what do they really mean? 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