Diagnosing diabetes: What all those numbers mean

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Monday, November 8, 2021

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Diagnosing diabetes: What all those numbers mean

Julie Fortenberry RDN, jfortenberry@stph.org

(Stock image)

Did you know that more than one in five of the people in the United States who has diabetes doesn’t even know they have it?

According to the American Diabetes Association, that’s 7.3 million people — out of a total 34.2 million — who are not aware they are living with the disease and all the health risks that poorly managed blood sugar can pose.

Type 2 diabetes can be detected easily during a routine screening exam and blood test. However, it can go undiagnosed for years unless a physician draws a blood sample to check blood glucose.

Risk factors for prediabetes and Type 2 diabetes include:

--Family history (parent or sibling) of prediabetes or Type 2 diabetes.
--Being Black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian-American or a Pacific Islander.
--Being overweight.
--Having high blood pressure.
--Having low HDL cholesterol (the “good” cholesterol) and high triglyceride level.
--Being physically inactive.
--Being age 45 or older.
--Having gestational diabetes or giving birth to a baby weighing more than 9 pounds.
--Having polycystic ovary syndrome.

If you have any of these risk factors, be sure to have your blood glucose checked routinely. Most of the time, a simple blood test that evaluates your current blood glucose level is the first step in diagnosing diabetes.

Fasting Plasma Glucose (FPG) level is a common method to check for diabetes. This test checks your fasting blood sugar levels. Fasting means after not having anything to eat or drink (except water) for at least eight hours before the test.

If the blood test reveals your level is above 125 mg/dl, your doctor may ask you to repeat the test on a different day to confirm a diabetes diagnosis. Or your doctor may additionally order an A1C test, which measures your average blood glucose (sugar) levels over the past three months. The more glucose in the blood, the higher the A1C percentage. The higher the A1C, the more damage that is occurring to your body.

The A1C test gives you a better picture overall than just a single blood test that measures only your current level of blood glucose on that particular day. A normal A1C level ranges from 4.5 to 5.6 % for someone who doesn't have diabetes. When the A1C test is used for diagnosing diabetes, an A1C level above 6.5% indicates diabetes.

Another way to diagnosis diabetes is an Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT). The OGTT is a two-hour test that checks your blood sugar levels before and two hours after you drink a sweet drink. It tells the doctor how your body processes sugar. Diabetes is diagnosed at two-hour blood sugar of greater than or equal to 200 mg/dl.

Learn more about detection, management and thriving with diabetes in our articles throughout November, which you can find at StTammany.health/DiabetesED.


Julie Fortenberry is a registered dietitian at St. Tammany Health System.

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