The Facts about the Important Diabetic A1c Blood Test
Haemoglobin A1c (Hb A1c)
Unlike an instant blood glucose test that gives you a reading at a particular moment in time, an A1c test gives you an average level over the last two to three months. Your health care professional should be testing your A1c level two to four times a year. The value you get can tell you just how good your control has been.
| A1c % | Comment |
| 5 to 6 | Normal - great control |
| 6 to 7 | Good control |
| 7 to 8 | Below average control with raised risk of long term complications |
| 8 and above | Poor control, high risk of long term complications |
Clearly anything above 7 is a warning sign that you need to tighten your control. Eight and over represents a rapidly increasing risk factor of both long and short term complications and you should be highly motivated to bring your blood glucose under much better control as quickly as possible.
Fructosamine
Testing for Fructosamine is another longer term test that can be done. In this case it gives an idea of the average blood glucose reading over the previous 2-3 weeks. It is not a widely used test, but has a couple of potentially useful situations when it can help. Firstly if you are changing your medication, secondly if you are pregnant. In both cases a 2-3 week timespan can be more useful than the HbA1c's 2-3 month timespan as you need to know quicker what your average blood glucose levels have been.
If you are taking high doses of Vitamin C, it can affect the accuracy of the results. Speak to your doctor about this test to see if they think it could be useful to you.
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More Resources
[ www.caringfordiabetes.com ]
[ www.lifescan.com ]
[ www.drgreene.com ]
[ www.diabetes.org
]
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[ Introduction ] [ Glucose Monitoring ] [ Hb A1c ] [ Alternative Treatments ] [ Pregnancy ] [ Type 1 and Type 2 Pregnancies ] [ Gestational Diabetes ]
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