With so much diabetes around these days, you may think that recognizing it should be easy. The truth is that it’s not easy, because diabetes is defined by blood tests. You can’t just look at someone and know the level of glucose in his or her blood.
Glucose is the name of the type of sugar found in our bodies that provides all the energy needed by your cells and organs to carry on all the chemical reactions that permit you to live and move.
The level of glucose that means you have diabetes is as follows:
- A casual blood glucose of 200 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl) or more at any time of day or night, along with symptoms such as fatigue, frequent
urination and thirst, slow healing of skin, urinary infections, and vaginal itching in women. A normal casual blood glucose should be between 70
and 139 mg/dl.
- A fasting blood glucose of 126 mg/dl or more after no food for at least eight hours. A normal fasting blood glucose should be less than 100 mg/dl.
- A blood glucose of 200 mg/dl or greater 2 hours after consuming 75 grams of glucose.
A diagnosis of diabetes requires at least two abnormal levels on two different occasions. Don’t accept a lifelong diagnosis of diabetes on the basis of a single test.
The United States uses milligrams/deciliter (mg/dl) for units of measurement of the concentration of something in a liquid. Most of the rest of the world uses the International System (SI) of units, in which the concentration in a liquid is designated millimoles per liter (mmol/L).
To convert mg/dl to mmol/L, divide the value of mg/dl by 18. For example, 126 mg/dl becomes 7 mmol/L. A fasting blood glucose between 100 and 125 mg/dl or casual blood glucose between 140 and 199 mg/dl is pre-diabetes.
Most people with pre-diabetes will develop diabetes within ten years. Although people with pre-diabetes don’t usually develop small blood vessel complications of diabetes like blindness, kidney failure, and nerve damage, they’re more prone to large vessel disease like heart attacks and strokes, so you want to get that level of glucose down. 41 million people in the United States have pre-diabetes.