Thanks, BFL
If you can’t get the numbers you want, you change the way you get the numbers. Sounds like a SHELL game. I know I have been going through this the last 15 years. You can not make MONEY if the numbers are to low.
Why? I’ve long criticized the futzing with the numbers - and this change is worse, to me.
instead of sticking with an inexpensive, instant test (plasma glucose), they have shifted toward a much more expensive laboratory test that is typically not administered unless sugar problems are at least suspected. How much money did the panel receive from the med lab industry?
The HbA1C gives inferential evidence of an average blood sugar. Therefore, they are endorsing the idea that a balance of high and low-sugar spikes is NOT diabetes? I vehemently disagree with this decision!
While I agree with the A1c approach, the sticky part comes in with picking the target number.
As an example, blood pressure of 120/80 was considered ideal. Now it’s 115/75. I wonder how much input the pharmaceutical companies had on the new target?
The same can be asked with recommended cholesterol levels. If they’re not selling enough Zocor/Lipitor, then lower the target numbers.
Five years ago, at age 65 and after 3 years of progressive loss of feeling in my feet, and my Dr always instructing me to fast before each appointment, my A1c was about 7.5 - although my fasting glucose was normal. He never did a glucose tolerance test.
He handed me a copy of a “diabetic diet” brochure and a prescription for a meter, along with instructions to just monitor my glucose for a week. I learned that non-diet soft drinks, sweet & sour pork over a small mountain of rice, or a loaded baked potato sent my glucose above 240. Bread and pasta also raised it, but not as much.
But the diabetic diet seemed to emphasize carbohydrates! So after some research I settled on a pretty informal low-carb diet - except for various fruits - which I have adhered to ever since. My glucose averages under 100, measured morning and night, and my A1c is back to 5.5.
Am I diabetic? I still have peripheral neuropathy, and my opthalmologist has found early cataracts in both eyes, as well as early “low-tension” glaucoma that I am treating with eyedrops. And when I drank a mint julep (sugar syrup and bourbon) last Derby day at my wife’s UofL alumni party, my glucose paid another visit to 200+!
Palin Settles on Hemoglobin A1c to Diagnose Diabetes: Implications of the shift to be assessed.
This will be good because it won’t just be the bloodsugar reading at the time but the average of what it has been for the last 8-12 weeks.