PCOS test is based on the Rotterdam criteria for diagnosing PCOS.
Prediabetes
Prediabetes Test Measures And Results to Be Sure!
Dec 1, 2016Do you want to be very sure that you’re doing ok on the prediabetes front? Here is a Prediabetes Test method that is used by medical experts who believe you can never be too careful with blood sugar.
- Step 1 Get yourself a good quality home glucometer. It will help you monitoring the glucose levels regularly.
- Step 2 Fast overnight. Twelve hours is a must. So if you ate dinner at 7pm, nothing except water till 7am. Take the first reading. This is called your Fasting Blood Glucose or FBG. Note this down.
- Step 3 Take the next blood sugar reading just before starting lunch
- Step 4 Eat your typical lunch. Once you’re done with lunch, do not eat anything else for the next 3 hours. After one hour of lunch, test for sugar and note it down.
- Step 5 Two hours after lunch, test again
- Step 6 Last test due: 3hrs after lunch
Repeat these tests for two days, recording what you ate and what you measured for each test.
Now that you know how to test for diabetes at home, read on to find out what these test results mean.
What Are We Measuring in Prediabetes Test?
What are the test to determine pre-diabetes
The first test (Fasting Blood Sugar or FBG) tells us how much sugar is floating in your blood after you’ve fasted for 12 hours. It should be at its lowest at this point. Remember: The American Diabetes Association classifies anyone with fasting blood sugar between 100-126 mg/DL or the equivalent of HbA1c between 5.7-6.4% as having prediabetes.
We, however, know that sugar can do serious damage (cardiac damage, risk of cancer etc.) at far lower levels than this. So doctors keen to protect their patients from even slight prediabetes damage want to see a number less than 86 mg/DL on this test. Maintain a diabetes test results chart at a place you can see daily and fill in the numbers regularly to keep track of your blood sugar levels.
The same doctors would like to see the following values for the rest of the tests:
- One hour after lunch: Less than 140 mg/DL
- Two hours after lunch: Less than 120 mg/DL
- Three hours after lunch and before you started lunch: Less than 100 mg/DL
Interpreting The Results
If your blood sugar results are on the borderline, say consistently at around 95mg/DL for the fasting test and around 140-45 mg/DL, you may want to consider easy-to-adopt steps to prevent prediabetes.
If your blood sugar results are mildly alarming, say at 150-160 mg/DL after one hour or 130 mg/DL after two hours, you need to make simple lifestyle changes to reverse prediabetes.
If you’re nearly 180-190 mg/DL after the first hour of food and it stays higher than say, 160 mg/DL after two hours of lunch, you need more serious help. Dietary supplements can help, along with diet and lifestyle changes, to keep you out of repeat visits to the doctor’s office
If your results came back a consistent 40-50 points higher on two or more of the tests, you need professional help. Please see a holistic medical practitioner to help you understand and deal with the problem.
Irrespective of which of these categories you fall into, remember – knowledge is power. Understand what’s really happening in diabetes, what side effects you may face if you go on prescription medicines for diabetes and what alternatives are available in the world of dietary supplements.
Finally, the same things that work for diabetes also work for pre-diabetes. So if you eat right, exercise right, lose some weight, do a bit of yoga and reduce stress in your life, you could reverse your pre-diabetes as well.
Sharda Agarwal is a qualified Functional Nutrition Therapy Practitioner & a Certified Blood Chemistry Analyst. She first used dietary supplements to overcome a debilitating migraine she suffered for years. Since then she has studied the subjects of nutrition and nutrients extensively. She uses this to manage the health of her family at home and with Sepalika.
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