Blood Sugar

[Jay13]

I just got a call back from a nurse for a recent Physical and the nurse said my blood sugar is a little high, it was 104 (after fasting) and they said it should be under 100. That seemed like they were being a little picky... I am 34, 6'1" and about 185, in fairly athletic shape. Should I be concerned? They said just watch my diet and come back in 3 months... (I did not get to talk to the doc) Any insight folks? There's no history of diabetes in my family...

[tryandgetme]

I'm a full blown diabetic, so maybe I can explain a bit...

If you drank a large slurpee within an hour of going to the dr. office, that could explain it. The body can't deal with massive carbohydrate intake like that fast enough, but it eventually will. They typically do diabetes tests with fasting, so that it eliminates that possibility. If you're running higher than 100 after fasting, that could be a problem.

A random blood sugar test (no fasting to provide a baseline) doesn't really tell you much, however, even if you've recently eaten and your blood sugar level is at its peak, your random blood sugar level shouldn't be higher than 200 mg/dL. A normal fasting blood sugar will be below 100 mg/dl.

EDIT: whoops, I just reread and you said it was fasting. 100 is the upper bound of normal, it could be an indicator of prediabetes. Don't miss that appointment in 3 months. You might also want to talk to your doc for more information about your specific test and what it means for you.

[tryandgetme]

oh, and a history of diabetes in the family means nothing now, it can hit ANYONE. Especially type 2, they don't know what causes it, but they're pretty sure it's not genetics.

[Jay13]

Yes, I was fasting. I didn't eat or drink anything since probably 9:00pm the night before, and the test was done at about 8:30am. So almost 12 hours had passed. I will concede that I do have a fairly high sugar diet, it will be tough to change but I guess I should consider it. Thanks Chris.

[tryandgetme]

don't worry too much, diabetes is a totally managable disease, you can live a totally normal life if it's managed. I don't want to be alarmist, it could be nothing, but if it is something it's important to get on it...

could have been an anomaly in the test too. I know I can once in a while test my sugar twice in 3 minutes and get different numbers.

[Jay13]

Yeah, I'm not freaking out about it, but I don't want to blow it off either... I probably could stand to lay off the sugar anyway.

[tryandgetme]

everyone could. I just found out there's as much sugar in half of one of those jumbo freezies as a can of coke.