Question from Houston, Texas, USA:

I am a 44 year old female, who 5 feet tall and weighs 100 pounds. When I was in my twenties, I was about 25 pounds overweight and diagnosed with borderline diabetes, but I lost weight, felt better, and pretty much ignored it until two years ago when I started feeling the symptoms again. I took my blood sugar on a home meter and found that it was elevated.

I went to an endocrinologist and took records of what I had eaten and what my readings were. He said that I was not the “body type” for diabetes, even though I have a strong genetic predisposition, and some of my readings were over 200 mg/dl [11.1 mmol/L]. My family practice doctor does an hemoglobin A1c every six months, and although it has always been normal, I have been on a modified diet for the past two years trying to keep myself from becoming developing diabetes. I also am very active physically.

For the most part, I keep my fasting levels well under 120 mg/dl [6.7 mmol/L], but still struggle some with postprandial readings.If gain any weight my fasting sugars start to rise. Recently, I had a one-hour postprandial of 214 mg/dl [11.9 mmol/L] and today, about an hour after a snack, my blood sugar was 182 mg/dl [10.1 mmol/L]. For dinner I had a grilled chicken salad with no starches, and an hour later my blood sugar was only 92 mg/dl [5.1 mmol/L]! It seems like two to three carb units causes me to be somewhat high. For the past few days, I have been extremely tired, my skin seems very dry, and I have been getting up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Ever since I went to that endocrinologist I have felt like I was making a big deal out of nothing. Does all of this sound silly to you? What should my blood sugar goal be? Could I possibly have Late-onset Autoimmune Diabetes of Adulthood (LADA)? I was going to talk to my doctor about all this, but I wondered if I was being an alarmist.