August 23, 2001
Diagnosis and Symptoms
Question from :
I am not diagnosed with diabetes, but I bought a glucose monitor to see if I could find a pattern with my eating and glucose levels. I have only been doing it a few days, and I have found that when I go for more than 10 hours without eating my glucose levels are high. They don’t appear to be particularly high after I eat. Today my fasting level was 122 mg/dl [6.8 mmol/L]. Is this significant?
Answer:
A fasting blood sugar level of 122 mg/dl [6.8 mmol/L] is within the range of what the American Diabetes Association now calls IGT or Impaired Glucose Tolerance. Bearing in mind however that you are not yet very experienced with your meter, that it is only a single reading and that there may well be a strong element of anxiety over diabetes, all this really indicates is that you would do well to ask your doctor’s help in resolving the problem. This is especially important because if you do indeed have IGT, there is now good recent evidence that clinical diabetes can be averted by diet and exercise.
DOB
