A1c Levels are Dropping in Diabetes!Your Hard Work is Paying Off!Quest Diagnostics, a medical laboratory company, examined 14.3 million A1c blood tests over the past few years. Why? To see how well people were doing managing their diabetes of course. The results are very encouraging. These glycated hemoglobin tests are closely linked to the risk for diabetes complications. The higher the result, the greater the risk for developing complications to eyes, kidneys, nerves and heart. Higher A1 c blood test result means higher blood sugars. Charts exist to translate A1c into actual blood sugar numbers. The result of Quest Diagnostics study showed more people were getting their A1c three month average blood sugars into target ranges of 7% or less. So more people are getting their daily blood sugars into target ranges. According to the unpublished study only 36% of A1c tests were in target range in 2001. However, by the end of December 2005, 56% of the A1c tests were in target! This is an incredible improvement and should translate into less diabetes complications and less health care dollars spent on diabetes. Not having read the actual study, it is hard to determine how we should be interpreting these results. Apparently, only people getting A1 c tests on a regular basis were included. This would exclude most of the people who had A1c tests done just to see if by chance they had diabetes. It is not typical to test A1c to diagnose diabetes, but some physicians do. What was left in the study should be people with diabetes. Quest estimates the study might represent 6-7 million people with diabetes with an average of two A1c tests per year. The guidelines do recommend 4 per year but, this is a huge increase from where things had been. Overall, this study seems to portray good news. Rather - GREAT NEWS! People with diabetes are making more effort to control blood sugars. It is reflecting in their three month average blood sugars. These better A1c results should lead to less diabetes complications. Congratulations! Now go the step further and fine tune those numbers. Below are links that will give you specific ideas on how to lower blood sugars at different times of the day.
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