What is Diabetes?
Put simply, when you’re diabetic, your body can’t easily turn the sugar in your bloodstream into fuel. Instead of sugar being used by cells as fuel, it stays in the blood and over time, causes damage to various organs like the heart, the liver, the eyes and the kidneys. Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas when your blood sugar goes up and acts as a gatekeeper for sugar entering cells. A diabetic person’s pancreas, either does not produce enough insulin, or cells don’t respond to insulin the same way they used to.
So How Can You Tell If You Might Have Diabetes?
It has been my experience that diabetes is the type of disease that sneaks up on you slowly. Symptoms like weight gain, feeling very tired, waking up to pee at 4 am, and tingling in the fingers, manifested gradually over a decade. I thought that these were signs of getting older so I didn’t bother asking my doctor. The CDC also lists a host of other symptoms for diabetes.
Diabetes Presents Differently for Different People.
I think it is important to note here that the way the disease presents itself will likely be different for you than it is for me. The key takeaway is that these symptoms should not be ignored. Consult your doctor!
What Tests Do Doctors Use to Diagnose Diabetes?
The most common way doctors diagnose Type 2 diabetes is by using the Glycated Hemoglobin (A1C) test. This is a blood test done at a lab that measures the average blood glucose level over the past 2 or 3 months. Your doctor will order the test twice to verify results. You’re diabetic if both tests come back with a reading of 6.5% or higher. If your reading is between 5.7% and 6.4% then you are in the pre-diabetes range. If your reading is 5.7% or below, then you are in the normal range.
There are other tests that doctors can order to confirm the diagnosis and they include: 1) fasting blood sugar, 2) glucose tolerance, and 3) random blood sugar.