Normal Blood Sugar Levels

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Why is it so important that you maintain normal blood sugar levels?

The criteria for diagnosing diabetes mellitus is as follows, according to the World Health Organization and National Diabetes Data Group:

• Symptoms of diabetes plus random blood sugar levels > 11.1 mmol/L (200 mg/dL)
• Fasting plasma sugar > 7.0 mmol/L (126 mg/dL)
• Two-hour plasma sugar > 11.1 mmol/L (200 mg/dL) during an oral glucose (sugar) tolerance test

You only need to fulfill one of those criteria once now, and once in another day to be diagnosed as having diabetes. Or you can be diagnosed as having diabetes by having really high blood sugar levels or having really bad symptoms of diabetes (such as diabetic coma or diabetic complications).

These cutoff point values of normal blood sugar levels are important to us because research has shown that persons with higher-than-normal blood sugar levels have exponential or tremendously increased risk of diabetes complications. These risks are dependent on two factors: The degree of severity of your higher-than-normal blood sugar levels, and the length of time you failed to maintain normal blood sugar levels.

Besides that, research has also shown that if you have a:

• Fasting blood sugar levels of 5.6-6.9 mmol/L (100–125 mg/dL) or
• 2-hour blood sugar levels of 7.8-11.1 mmol/L (140-199 mg/dL) during an oral glucose tolerance test

Then, it would mean that you are at 25-40% risk over the next 5 years of developing Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus. Besides, even at these levels, you already have higher risks of having cardiovascular diseases.

Do you already know what are your own blood sugar levels? It’s absolutely important to maintain normal blood sugar levels because of the many implications of diabetes mellitus, which we will go into later. If you have risks of having higher than normal blood sugar levels or if you are worried about having diabetes mellitus, go for a blood sugar test today!

For those who have higher-than-normal blood sugar levels, explore ways to achieve normal blood sugar levels here.

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What are normal blood sugar levels?

Having normal blood sugar levels are critically important for people living with diabetes. Because of the nature of diabetes, ensuring long-term, normal blood sugar levels is the only way to prevent potentially dangerous health complications from arising. So, what is a normal blood sugar level?

There are many ways to define normal blood sugar levels,

1. To a medical student:
A normal blood sugar level is defined as: 
No symptoms of uncontrolled diabetes (for example polyuria, polydipsia, nocturia, fatigue, weight loss) +
Random plasma glucose level of <11.1mmol/L or a fasting plasma glucose level of < 5.6mmol/L

2. To a normal person with diabetes:
A normal blood sugar level should be around: 3.5 – 8 mmol/L

3. If you are a more careful person with diabetes:
A normal blood sugar level is ideally 6 mmol/L before eating, 4 – 7.7 mmol/L after eating

4. To some doctors:
Although ideally, a normal blood sugar level should follow those remembered by a strict medical student, acceptable normal blood sugar levels can sometimes vary according to individuals and is correlated with the diabetes log book and the HbA1c value. For example, in elderly patients, the normal blood sugar levels aimed for are higher than the levels aimed for younger patients because of the higher risks associated with low blood sugar levels.

As you can see, opinions of normal blood sugar levels can vary, depending on the person’s experience and the patient’s condition. However, your blood sugar levels should not vary too much from the standard definition, as there are many undesirable high blood sugar symptoms, low blood sugar symptoms and other health problems related to long term high blood sugar levels.

We will talk more about other related topics in the future. In the meantime, I urge you to follow this link to learn more about what you can do to maintain normal blood sugar levels.

Just as a side note:
Many people use the unit mg/dL instead of mmol/L, it’s easy to convert the values. Just multiply the value in mmol/L by 18 and you will get the answer in mg/dL.

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