::knock knock::
"Hey! You said you had some wellness numbers you wanted to show me," I said to A on Monday around lunchtime.
"Oh you're so good to remember!" she said.
A had stopped me in the parking lot Thursday afternoon after she returned from our annual conference. She had been to the wellness booth where they drew an unbelievable amount of blood to test cholesterol, glucose, A1C, etc. She couldn't remember exactly the name of the test she wanted to talk to me about but knew it was something like hemoglobin.
"I'll bring the paperwork on Monday and we can discuss it," she said as she got into her car.
I had forgotten, actually, that we were going to talk about it. I'm not sure what triggered the memory; maybe it was because I was walking across the parking lot.
Anyway. So A got her packet of information out. It was really colorful and seemed to have a lot of good information. It gave the blood result and then underneath it had a yellow, green and red bar that indicated if the result was good, bad or otherwise.
She wondered about her A1C, which was indicated in red as an "alert" area.
"My gosh, I would kill for that," I said as I saw her A1C was 5.8%.
We talked about her fasting (she'd had coffee with creamer before her test) and the difference between a fasting blood test and A1C. It felt good that she came to me for information and I felt good giving it to her.
"Nah, that's a perfect A1C," I told her. "I wouldn't worry about anything."
And then when I got back to my desk I realized that for a nondiabetic 5.8% might be on the high end of normal. So I started researching and got quite frustrated when I couldn't find a single source that would offer information on what a normal nondiabetic A1C range is. The closest I could come up with was somewhere between 4.3 and 6.0. Well that's a hell of a range!
So I ask you, readers, should my friend see her doctor with a 5.8% A1C? She's not overweight, I don't think she has any risk factors or symptoms, she's active, blah, blah, blah. I just don't want to send her off thinking she's OK when really she should see her doctor.
no, she should not see her doctor. I am not diabetic, My mom is type 2 insulin dependant. Her A1C is 6.4. Mine was 5.8 too! We see the same doctor, and he was thrilled with mine, and he was thrilled with my mom's too. Of course she had they whole diabetic panel done.
It may depend on the lab and on the doctor. When I was first diagnosed, the literature said "normal" A1c was 3.5 - 5.0, but my doctor's lab's reference normal was 4.0 - 6.0. When I came up with 5.8 my last A1c and an average glucose reading of 115 on the meter, I got really concerned that the A1c was off -- until I looked up the estimated Average Glucose (eAG) tables, and found the two to be consistent. When we think of "average" blood glucose at 100 mg/dl, we're thinking of an A1c of 5.5. Then, of course, there are the Bernsteinites who maintain that "average" blood glucose of people without diabetes (or pre-diabetes) is 85, which translates to an A1c somewhere in the low 4's. (IIRC Bernstein looks at 4.5 as a goal for T1s as well as T2s.) My current lab (medical insurance required the switch) considers A1c between 5.8 and 6.5 to be "at risk for diabetes".
So... like anything else, it depends who you ask and what you ask.
i think it's high enough to be worth keeping an eye on. 5.8 is good for most type 1s, but higher than I think most non-diabetics. doesn't sound like cause for panic, but I would test once more in 6 months or so just to make sure it isn't moving.