America’s losing battle against diabetes

Re:America’s losing battle against diabetes by jimbob45 on Friday August 13, 2021 @12:14PM (#28170828)

The right solution is to educate people about what their A1C means and to incentivize them to check it. Most people don't know what theirs is - I would bet that less than five people in this very thread have checked their A1C in the last six months. Remember that diet isn't always sufficient to lower A1C and you may need drugs or other lifestyle changes.

Mandate A1C checks bi-yearly for insurance providers or have them pass along the penalty.

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Re:America’s losing battle against diabetes by jaywalk on Friday August 13, 2021 @12:20PM (#28170910)

It sounds like you don't really understand what A1C tests are meant for either. There's a reason it's not part of a standard physical while blood sugar is.

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Re:America’s losing battle against diabetes by mnw21cam on Saturday August 14, 2021 @07:04AM (#28179714)

And that reason would be?

HbA1C is effectively a measure of the average amount of sugar that has been in your blood over the last couple of months.

A spot sugar level is the amount of sugar in your blood right now, and can vary a huge amount, depending on when you last ate, what you ate, and what exercise you have just done. It's less useful. You can do a fasting blood glucose, and a glucose challenge, but these tests are much more inconvenient for the patient.

Outside the US, most testing has switched to HbA1C for these reasons.

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