Basic Skills for Living with Diabetes

Overview

Guidelines for diabetes care

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Diabetes health tip

a woman in bed sleeping Insufficient sleep can be dangerous
Here are some ways it affects your health.

Diabetes is not diagnosed by the symptoms it causes. You must have a test to measure blood glucose to find out if you have diabetes.

Diagnosis Tests	Tests		A1c
	Fasting	Casual
Diabetes	126 mg/dL or higher on two occasions	200 mg/dL or higher (with symptoms)	6.5 percent or higher
"Pre Diabetes"	100-125 mg/dL (IFG: when your blood glucose is too high in the morning)	140-199 mg/dL (IGT: when your blood glucose is too high during the day)	5.7 to 6.4 percent
Normal less than	less than 100 mg/dL	less than 140 mg/dL	4 to 6 percent
IFG stands for impaired fasting glucose. IGT stands for impaired glucose tolerance.

Note: We used the word glucose instead of the word sugar so it does not get it confused with the sugar in food.

Source: Allina Patient Education, Basic Skills for Living with Diabetes, fifth edition, ISBN 1-931876-32-0

First published: 12/01/2006
Last updated: 10/25/2011