The a1c/average glucose situation is not that clear. Each person will have different rates of glycation. Those numbers are only used as an estimate on a range. I would not sweat the difference in the correlation.
The A1c test is simply testing how many red blood cells get glycated as a percentage of all cells.( by the way since red cells are made at night, your night glucose levels can throw it off)
This glycation can be different for different people just as carb ratios and insulin resistance can be.
Also the total red blood cell count and amount of hemoglobin in each cell can effect it. Those things are usually stable in people so we can just look at the numbers and see if we are going higher or lower.
My a1c has been 5.8 for a while since I started my CGM( 10 months or so). that would seem high to me since my pump and meter tells me that my average finger stick over the past 3 months is 96.My cgm tells me its 103.I think it is close enough.I'm not trying to get it lower because I don't want lows.
I don't think of "I'm going to lower my A1C" as it's the sum of the parts of each inividual blood test. I try to win every test, either by having a decent number or by doing a good job fixing it. And cheating by exercising, eating moderately, and all the other stuff.
So far, since I started paying attention to this stuff (2008...) it seems to have worked. I'm always on pins and needles when it's "showtime" at the doctors but that may be a bit unavoidable?
Really? you think exercise is cheating? I think it is the opposite. It think it is exactly what I should do to keep my sugars in line. Besides it feels good to run and its good for everyone not just us.
i am on MEDICARE and they pay 100% for my A1c test so long as the nurse at my endo does it.and the nurse does it right in the doctors office, and it takes about 15 minutes to get the result. now i am very curious about which type of test he is using. Medicare pays for a test every 90 days (3 months).
what interests me is why my endo is content when my A1c is around 8. he is very big on stability rather than my bouncing up and down. he prefers my A1c at 8 knowing that we can just work with the basal rates on my pump, rather than having BS in the 35s and 300s which then average out to a sweet 6.5 A1c.
has anyone experienced something like this? i am curious about the value of a "high" A1c.
I have used the bayer A1C home test kit for the last 2 yrs, that was 4 tests at home, 3 of them i was on my way to the pc doc, they did an a1c in the lab, and sent it away, all 3 times my home test was 5.4, the lab test was 5.3 ,now that to me is ACCURATE...
You bring up another accuracy issue with a1c, All of the methods are sort of flat in the lower ( normal ranges) The differences become bigger in the higher ranges, People who are in the 10% or 11% range will see much more variance from test to test , then you who are in the low 5% range.
Most laboratory tests are geared toward the normal range. Of course they are designed that way to target the accuracy in a range that contains the most data.
Unfortunately with a1c , most of the people who are being tested are outside the normal range, It is a strange paradox really.
I mean everyone is tested for Cholesterol and glucose. But only diabetics and those suspected of having it are tested for A1c.
I think the accuracy target(calibration) for a1c should be around 7 % because that seems to be average for diabetics. Of course it isn't , It is generally calibrated at 4.5%. which is the average range for nondiabetics.
