if my blood sugars never go above 200 is this a sign of good control
200 is panic time for me, way too high. I would re-write this to say something like “if my blood sugars never go above 145, is this a sign of good control”. On the other hand, your A1c of 5.3 is excellent, so you must be doing it right!
Good control = normal mean blood glucose (meaning 110 mg/dl) + small standard deviation of BG (as small as possible) so you achieve a 1 to 2 hour spike below 160 + A1c like non diabetic person (in the 5 range, below 6.3 to be fair) + good carb counting and assessment skills + wizard of the mechanics of D + disaster proof like Chuck Norris.
Snowangel,
I’ll join others in saying, no. Blood sugars should stay below 140. Your 5.3 may be due to the averaging that occurs between highs and lows?
Frequent blood sugar over 110 isn’t good. What is your A1c?
I’d like to emphasize the small standard deviation. You can get a ~normal mean with a high SD and that’s still bad!
I don’t have many lows anymore because I am on the pump, and my blood sugar is rarely ever at 200, I guess what i meant to say is I havent had a blood sugar over 200 in nearly a year, is this beneficial in anyway to slowing down complications?
“I don’t have any lows anymore because I am on the pump” - now I’m confused! How does the pump keep you from ever being low? You must be lucky or talented or have a very regimented lifestyle.
but, yes, if you haven’t had an incident over 200 in a year then congratulations!
I’m thrilled when I can say I haven’t been over 200 in a month.
I’m very disappointed in myself if I go above 140. I think people have different definitions of what good control means for them–but personally, I like to stay beneath the renal threshhold or whatever it is. The place where you start to get microvascular changes.
It is a personal definition that “good control” is anything close to normal blood sugar level. (Im saying “personal” since different expert/books/research sometimes vary when normal bg is defined). In my case it is like a personal goal…and “normal” for me is between 80 to below 140 and an A1C of 6.5 and below. I’m at 6 now…working hard to improve it.
200 is way too high…
Sure, but catching your peak BG is a surprisingly difficult thing to do and takes a lot more testing than just looking at fasting, before meal, and 2 hour post meal. It’s way harder than catching your low BGs, which can sound the hypo alarm if they drop too low. A CGM can definitely help if you have one.
I’d also like to add that finding your peak BG and low BG have to be done if you want your Standard Deviation to account for anything. You’re concerned about your BG variation. Standard Deviation, under the best conditions that measuring BG can offer, is a marginal measure of BG variation. Knowing your daily peaks and low, what your daily range of BG is, is way more valuable. Without catching your daily peaks and lows, Standard Deviation is absolutely worthless.
No under 140 would be.