The Euro worked out real well didn't it. I'll stick with mg/dl and Europe can keep mM.
As an American, I agree, it is very tempting to ignore any number that contains a decimal point. There is one big advantage of measuring in mmol/l's, though. A1C is measured in mmol/l. So, if you just try to keep your BG to the same value as you want your A1C, say 4-5.5 for very tight control, you're all set. In that regard, it's actually, a lot simpler than mg/dl. That said, will we actally switch? Of course not.
It was not the conversion to Euro that made the currency fail!! I blame the politicians ;) Many countries where able to accomplish the switch and now you can go anywhere in Europe and don't have to exchange money, makes it way easier to understand where you are financially... even if it is in the gutter
It would be nice to be able to understand each other when talking BG instead of having to pull up a conversion chart, same thing with units of measurement.
It is obvious that many US people have the mentality of "i do it my way and i don't care what you think", that is why you really have to make and effort to be liked when you are out of your country and that's why they tend to pin Canadian flags over their backpacks in Europe. Only time and new generations can change that mentality.
Whoa! How did you get from preferring whole numbers to decimal places to being rude travelers?? Not that Americans can't sometimes be ethnocentric and overbearing but don't you think that is a major generalization you just made?
Some of us don't "pin Canadian flags over our backpacks" we just make an attempt to be polite and both respectful of and interested in the local culture, thereby making inroads against the 'ugly american" stereotype!
In Italy we use mg/dL: we are (still ;-) ) in Europe.
UK, Switzerland use mmol/L (Germany both, I didn't know that), who else?
I agree, big numbers are better and speedier to spell at phone, and it's immediate to "perceive" under 50, 100, under 150 and above 200 levels.
Hey he insulted the Euro, I felt I had to stick up for it :)
Yes, it is indeed a generalization, maybe I should apologize if it feels like an attack on your country. Not all US born are rude travelers or have the same mentality, US is a HUGE place! However, let me be honest about this, when I take the average of all the Americans (USA) that I've met, the general feeling that I get is that rather have the world spin around them kind of attitude.
Now back on topic... you, like me, have lived in different continents and among different cultures. So I believe, matter of preference aside, that you could learn to adapt to a different scale of measuring your BG's or a new currency. I personally don't care if its mmols or mg/dl. If it has a decimal or 3 figures, I still have to convey this info to my medical team and they have to understand me. And if wherever I travel to they use a different system then I'm back to square one, pulling out my charts and trying to be bilingual on yet another language.
Sorry if I get a little testy on this topic, it hits close to home for me, I not only travel back an forth a lot but also have to convert metric to imperial every day in my line work.
I'd just as soon use mg/dl. It's still metric, and it's actually understandable to anyone who has any experience with the metric system, without going into moles, which are chemistry measures, and not as accessible to the average person. Anything can be understood as mg/dl, whereas the number of millimoles per liter will vary according to the substance being measured. I just don't see any reason to add the extra layer of complexity.
And by the way, they use mg/dl in Japan, too. People who think the mmol/L system is universal except in the US are wrong.
When I read the Euro comment last night I sort of chuckled and said to myself that's going to tick someone off as well it should have. Like you said it's not the EURO that is the problem it's the politicians that have run it into the ground. I'm not qualified to discuss European politics so I will not do so. Americans should not point fingers since we are headed down the same if we don't see the light.
As far as American's wanting the world to revolve around us I don't see it. Europe should not base it's opinion of America on the behavior of the Americans that visit their continent. The average American is proud of their American heritage and if they are of European decent they are proud of that also. The same can be said African Americans, Asian Americans, Latin Americans or what ever their heritage is. We have been successful because of the influence of so many cultures. Our system and lifestyle works for us so we don't wish to be told that it is inferior. I would not for one minute try to tell someone else how to conduct their business and I don't think the average American will either.
Gary S
mg/dl IS metric!
A1c is measured as a percentage, not in mmol/L. The two measures are completely different. An A1c of 5.5% is an average blood sugar of 6.2 mmol/L (112 mg/dl).
I'm not from the U.S., so this whole discussion is moot for me since we already use mmol/L in Canada.
But I just wanted to say that the whole "complexity" thing just depends on what you are used to. I've been using mmol/L since I was diagnosed over 20 years ago, and there is nothing confusing about it, even for young kids. And the idea that mmol/L ranges somehow look "less impressive" than mg/dl ranges is moot, too. In fact, when I see a triple digit number on my meter (5.8 versus 11.4, for example) it catches my attention WAY more than seeing a 105 versus a 205 does. It's just a matter of what you are used to using and responding to.
I also think the "precision" argument (the fact that 5.4 versus 5.5 is 97 and 99, with no 98) is moot considering that home glucose meters are not nearly that precise. I don't think having 97 and 99 but no 98 would make any difference, who really cares about a 1 point difference (I mean really!)?
I do think the change would cause some disruption for a time, if it happened. Interestingly, in the blindness community there is a massive project to "merge" all the braille codes used in English-speaking countries (currently each country uses its own code, so resources can't be easily shared). There was a massive project initiated by the U.S. to address this problem, with a unified code as the goal, which was successfully developed. Now, every country involved has accepted the new code—which, yes, will be disruptive during the switchover for current braille readers—EXCEPT for the U.S., who is now looking at developing their "own" code, which defeats the entire purpose of the project in the first place ... In this age of globalization, I must admit that this is a bit frustrating! (Okay, vent over.) Interestingly, I have come to a point where I can pretty much translate blood sugar values between mmol/L and mg/dl in my head, since 99% of people in the DOC are from the U.S. and thus that's what I most commonly encounter on forums. I didn't even realize there were two systems until I got online!
I know there are other units that differ between countries (cholesterol and a lot of other blood measurements). Is there any attempt to unify these worldwide, regardless of which system ends up being accepted? It would be kind of nice to have just one unit of measurement to work with, whichever it was.
Philippines - mg/dL, mmol/L mg mmol
Singapore - mg/dL, mmol/L mg mmol
Ukraine - mg/dL, mmol/L mg mmol
Sub-Saharan Africa - mg/dL, mmol/L mg mmol
Germany - mg/dL, mmol/L mg mmol
Algeria - mg
Argentina - mg/dL mg
Aruba - mg/dL mg
Austria - mg/dL mg
Bahamas - mg/dL mg
Barbados - mg/dL mg
Belgium - mg/dL mg
Brazil - mg/dL mg
Cayman Isl - mg/dL mg
Chile - mg/dL mg
Columbia - mg/dL mg
Curacao - mg/dL mg
Cyprus - mg/dL mg
Dominican Republic - mg/dL mg
Ecuador - mg/dL mg
Egypt - mg/dL mg
El Salvador - mg/dL mg
France - mg/dL mg
Gaza Strip and Jericho - mg/dL mg
Georgia - mg/dL mg
Greece - mg/dL mg
Guatemala - mg/dL mg
Honduras - mg/dL mg
India - mg/dL mg
Indonesia - mg/dL mg
Israel - mg/dL mg
Italy - mg/dL mg
Ivory Coast - mg/dL mg
Jamaica - mg/dL mg
Japan - mg/dL mg
Jordan - mg/dL mg
Korea - mg/dL mg
Lebanon - mg/dL mg
Mexico - mg/dL mg
Morocco - mg/dL mg
North Yemen - mg/dL mg
Pakistan - mg/dL mg
Peru - mg/dL mg
Poland - mg/dL mg
Portugal - mg/dL mg
Puerto Rico - mg/dL mg
Qatar - mg/dL mg
Romania - mg/dL mg
Saudi Arabia - mg/dL, mmol/L mg
South Korea - mg/dL mg
Spain - mg/dL mg
St Martin - mg/dL mg
Syria - mg/dL mg
Taiwan - mg/dL mg
Thailand - mg/dL mg
Trinidad and Tobago - mg/dL mg
Tunisi - mg/dL mg
Turkey - mg/dL mg
UAE United Arab Emirates - mg/dL mg
Uruguay - mg/dL mg
US - mg/dL mg
Venezuela - mg/dL mg
Vietnam - mg/dL mg
Yemen - mg/dL mg
Australia - mmol/L mmol
Bahrain - mmol/L mmol
Bangladesh - mg/dL mmol
Belarus - mmol/L mmol
Bosnia and Herzegovina - mmol/L mmol
Bulgaria - mmol/L mmol
Canada - mmol/L mmol
Caribbean Countries - mmol/L mmol
China - mmol/L mmol
Croatia - mmol/L mmol
Czech Republic - mmol/L mmol
Denmark - mmol/L mmol
Estonia - mmol/L mmol
Finland - mmol/L mmol
Hong Kong - mmol/L mmol
Hungary - mmol/L mmol
Iceland - mmol/L mmol
Ireland - mmol/L mmol
Kazakhstan - mmol/L mmol
Kuwait - mmol/L mmol
Latvia - mmol/L mmol
Lithuania - mmol/L mmol
Luxembourg - mmol/L mmol
Macedonia - mmol/L mmol
Malta - mmol/L mmol
Malaysia - mmol/L mmol
Montenegro - mmol/L mmol
Netherlands - mmol/L mmol
New Zealand - mmol/L mmol
Norway - mmol/L mmol
Oman - mmol/L mmol
Russia - mmol/L mmol
Serbia - mmol/L mmol
Slovakia - mmol/L mmol
Slovenia - mmol/L mmol
South Africa - mmol/L mmol
Sweden - mmol/L mmol
Switzerland - mmol/L mmol
UK - mmol/L mmol
oops, I missed "bother" Saudi Arabia. It appears as if mg/dl > mmol?
Good thing I am not in charge of anything but taking out rubbish, because I would put the whole world on a base 10 clock too. An hour would be 1/10 of a day. And an hour would have 100 minutes.
Oh excellent, not only are the trains now running on time, they're running on metric time. Remember this time people, 80 past 2 on April 47th, it's the dawn of a new enlightenment.
The thing is diabetes is not about "a" magic number. You have to use all of the numbers available to evaluate and treat the different aspects of the disease dozens of times (at least...) per day. I agree SD is a useful number and I also find A1C to be good to know but really, I'm trying to "beat" every single test by getting a result I want or, if it's *not* the result I want, I want to use my experience to do a good job fixing the off number quickly and smoothly, without overdoing it and seeing the result after that to be flying all over the place either. If I beat most of the tests (all is still not in the cards...), I will get a decent A1C and if I have a lower SD, it will be easier in a number of ways, less lows, less highs, less time spent dealing with it, etc.
Diabetes can be a drag but every day I'm presented with dozens of opportunities to kick ■■■ and I find that when I'm sucessful at doing what I want to do, all the numbers (BG, A1C, SD, LDL/HDL, BP [although the cholesterol/ BP results seem to be more directly impacted by running a lot, having OK BG probably helps? Less clutter in the pipes?]) fall into place. I don't see a lot of value in "ivory tower" "navel gazing" about this long-term test or that term test, the one's that matter are the ones on your meter and what you do with them!
As an old person, I went through the idiotic conversion to metric in Canada.
Let science and labs use metric, for the rest of us this the farenheit scale and our current 3 digit system give a better spread of measurement for humans than the metric system does. I absolutely hate metric thermostats over my farenheit thermostats.
There is NO inherent advantage to the metric - system in a daily human life scene and switching over is only excuse to waste yet more money. In a day and age of computers and microchips, stop the sophistry.
I remember being in metal shop in Canada when a production engineer was working with metric drawings from England. Here he found that each metric measurement worked out exactlty back to inches. Conclusion - poor buggers in england designed product in inches in english system and converted to metric.
At this end, here they are converting back to inches.
While I am not recommending we go to cubits/furlongs per fortenight; the passioned sophistry for certain measurement systems over another only to cause all sorts of extra costs and elegance and can be stopped as unnecessary.
I am fed up with overbearing sophistry about ideal measurement systems as it pertains to human daily life.
On a lighter note, when I lived in Mexico briefly in my early 20's I went to buy a new bra and discovered to my horror that my correct size was 84!
Seems to me that there's no clear advantage for either system. So I'm cheering for the home team, LOL!!
From BG's to Carb counting ...metric in USA and Canada ( grams )?? .
Naah, Aenon. We know when enough is enough and too much is too much in terms of carb count or portion sizes.. Our glucometers will tell us.
Honey, I Know you do math problems for fun LOL: TOO EACH HIS OWN I garden in 80% humidity, make beaded jewelry in the wee hours of the morning, and sing karoake when I get the chance. We all thrive in our own interests.
Many years ago I learned , in a required high school math class, how to compoute standard deviations ( Sds). Learned the info and never used it once I passed the class. I did not find it particularly useful in my career nor my life: The calculator, as you said. will do it for me. But I can judge, from 43 years of diabetes and multiple daily testings, when I am in "acceptable" range. Each glucometer reading and CGM viewing tells me. I thus take the easy way out, not bothering to compute the Sd. I know when a 6.2 A1c is a "good" 6.2, amainly a flatliner or slightly rising hills; rather than when it is "roller coaster" averged out to 6.2 ;Even without the CGM graph. I KNOW.
God bless,
Brunetta