However, if you are using insulin or a drug that causes your body to secrete insulin you must err on the side of caution and keep your blood sugar well over 70 mg/dl (3.9 mmol/L). This is because home blood sugar meters often read lower than lab values, so a reading in that very slightly lower range might actually be normal. If you are not on insulin or a drug that causes your pancreas to secrete insulin, a blood sugar 5 to 10 mg/dl slightly below this range, while it might be uncomfortable,is not dangerous unless there is evidence that it is continuing to drop. This is demonstrated by the graph at the top of this page, which shows the blood sugars measured during a study where normal people had their blood sugar sampled every few minutes after eating a high carbohydrate meal.īlood sugars under 70 mg/dl (3.9 mmol/L) are considered to be hypoglycemic and should be avoided. Most normal people are under 100 mg/dl (5.5 mmol/L) two hours after eating. Under 120 mg/dl (6.6 mmol/L) one or two hours after a meal. Independent of what they eat, the blood sugars of truly normal people are:
Nevertheless, most doctors consider any fasting blood sugar below 100 mg/dl (5.6 mmol/L) as completely normal Those with supposedly normal blood sugars above 92 mg/dl often do. People whose blood sugar tests at this level do not develop diabetes over the next decade or longer. This is the finding of a considerable body of research.
A truly normal fasting blood sugar (which is also the blood sugar a normal person will see if they have not eaten for a few hours) is:īetween 70 mg/dl (3.9 mmol/L) and 92 mg/dl (5.0 mmol/L). Normal Fasting Blood Sugarįasting blood sugar is usually measured first thing in the morning before you have eaten any food. Rarely doctors will order a Oral Glucose Tolerance Test, which tests your response to a huge dose of pure glucose, which hits your blood stream within minutes and produces results quite different from the blood sugars you will experience after each meal. Doctors rarely test this important blood sugar measurement as it is time consuming and hence expensive. The most informative blood sugar reading is the post-meal blood sugar measured one and two hours after eating.
When you are given a routine blood test doctors usually order a fasting glucose test. The blood sugar measures that doctors are most interested in is the A1c, discussed below. It can even vary significantly from minute to minute. The concentration of glucose in our blood changes continually throughout the day. In most of the rest of the world it is measured in millimoles per liter, abbreviated as mmol/L. it is measured in milligrams per deciliter, abbreviated as mg/dl.
The term "blood sugar" refers to the concentration of glucose, a simple, sugar, that is found in a set volume of blood.
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