No change to HbA1c

Hi guys,

Haven't posted for a while but have been trying really hard to regulate my HbA1c by returning to Lantus following a very difficult trial of Levemir.

On paper, my test results certainly look a lot better than they used to - day to day readings have been lower, more consistant and have followed the DAFNE patterns much more.

However, I had another HbA1c last week and, despite all of this, my results are exactly the same as they were about 4 months ago when my sugar levels were yoyo-ing around all over the place on the Levemir (7.9).

Help - I'm trying to stabilise my levels pre-conception and I don't seem to be getting anywhere. It's really disheartening.

Any advice welcome.

Thanks,

Melissa

The HbA1c can be tricky, for the last 4 weeks my average levels have been 7.2, in theory giving me an HbA1c at best of 6.2, but mine was 7.9.

How long have your blood sugars been behaving themselves, its probably not for the period of 90 days that the A1c takes a snapshot of. You are doing well, you are seeing some order in the madness, so just try and keep it going for another 2-4 weeks and you may see a dramatic drop.....

Its much harder and a lot more stressful to hit the targets when preparing for a family I would imagine, but dont be discouraged by your result staying the same, that's good, its not went up.......

Keep up the good work........

Thank you. It's probably true that they haven't been as good for the last 90 days as they've been for the last 30 for instance but, all in all, they've definitely been a lot better than when I was on the Levemir so it's really disheartening not to see some improvement.

Like you, I tend to keep an eye on the average readings on my monitor as a rough guideline of how I'm doing. At the moment they are 6.5 (14 day) and 7.4 (30 day) so I was hoping that this would reflect slightly more in the HbA1c.

Do you think that your HbA1c reflects worse control in the period beyond the 30 day average or was it a surprise to you as well?

At the moment I'm supposed to be aiming for a reading of less than 6.5 so pretty much everything is a struggle!

Thanks again,

Melissa

You seem to be experiencing the same as me, I was expecting much lower A1c, but I didn't have my 90 day average to hand to calculate my predicted A1c..........

hence my request to include it in the online diary, my 30 day was 8.2, probably much lower than my actual 90 day average..............keep it up and i am confident you will see an improvement.......

the 30 day only gives you a monthly average but the A1c gives you a 3 month snapshot....

keep it up......

Thanks for that. I'll try not to be too disheartened. I can only have the HbA1c every 3 months at my hospital so I will just have to stick with it and just hope for the best if I manage to conceive.

Do any monitors give you a 90 day average do you know?

I am sure there are some monitors that do it......the next best thing is a phone app or my preferred choice, the online diary here, which will have the 90 day soon........only downside is you would need to input the results again......

You have to have a 90 day average of between say 6.5 - 7.5 to get to were you want to for pregnancy.......

But if you get close that will be good enough.........managing your levels throughout the pregnancy may be the trickiest part......

Yes, that's a total nightmare. I remember it well!

Welcome back to the forum MelissaF! After what everyone else has put, I'm not sure what else to contribute apart from keep up the good work (your HbA1c is better than some!) and you'll get there!

Hi J,

Apologies for absence - life sort of gets in the way! Hope that everything's good with you? Have your levels settled down at all?

I viewed another forum yesterday for research and every single person contributing to that forum said that their HbA1c was around 5-5.5. Maybe this was a forum for superhumans or maybe they were all lying!

M xx

MelissaF said:
Hi J,

Apologies for absence - life sort of gets in the way! Hope that everything's good with you? Have your levels settled down at all?

I viewed another forum yesterday for research and every single person contributing to that forum said that their HbA1c was around 5-5.5. Maybe this was a forum for superhumans or maybe they were all lying!

M xx