For diabetics, everyday life is always accompanied by one factor: blood sugar levels. But what is the long-term sugar value? And how high should it be?
Always check your blood sugar level, if necessary inject insulin to lower it or eat something to raise it. Avoid certain meals and pay attention to exercise and a healthy diet. This is everyday life for many diabetics in Germany. There are over four million, most of them have Type 2 diabetessome Type 1 diabetesfew Double diabetes and other even rarer forms of diabetes.
They all have to be based on one factor: the blood sugar level. It must be constantly kept in view, because low or high blood sugar levels have serious consequences, including: diabetic coma. The blood sugar level is crucial in everyday life, but this does not change for type 1 diabetics, whose disease will accompany them throughout their lives. Type 2 diabetics can be cured of the disease. For both types there is another factor that is crucial for them: the long-term sugar value.
But what exactly is the long-term sugar value? Why is it so important for diabetics and how high should it ideally be? Here you will find all the answers to these questions.
Diabetes: Why is blood sugar important?
To explain what long-term glucose level is, one must first understand the role of blood sugar for diabetics. In both of the common forms of diabetes, type 1 and type 2, The body has difficulty processing ingested sugar and converting it into energy.
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With type 1 diabetes, this is as the Federal Ministry of Health explainsdue to an absolute lack the hormone insulin, which is responsible for processing sugar. This form of diabetes usually begins already in childhood or adolescence and is currently not curable.
Type 2 diabetes is also an inability to process ingested sugar, but lifestyle plays a crucial role here. On the one hand, due to heavy sugar consumption, the body’s cells are no longer able to absorb insulin over time. This insulin resistance leads to inadequate processing of the sugar consumed. In addition, there is an “exhaustion” of the insulin-producing cells, which have had to overproduce the hormone for years because so much food was consumed.
In both cases, diabetes causes the body to be unable to process the sugar it has consumed, leading to an overdose high blood sugar levels, which can be dangerous. This is where artificially administered insulin comes into play. Type 1 diabetics, who cannot produce insulin at all, will need insulin throughout their lives because they have to constantly inject it. Things are different for type 2 diabetics; temporary administration of insulin may also be necessary, but often a change in lifestyle is also necessary. So more exercise and a healthier diet a sufficiently large factor to defeat diabetes.
Long-term sugar level: What does it mean for diabetics?
So that diabetics who need to take insulin know when to inject the hormone, they check their blood sugar levels regularly. This is measured either in mg/dl, which stands for “milligrams per deciliter,” or in mmol/l, which stands for “millimoles per liter,” with mmol/l being much more widely used than mg/dl. According to the World Health Organization WHO is the fasting blood sugar level, i.e. after around eight to ten hours without eating, in a healthy adult without diabetes between 70 mg/dl (3.9 mmol/l) and 100 mg/dl (5.6 mmol/l).
Diabetics therefore inject themselves with insulin in order to achieve a blood sugar level that is safe for their condition. The target blood sugar levels are crucial for knowing how much insulin you need to inject. Like the health portal Enableme explained, the target value for healthy people is 60 to 100 mg/dl when fasting and 90 to 140 mg/dl after eating. This value is higher for diabetics; for type 1 diabetics it is 90 to 120 mg/dl on an empty stomach and 130 to 160 mg/dl after eating. They are even higher in type 2 diabetics, where the values are 100 to 125 mg/dl on an empty stomach and 140 to 199 mg/dl after eating.
But what role does the long-term sugar value play? The long-term glucose value indicates how the quality of blood sugar control has developed over the last eight to twelve weeks, explains the pharmacies Umschau. This is crucial, to initially diagnose diabetes and later to achieve therapy goals.
Long-term sugar level in diabetics: How do you measure it?
For type 1 diabetics, long-term glucose levels are crucial to ensure the disease is kept under control. For type 2 diabetics, the long-term sugar value and the constant lowering of the value as new therapy goals can mean slow healing from the sugar disease.
The long-term sugar value is also called HbA1c, which stands for hemoglobin (Hb), also called “red blood pigment”, and glucose (sugar), which attaches to the hemoglobin. The long-term sugar value tells you how much blood sugar has bound to the red blood cells in the last two to three months. The long-term sugar value HbA1c is measured in mmol/mol or in percent. This means, for example, with an HbA1c of ten percent, around ten percent of the hemoglobin molecules are “saccharified”.
Diabetes: How often do you have to measure your long-term sugar level?
The German Diabetes Aid recommendsThat type 1 diabetics have their long-term sugar levels measured once or twice a quarter. It is also less common for type 2 diabetics; two measurements per year are enough.
Long-term sugar level in diabetics: How high should it be?
In healthy people, the long-term sugar level HbA1c is around 30 mmol/mol (or around five percent). For type 2 diabetics, the goal is to get back to a healthy level at some point, i.e. to beat the disease. However, many studies have shown that a reduction below seven percent has no benefit for type 2 diabetics, as the Drug Commission of the German medical profession explains.
The Medicines Commission therefore sets the target for type 2 diabetics between seven and eight percent at. For people over 75 years old or with a life expectancy of less than ten years, it is sufficient not to allow long-term sugar levels to rise above 8.5 percent.
For type 1 diabetics there is also a target value of less than eight percent, only a few achieve less than seven percent, as a report from the German Diabetes Society shows. In general, values between six and eight percent are good to sufficient. Between eight and ten the value is considered bad and from ten percent it becomes very dangerous. People with very severe diabetes can have levels of up to 15 percent.
By the way: There is now an artificial intelligence that can diagnose diabetes based on voice.