Wednesday, November 05, 2008

What is normal?

When you talk about blood sugars, you often ask the question (or you are ASKED the question), "What is normal"?

Well, normal means lots of things.

For a completely healthy non-diabetic, normal blood sugar readings would be 70-120.
Even right after a meal.

Your body has an amazing ability to secrete insulin that is immediately effective on sugars in your system - synthetic insulin is much slower.

Normal for a Type 2 diabetic that is diet-controlled is about the same as a non-diabetic.

Normal for a diabetic is a bit different. Would we LOVE Emma to always be within 70 and 120 for her readings? ABSOLUTELY.

Will that happen? ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Is it normal to see a reading over 200 after breakfast? Yep
Is it normal to see a reading of 50 after a lot of activity? Yep
Is it normal to see an unexplained reading of 300+? Yep
Is it normal to see an unexplained reading below 40? Yep

So, for us, normal is relative. We target numbers in the 80 - 150 range. But its not abnormal to see anywhere from 50 - 300!

For a diabetic, its not about a single number. Its about how we deal with that single number, how we react to trends, and how we fix a situation that we handled incorrectly (overdose, underdose, missed dose, bad pump site, bad insulin, illness, etc)

One reading at a time.

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