HBA1C Milestone

Sometimes when managing a chronic illness like diabetes, you can get bogged down by numbers. What your blood glucose levels are, how much insulin you’ve taken or how many carbohydrates you need to count. The numbers can mean the difference between good management and bad. When they're bad it’s disappointing because diabetes is a condition that requires a lot of hard work despite the results. But when they're good, it's the best feeling.

Today I reached a milestone in my diabetes, in the last few months I’ve had numerous changes in my life. I’ve changed my job, which in turn has changed my routine. It has allowed me to increase the amount of training sessions I do a week by a lot and has allowed me to take the time to really manage my diabetes. One morning last week I had diabetes clinic and I knew that I’d specifically worked hard to lower my hba1c. Which is saying something when you train 5-6 times a week let me tell you. But I just knew that I could do better and that I owed it to myself to do so.

My last diabetes clinic at the hospital had been about 6 months ago and at which point my hba1c had been 8.3%. For those who haven’t experienced the test before the hba1c test is a blood test that takes an average result of your blood glucose levels over a 6 month period of time. It gives the result as a percentage, so as a measure to go by- a result of 6% is amazing and means your blood sugars have been in range (4.0mmol – 7.0mmol) for a lot of the time. 8% however is a representation of a lot of high blood sugar levels. To give you an idea of my own hba1c results, when I was really unwell with my diabetes prior to going onto an insulin pump my hba1c result was 9.7%.

For the 5 years between having gotten an insulin pump and my previous diabetes clinic, my hba1c result has never dipped below that 8.3%. But today it was 7.6%! I was absolutely over the moon at this result, firstly because I’d worked so hard to achieve it and secondly because I’d started to believe that it was out of my reach to get such a good result despite all of the training I do. But as you'll find out in the blog that follows, there were circumstances at play that were having a massive impact on my diabetes. But I did it! There were three main factors that I believe contributed to the good result, the first was my change in job, the second was my new blood glucose monitor and the third was avoiding gluten. Read all about it in my next blog!