let's think alittle bit about how we can tell whether our bodyis processing glucose properly, and whether maybewe have diabetes. and i want you allto take all of this with a huge grain of salt,because i am not a doctor.
this is not medical advice. my goal here is to kind of justexplore the subject with you, and to try for allof us to get a better understanding of things.
so let's think about what mighthappen after we have a meal. so let me draw alittle chart over here. so let's call this hours. and then on thevertical axis, i'm going to talk about ourconcentration of sugar in the blood. so blood sugar concentration. you could call itglucose concentration. blood sugar concentration.
when we're talkingabout blood sugar, we're talking about glucose. and let me draw a coupleof points on this chart. so maybe this is 50. and our units are going tobe milligrams per deciliter. actually, let mejust do it this way. let me just say that everythingis in milligrams per deciliter. and we'll talk infuture videos about how we can relate theseunits to everyday terms.
but let's say thatthis right here is 50. this right here is 100. this right here is 150. and let's mark itright here at 200. so let's think about what wouldhappen for a normal person. let me mark somehours over here. so hour 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. that's probably good enough. so in a normal person, whenthey haven't eaten anything
for a long time, let'ssay greater than 8 hours-- so their fastingblood sugar will be right around 80milligrams per deciliter, give or take a little bit. there's a range aroundthat, but i just want to show you what wouldhappen to a normal person. so at 80 milligramsper deciliter, their blood sugarwill kind of be-- should, hopefully, beright around there.
and sometimes thisfasting blood sugar-- and maybe we're assumingthat this is in the morning. so maybe this hour oneis 7:00 in the morning. so they haven'teaten for a while, and that's why it'sfasting blood sugar. this is also-- you'llsometimes hear doctors, i've heard my wife saythis word without knowing what it meant-- they'llsometimes say preprandial, which is a very fancy wordwhich just means before a meal,
prandial is literallybefore eating. after the meal, you'retalking postprandial. so it's a very fancy word fora very simple idea, eating. so let's say at hour two, thisindividual eats breakfast. so this is where the individualis going to eat breakfast. now in a normal person, whenthat person eats breakfast, there'll be some carbohydratesin that breakfast, and it will be brokendown into glucose, and that glucose willenter the bloodstream.
and so their bloodglucose will go up. it'll slowly go up. and i was reading some studies. they say it kind of spikes atabout 45 minutes into a meal. so let's see. 45 minutes is over there. so maybe it'll goup to about there. and in a normal individual,the blood glucose really shouldn't go up above 120milligrams per deciliter.
and there's obviouslyexceptions to all of these. we're just kind of saying,a normal breakfast, a normal person. they're not eatinga pint of honey. they're not doingsomething crazy. so let's say 120 wouldbe right around there. a normal person, someonewho does not have diabetes, it would be unlikely thatit would go above that. and then actually,after about two hours,
they're getting prettyclose to normal. they get back under 100milligrams per deciliter. and then you gobeyond two hours, they just kind of get close,back to their baseline, to that 80 milligramsper deciliter. so once again, this is normal. and of course, don'tfreak out if you were to take a bloodtest one morning, and you were at like 85milligrams per deciliter.
you're still notfar off from normal. so obviously, there'ssome variation from person to person. now, if someone has diabetes,if either they have type 1, they don't have enoughinsulin to actually process the glucose, or if theyhave enough insulin, but their body isdesensitized to it. the insulin isn't beingprocessed properly so they can'tprocess the glucose,
we've seen that the glucoseconcentrations will go up. and so, in general, if youwere to wake up one morning after not having eatenfor more than eight hours, and you were to prickyour finger with one of those little glucose monitorsyou can get at the drug store, and in your finger,the blood sugar levels, if you were to findthem to be-- let's say you were to find them to beat 140, that's 140 milligrams per deciliter.
it's a good indication. i mean, you shouldn't freak out. you should do multipletests and make sure that it wasn't a falsereading or any of that. and you shoulddefinitely see a doctor. once again, don't view thisas any type of medical advice. that is not the purpose of this. the purpose of thisis just to understand a little bit of what's going on.
don't change your lifestylebased on anything i tell you. all right. but if you do experiencethat, it looks like, at least just fromthat one data point, that your body isn'tprocessing sugar properly. because you've had over eighthours to process the sugar, for insulin to go intoyour bloodstream and allow glucose to be taken up and getback down to a normal level. but it still hasn't gone there.
so if you were to testa value like that, you should be concerned. in general, the threshold, andi've seen multiple thresholds here, are between 100and-- i've seen high, kind of mid-120s to 130milligrams per deciliter. so that's kind of-- letme do it in this range. if your fasting bloodsugar is above this line right here-- remember,the fasting blood sugar. not after you've eaten a meal.
your preprandial,before a meal-- if it is above thatthreshold right over there, then you should at least-- youshould definitely see a doctor and make sure that they cansee if you have diabetes. but this would because for concern. another thing isif after a meal, it spikes wellbeyond that, we're talking if it gets beyond 180. and once again, theseare all just thresholds
that doctors have come up withand researchers have come up with that say, hey, thisis a good indication that somehow you are notprocessing glucose properly. so 180 is up here. and i'm drawing itas a squiggly line because it's kind of a range. it's not like if your bloodglucose is 124, you're safe. and all of a sudden at125, you have diabetes. no.
they're not thatdifferent than each other. but they have to setup some threshold just to kind of have athreshold, i guess. so if your blood sugar,after eating a meal, were to spike upto, let's say 200, once again, that wouldbe cause for concern. so in general, ifsomeone has diabetes, because they're not processingthe glucose properly, their blood glucose mightlook something like this.
so maybe theirfasting blood glucose is right around 125, 130. it can move around. then they have a meal. then it might spike up. obviously, they can processsome of the glucose. otherwise, they would die. but it's not beingprocessed properly. so the glucose levels don'tgo down to where they should.
and maybe some glucose getstaken up from the blood. obviously they'reliving, so their cells are metabolizing something. but it never gets down tothe normal 80 milligrams it might settle down, backto something in the 120 range or something like that, whichwould be cause for concern. and in general, ifyou're someplace-- i've seen the threshold ifyou're above 100 on a fasting basis, that's cause for concern.
you should maybeadjust your lifestyle. and if you're above 120,130 after meal, once again, you should also beslightly worried that you might maybeare prediabetic or you have some riskof developing diabetes. so if someone hasblood sugar like this, they're probably diabetic. and if someone hasblood sugar like this, they should be worried.
Hypoglycemia In Non Diabetics,
but once again, iam not a doctor. don't take any ofthis as advice. this is really just ourattempt to understand things a little bit better.
Since you now learn how to manage your condition, you happen to be greater prepared to create the right alternatives and changes in your lifetime. Remember that the following tips are only related when you use as a lot of them as possible, and so you ought to start off now to see prompt effects.
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