Let's think a little bit about how
we can tell whether our body is processing glucose properly,
and whether maybe we have diabetes.
And I want you all to 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 just explore the subject with you,
and to try for all of us to get a better
understanding of things.
So let's think about what might happen after we have a meal.
So let me draw a little chart over here.
So let's call this hours.
And then on the vertical axis, I'm
going to talk about our concentration of sugar
in the blood.
So blood sugar concentration.
You could call it glucose concentration.
Blood sugar concentration.
When we're talking about blood sugar,
we're talking about glucose.
And let me draw a couple of points on this chart.
So maybe this is 50.
And our units are going to be milligrams per deciliter.
Actually, let me just do it this way.
Let me just say that everything is in milligrams per deciliter.
And we'll talk in future videos about how
we can relate these units to everyday terms.
But let's say that this right here is 50.
This right here is 100.
This right here is 150.
And let's mark it right here at 200.
So let's think about what would happen for a normal person.
Let me mark some hours over here.
So hour 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
That's probably good enough.
So in a normal person, when they haven't eaten anything
for a long time, let's say greater than 8 hours--
so their fasting blood sugar will
be right around 80 milligrams per deciliter,
give or take a little bit.
There's a range around that, but I just
want to show you what would happen to a normal person.
So at 80 milligrams per deciliter,
their blood sugar will kind of be--
should, hopefully, be right around there.
And sometimes this fasting blood sugar--
and maybe we're assuming that this is in the morning.
So maybe this hour one is 7:00 in the morning.
So they haven't eaten for a while,
and that's why it's fasting blood sugar.
This is also-- you'll sometimes hear doctors,
I've heard my wife say this word without knowing
what it meant-- they'll sometimes say preprandial,
which is a very fancy word which just means before a meal,
prandial is literally before eating.
After the meal, you're talking postprandial.
So it's a very fancy word for a very simple idea, eating.
So let's say at hour two, this individual eats breakfast.
So this is where the individual is going to eat breakfast.
Now in a normal person, when that person eats breakfast,
there'll be some carbohydrates in that breakfast,
and it will be broken down into glucose,
and that glucose will enter the bloodstream.
And so their blood glucose will go up.
It'll slowly go up.
And I was reading some studies.
They say it kind of spikes at about 45 minutes into a meal.
So let's see.
45 minutes is over there.
So maybe it'll go up to about there.
And in a normal individual, the blood glucose really
shouldn't go up above 120 milligrams per deciliter.
And there's obviously exceptions to all of these.
We're just kind of saying, a normal breakfast,
a normal person.
They're not eating a pint of honey.
They're not doing something crazy.
So let's say 120 would be right around there.
A normal person, someone who does not have diabetes,
it would be unlikely that it would go above that.
And then actually, after about two hours,
they're getting pretty close to normal.
They get back under 100 milligrams per deciliter.
And then you go beyond two hours,
they just kind of get close, back to their baseline,
to that 80 milligrams per deciliter.
So once again, this is normal.
And of course, don't freak out if you
were to take a blood test one morning,
and you were at like 85 milligrams per deciliter.
You're still not far off from normal.
So obviously, there's some variation
from person to person.
Now, if someone has diabetes, if either they have type 1,
they don't have enough insulin to actually process
the glucose, or if they have enough insulin,
but their body is desensitized to it.
The insulin isn't being processed properly
so they can't process the glucose,
we've seen that the glucose concentrations will go up.
And so, in general, if you were to wake up one morning
after not having eaten for more than eight hours,
and you were to prick your finger with one
of those little glucose monitors you can get at the drug store,
and in your finger, the blood sugar levels,
if you were to find them to be-- Let's say
you were to find them to be at 140, that's 140 milligrams
per deciliter.
It's a good indication.
I mean, you shouldn't freak out.
You should do multiple tests and make sure
that it wasn't a false reading or any of that.
And you should definitely see a doctor.
Once again, don't view this as any type of medical advice.
That is not the purpose of this.
The purpose of this is just to understand
a little bit of what's going on.
Don't change your lifestyle based on anything I tell you.
All right.
But if you do experience that, it looks
like, at least just from that one data point,
that your body isn't processing sugar properly.
Because you've had over eight hours to process the sugar,
for insulin to go into your bloodstream and allow
glucose to be taken up and get back down to a normal level.
But it still hasn't gone there.
So if you were to test a value like that,
you should be concerned.
In general, the threshold, and I've seen multiple thresholds
here, are between 100 and-- I've seen high,
kind of mid-120s to 130 milligrams per deciliter.
So that's kind of-- let me do it in this range.
If your fasting blood sugar 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 that threshold right over there,
then you should at least-- you should definitely see a doctor
and make sure that they can see if you have diabetes.
But this would be cause for concern.
Another thing is if after a meal,
it spikes well beyond that, we're
talking if it gets beyond 180.
And once again, these are all just thresholds
that doctors have come up with and researchers have come up
with that say, hey, this is a good indication
that somehow you are not processing glucose properly.
So 180 is up here.
And I'm drawing it as a squiggly line
because it's kind of a range.
It's not like if your blood glucose is 124, you're safe.
And all of a sudden at 125, you have diabetes.
No.
They're not that different than each other.
But they have to set up some threshold just
to kind of have a threshold, I guess.
So if your blood sugar, after eating a meal,
were to spike up to, let's say 200,
once again, that would be cause for concern.
So in general, if someone has diabetes,
because they're not processing the glucose properly,
their blood glucose might look something like this.
So maybe their fasting blood glucose
is right around 125, 130.
It can move around.
Then they have a meal.
Then it might spike up.
Obviously, they can process some of the glucose.
Otherwise, they would die.
But it's not being processed properly.
So the glucose levels don't go down to where they should.
And maybe some glucose gets taken up from the blood.
Obviously they're living, so their cells
are metabolizing something.
But it never gets down to the normal 80 milligrams
per deciliter.
It might settle down, back to something in the 120 range
or something like that, which would be cause for concern.
And in general, if you're someplace--
I've seen the threshold if you're above 100 on a fasting
basis, that's cause for concern.
You should maybe adjust your lifestyle.
And if you're above 120, 130 after meal, once again,
you should also be slightly worried
that you might maybe are prediabetic
or you have some risk of developing diabetes.
So if someone has blood sugar like this,
they're probably diabetic.
And if someone has blood sugar like this,
they should be worried.
But once again, I am not a doctor.
Don't take any of this as advice.
This is really just our attempt to understand
things a little bit better.