Hi there I am Christel from Diabetes Strong and in this video I'm going to
show you how to check your A1C either at home or
in a clinic so I'm going to take you through three
ways of checking your A1C or your hemoglobin A1C same thing
so the first one is an at-home test looks like this the one I'm gonna
do and it's everything is at home which you get the results in five
minutes so that's convenient second one is
also a home test looks like this I will be drawing my blood at home and then
sending this into a lab so they say that I should have the
results of my A1C test after about three days
so the third way is simply to go to the lab and get my blood drawn
so when I do that they expect the results to be back in three to five days
so your A1C or your hemoglobin A1C shows you your average blood sugars for the
last three months so that can be a really good indicator
whether or not your blood sugars on average
are within your desired range so it's not an equal average though in the sense
that your blood sugars from the last two to
three weeks will weigh a little heavier on that average
so people not living with diabetes generally have A1C's or 5.7 percent or
lower but that doesn't mean that people living
with diabetes should necessarily aim to go that low
so your A1C target should be tailored to you
specifically so you should be working with your medical team and figuring out
you know what is the right target for you so the American Diabetes
Association they generally recommend A1C's of seven
percent or lower that's about 154 milligrams per
deciliter or 8.6 millimole per liter but that doesn't
mean that that's the right target for you
maybe you need to be more aggressive maybe you need to be less aggressive
again it should be tailored so I've been learning type one diabetes since 97
and I've had A1C's from the high eights to the high
fives so it's a pretty wide range and today I aim for an A1C of about
six to six point five percent but that's what works for me
and for my lifestyle if you want to learn more about A1C's or
maybe even how to lower it I will link to an article on diabetestrong.com where
you can find all of those details
so we're going to start out with this at home test
so it comes with a very extensive manual I can
tell you I've already done it once because first time it came out with not enough
blood anyway let's try again so start out with
this pouch number one open that of course prior to that wash
your hands with soap and you dry them so my hands are really
clean right now so start out so this is a lancet device
so this is what's going to prick your finger
so we're going to start with that let's do that here find a place that we know
bleeds well just push it and there's a nice blood draw
so I'm gonna do so this is a little extra than they actually said in the
manual but given I got a faulty reading before
then you collect the blood with this hold it over to the blood drop and see
that it simply sucks up the blood okay so that should be be enough blood
you can see the whole strip is full next step is to put this
into the blood collector which is this guy
so you simply push it in
see there you can still see the edge push it in so it's firm okay then you
shake it off shake it shake it shake it
all righty and we're gonna put this to the side so
put it on the little foot so that's going to stand there for now
so next you're going to get your A1C meter out
and you're going to open this next pouch
so this is a cartridge okay see this says G4 there it says G4
there so that's how it goes into the device pick up your device
simply slide it in it's telling you to wait
okay so while it's calibrating I guess now it says sample okay so the sample is
in here in our blood collector so what we do is
we're going to take it up you're going to take off the foot
squeeze off the foot and then simply put that
part with your blood sample into the collector
push down there we go
and nothing happened so let's try again
there we go so see what I did wrong first I didn't push this part
so remember to push that part down that's what's going to release
the blood sample and now the countdown has begun
so it will take five minutes
alrighty and there we have our results so it's like
telling us QCOK which means that the test is good
and it's saying that it's an A1C of six percent
that's how that works
so next we're going to do this at home test so basically we're going to collect
the blood and send it to a lab that then will
run the A1C and send it back to me so
this one also comes with a fairly detailed instruction so that should make
it easier to to do so basically what it
tells us is wash your hands first I already did that
they're dry so next thing I'm just going to put these aside
this one is open up the pouch so let's just open it and drop all this
stuff out here
okay that one we don't need yet so these this is basically what we need so these
are just bandages if you think that you're gonna need that that's
I don't think I'll need those but we'll leave those there and this is gauze
so open that one up first
and just you know leave it here to the side
so again your hand should be dry
by now so this is your lancing lancet device so this
is what's going to prick your finger you will need more blood than you do for a
regular finger test so be aware of that so process here is prick my finger
squeeze that blood just pour that into there until that little
triangle turns completely red once that's red I know there's enough
blood sample enough blood in the sample if my hand sort of dries
up as I stop bleeding I can use the gauze
to help you know help it bleed more I guess so
let's try so you open that up now I need to choose
a place so let's just choose here
okay put that over there and I'm going to start bleeding
that's a nice pretty blood so we're going to be like
dripping the blood see how I do that drip the blood into the container
this blood is sticky
so that's one blood drop
there's another blood drop
I'm gonna just keep pushing so this is a good bleeding finger you see there's a
lot of blood still the triangle is not hasn't turned
red yet so it's still not enough so we're just
gonna keep bleeding
blood all over the place
blood I think it's almost turning
so I think what is this our fourth blood drop
kind of looks like it's big enough sample just to be sure let's just add
another one
and I'm not touching the pad I'm just it's helping me get the blood drops off
so look at that so now it definitely looks like
a little triangle is full of blood all right I'm going to use the gauze
just dry off my finger so next step is simply put this away let
it dry out for 15 minutes so 1-5 15 minutes while you do that
just make sure nothing else gets on it so while you do that
you can fill out the card the sample collection card that needs to be filled
out that needs to then be put
on this
sorry needs to be put on this pouch which is where the sample will go
into once you have all of that collected again wait 15 minutes
I'm gonna put it in a pre-paid postage it's an envelope
and just put it in the mailbox and you will get the results
so I've now had my blood sample sitting out for 15 minutes to dry out
meanwhile, I filled out the label with my name and address
so next step is to cut open the pouch
go open that up
see just leave that one in that's to keep it dry put in your sample
close the pouch okay then you simply put it in the
envelope
there we go seal that
and I then just drop that off in the nearest mailbox and hold on to my
little record number here so you know I can trace my sample so
basically I'm going to put this in the mailbox depending on how long
the mail is going to be it's going to be maybe a few days to get there and then
they want to mail me the results back so let's see what they say
I finally got the results back from the lab
it took the mail two weeks to get to the lab
only took them a few days to do my actual A1C test and took another two
weeks for this letter to end up in my mailbox
I did call the lab after the two weeks and they gave me the result but
let's open the letter together nobody gets snail mail anymore
see what it looks like so
page one is just saying what are we doing
here we go see if you guys can see that there we go so this one says six point five
so I'm about to go get my A1C done at the lab
so I booked an appointment online with a lab I got the
lab work request for my doctor and I'm ready to go
so I'm done at the lab I got my blood drawn
and all I got to show for it is a little band-aid so far
it took about half an hour including check-in
spending time in the waiting room and then actually get the blood drawn
I should get the results in my electronic inbox in three to five days
so let's see what it says
so it ended up only taking the lab one day to process my blood work and sending
my A1C so that was fast and you can see a
screenshot of it right here so the way that it works is I
went through something called Quest labs what they did was once they're done
processing my blood work they sent me an email saying hey your
results are now available in your electronic inbox
I just log on online and there are my results
that was three different ways of measuring my A1C
definitely pros and cons to each of those I think my favorite is probably
the at-home test I mean you can't beat that that was five
minutes didn't require a lot of blood it's fairly easy I did have to go
through two tries before I got it but overall that was
very easy second would be going to the lab
especially if you need to get other blood work done
like I did that day it just makes more sense
also I do really trust the labs I know that there can be a little bit of
differences between the labs but you know that the quality is high
there of course then you have to get in your
car you have to drive there to get the results so that's a little
bit more time consuming you might also have to pay more out of pocket
for going to a lab I'm not super impressed with the
with the sample where I had to send it in and then get my results back
just because it took so long that's not any fault of the lab obviously that
is the mail system right now but also it came back 0.5 higher than my two
other A1C tests which you know makes me doubt it just a
little bit so overall three different ways choose
whatever is most convenient for you just know that there are pros and cons to
each of them I hope you enjoyed this video on how to
measure A1C at home or in the lab give it a like and
let me know your comments down below with your experience
of getting our A1C done thank you so much for watching