Usually, your pancreas releases insulin when blood glucose, also known as sugar level, increases, such as after a meal. This instructs the body to take up glucose until the levels are normal.
However, if you have diabetes, either type 1 or type 2, your body does not produce insulin or react to it appropriately. Your blood sugar may remain excessively high for an extended period. Over time, this may erode blood vessels and nerves, causing heart disease and other issues.
How much blood sugar is too much? Why is high glucose such a health risk? The impact of your levels on your health is seen below.
What Blood Sugar Levels Are Typical?
After at least 8 hours of not eating (fasting), they are fewer than 100 mg/dL. Two hours after eating, they are fewer than 140 mg/dL.
Just before meals is usually when levels are lowest throughout the day. Before meals, blood sugar levels for most persons without diabetes range from 70 to 80 mg/dL. While 90 is the norm for some, 60 is for others.
What does low blood sugar mean? It also differs significantly. Even with extended fasting, the glucose level of many individuals will never drop below 60. The liver maintains your classes while you diet or fast by converting fat and muscle to sugar. Some people’s levels can drop a little bit.
Diagnosis of Diabetes
Doctors use these tests to determine whether a patient has diabetes:
- Test for fasting plasma glucose. After an 8-hour fast, the doctor checks your blood sugar levels and finds that they are greater than 126 mg/dL.
- Test for oral glucose tolerance. After an eight-hour fast, you are given a unique sweet beverage. Your blood sugar level exceeds 200 two hours later.
- Check at random. Your blood sugar was above 200 when the doctor checked it, and you were also urinating more often, always thirsty, and had either gained or lost a large amount of weight. The diagnosis will be verified with an oral glucose tolerance or fasting blood sugar level test.
Unhealthy sugar levels are those that are greater than usual. Prediabetes is the medical term for blood sugar levels more significant than normal but does not yet indicate full-blown diabetes.
Eighty-six million Americans are estimated to have this disease, which, if you don’t follow the healthy lifestyle modifications that your doctor advises, might progress to diabetes. Although not as much as diabetes, it also increases the risk of heart disease. With proper food and exercise, prediabetes may be prevented from developing into diabetes.
Elevated Blood Sugar
Why is having a high blood sugar level unhealthy? When present in your body in regular quantities, glucose is priceless fuel for all your cells. It may, however, behave slowly and poisonously.
The cells in your pancreas that produce insulin steadily lose their capacity as your blood sugar levels rise. The organ overcompensates, resulting in persistently elevated insulin levels. The pancreas suffers lasting harm over time.
High blood sugar levels may bring about changes that result in atherosclerosis or the hardening of the blood arteries.
Too much sugar may affect almost any area of your body. Blood vessel damage results in issues like:
- Dialysis is necessary for renal illness or failure
- Strokes
- Cardiac arrests
- Blindness or a lack of vision
- Immune system impairment increases the risk of infection.
- Erection problems
- Damage to the nerves, also known as neuropathy, results in tingling, discomfort, or loss of feeling in the hands, legs, and feet.
- A lack of blood flow to the feet and legs
- Slow wound healing and the uncommon possibility of an amputation
To prevent many of these issues, keep your blood sugar levels near to normal. The American Diabetes Association recommends blood sugar levels of 70 to 130 mg/dL before meals and fewer than 180 mg/dL after meals for patients with diabetes.
Detecting Blood Sugar
If you have diabetes, your doctor could advise you to monitor it by measuring your blood sugar at home using a specialized tool called a home blood sugar meter. It detects the quantity of glucose in a tiny blood sample, often from the tip of your finger.
Pay attention to your doctor’s recommendations about how to utilize your device.
You’ll learn when and how to test your blood sugar from your doctor. Record it each time you do it in a journal, an online tool, or an app. Your doctor may be concerned about a reading depending on the time of day, your recent activities, your most recent meal, and other factors. So, strive to record pertinent data such as:
- What medications did you take, and what was their dose
- Whether you fasted, when you fasted, or what you ate
- What kind of exercise you were doing, if any, and how much of it you were doing