There are several tests that you’re going to need when you go to the diabetic clinic. The commonest is of course, blood sugar and what that does is to measure the amount of sugar in your blood at the time that you take the test. It’s like a snapshot, if you like. But if you want to get a better picture, you need more than a snapshot, you need a movie. You want to be able to see the whole thing.

And there’s another test that does that, it’s called the HBA1C. HB stands for hemoglobin but it’s got nothing to do with whether you’re anemic or not. It’s a chemical that’s produced in response to your diabetic control. If your diabetic control, not just today, but over the last month or so has not been good, then your HBA1C will have gone up. So that is a very good test not just at finding out whether things are OK - not just today, because we all clean our teeth before we go to the dentist, don’t we - it’s a much better test at finding out whether we’re really getting our diabetes under control and if that’s up, we really should be talking with our professional to see if there are ways of bringing it down.

Posted: 15/01/2009