Before considering what your blood glucose level is, it is important for you to know what the numbers mean. What glucose level, for example, means that you have diabetes? What level is undeniably in the non-diabetic range? This distinction has occupied many committees for many years. The World Health Organization has produced the most widely agreed guidelines.The diagnosis of diabetes must be made before any treatment is begun. The internationally agreed guidelines assume that people are eating their usual diet and not taking glucose-lowering medication. If you have symptoms of diabetes (for example, thirst and passing a lot of urine), a single laboratory measurement of glucose in a sample of blood taken from a vein is sufficient to make the diagnosis of diabetes. If the glucose concentration is 7.8 mmol/1 or more (140 mg/dl in America) if you have fasted overnight, or if the glucose is 11.1 or more (200 mg/dl) if you have eaten, then you have diabetes.If you have no symptoms of diabetes, two blood samples must show a glucose concentration above these levels before the diagnosis of diabetes can be confirmed.If your fasting blood glucose is below 6.7 mmol/1 (120 mg/dl) or a sample after food is below 7.8 mmol/1 (140 mg/dl) you do not have diabetes. There is a grey area in between these figures and those which define diabetes. People whose blood glucose levels fall within this grey area are said to have impaired glucose tolerance. You may return to normal, stay as you are or progress to definite frank diabetes.
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