Almost every time I ask my patients and friends to be vigilant about carbohydrate consumption, they assert that they are not diabetic because they had a normal reading on their fasting blood sugar (or glucose) test or glucose tolerance test, or both. People can easily be lulled into the belief that they are healthy. But a fasting blood test does not tell the whole story, by a long shot!
A diagnosis of diabetes mellitus (DM) is made only when either the patient’s fasting blood glucose (FBG) is 126 mg% or higher, or his two-hour glucose tolerance test (GTT), after drinking up to 75 grams of glucose in water, was 140 mg% or more. You would be told that you are pre-diabetic if your fasting blood glucose was in the range between 100 mg% and 125 mg%. Very few physicians and academicians are concerned about the magnitude of blood glucose after each meal inside the window of two hours, so long as both the FBG and GTT are within normal limits. However, with my intensive literature review and careful personal experiments, I have concluded that the magnitude of blood glucose after each meal is the most important key to our health.
Because of this, I am launching a new awareness campaign: I’m asking you to commit to having an annual two-hour series of glucose tests. Have your glucose level check just before beginning a meal, and at regular intervals over the next 120 minutes. The test results help an individual to understand the relationship between the amount and types of consumed carbohydrates and the level of rising blood glucose, and help discover abnormal blood glucose readings sooner, preventing or managing diabetes mellitus and other diseases.
For more information, view my video, “A Series of Blood Glucose Tests On Foods”, at www.carbohydratescankill.com or read my in-depth article, Why Does Everyone Need Annual Series Of Blood Glucose Tests?
Robert Su, Pharm.B., M.D.
