Health Center - Diabetes
About eight percent of all Americans have diabetes, and the rate is increasing. Learn more about this prevalent and life-threatening disease, including common symptoms, how it affects your health, tips to manage it and prevent complications and ways to reduce your risk factors.
Diabetes Guide
Know Your Blood Sugar Basics
- Blood sugar, or glucose, provides vital energy to all our cells. The hormone insulin, produced in the pancreas, helps glucose get into those cells.
- Blood sugar levels rise and fall to balance your body's needs: up after eating, down when you need to eat.
- When blood sugar rises too high, it causes insulin resistance and prevents glucose from delivering its energy properly. Insulin resistance increases when you're overweight, especially if you carry extra weight in your mid-section.
- Only medical tests can show if you have a healthy blood sugar level. You may be tested after not eating (fasting) for a specific amount of time. Fasting blood sugar levels:
- Normal: 70 to 99 mg/dl
- Prediabetic: 100 to 125 mg/dl
- Diabetic: 126 mg/dl or above
You might also drink a sugary drink and then be tested with an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT). If your OGTT score is 140 mg/dl to 199 mg/dl you're prediabetic; above that is diabetes.
