My doctor orders something called a Hemoglobin A1C (or glycohemoglobin). What is it and why do I need to have it measured?
A hemoglobin A1C (glycosylated hemoglobin or glycohemoglobin) is a measurement of the percentage of the hemoglobin molecules in your red blood cells that have a glucose bound to them. The number that is reported doesn’t sound like a blood sugar. It’s expressed as a percentage, e.g. 7.3%. But it correlates to your average blood sugar value over the three months prior to the time that the blood was drawn. Imagine that you could measure a blood sugar once a minute, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, over a three month period. If you took all of those numbers and averaged them, you would get a pretty good idea of how your blood glucose has been running over a three month interval. That’s how the hemoglobin A1C works, and in general, the lower the average the better. However, like all averages where lower is better, there are two ways to get a good value: the blood sugar values can be predominantly in the target range, or there can be equal numbers of highs and lows.
A hemoglobin A1C (glycosylated hemoglobin or glycohemoglobin) is a measurement of the percentage of the hemoglobin molecules in your red blood cells that have a glucose bound to them. The number that is reported doesn’t sound like a blood sugar. It’s expressed as a percentage, e.g. 7.3%. But it correlates to your average blood sugar value over the three months prior to the time that the blood was drawn. Imagine that you could measure a blood sugar once a minute, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, over a three month period. If you took all of those numbers and averaged them, you would get a pretty good idea of how your blood glucose has been running over a three month interval. That’s how the hemoglobin A1C works, and in general, the lower the average the better. However, like all averages where lower is better, there are two ways to get a good value: the blood sugar values can be predominantly in the target range, or there can be equal numbers of highs and lows. Clearly, the former is
