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I am often asked this question, “What is a normal blood sugar?” It should be relatively easy to answer, but there is a lot of potential confusion that I need to clarify.
Sugar is the name for any one of many edible carbohydrates that taste sweet. The common one that you know is table sugar, which is actually sucrose, the sugar in sugar cane and sugar beets. Then there is the sugar in fruits, called fructose. But the sugar that really affects your life is glucose. This is the sugar that floats around in your blood, providing energy for your muscles, food for your brain cells and power for the millions of chemical reactions that take place in your body.
The and the have established levels of glucose that are considered normal and levels that establish a . These levels refer to the amount of glucose in the blood and are given in units called milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl). Most of the rest of the world uses International Units called millimoles per liter (mmol/L). You can transfer milligrams per deciliter into millimoles per liter by dividing the mg/dl by 18. For example, 126 mg/dl is equal to 7 mmol/L.
Here are the levels that these authorities have established:
That leaves a range of blood glucose from 100 to 125 mg/dl in the fasting state and 140 to 199 mg/dl in the fed state unaccounted for. If you have either one of those situations, you are considered to have prediabetes, a state that could turn into diabetes but may not depending on how you respond with weight loss and exercise.
Symptoms associated with a low blood glucose usually begin around 60 mg/dl, but it is not the same for each person. It occurs when you are taking a medication to lower high blood glucose and you fail to eat, do too much exercise or take too much medication. Your body does everything it can to maintain a satisfactory level of blood glucose. If it goes too low, these are the symptoms of low blood glucose:
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