High Blood Sugar, Diabetes, and Your Body What is your normal blood sugar ?

Your blood sugar (also known as blood glucose) levels may be continuously high if you have diabetes. This can harm your health over time and cause a variety of additional issues.

How much blood sugar is too much? Why is high glucose such a health risk? The impact of your levels on your health is seen below.

What Are Normal Blood Sugar Levels ?

After at least 8 hours of not eating (fasting), they are fewer than 100 mg/dL. And two hours after eating, they are fewer than 140 mg/dL.

Just before meals is usually when levels are lowest during the day. Before meals, blood sugar levels for the majority of people without diabetes range from 70 to 80 mg/dL. While 90 is the norm for some, 60 is for others.

What does low blood sugar mean? It also differs greatly. Even with prolonged fasting, the glucose level of many people will never drop below 60. The liver maintains your levels while you diet or fast by converting fat and muscle to sugar. Some people’s levels can drop a little bit.

Diagnosis

Doctors use these tests to find out if you have diabetes:

• Test for fasting plasma glucose. After an 8-hour fast, the doctor checks your blood sugar levels and finds that they are greater than 126 mg/dL.
• Test for oral glucose tolerance. After an eight-hour fast, you are given a special sugary beverage. Your blood sugar level is higher than 200 after two hours.
• Random test Your blood sugar was above 200 when the doctor checked it, and you were also peeing more frequently, always thirsty, and had either gained or lost a large amount of weight. The diagnosis will next be verified with an oral glucose tolerance test or a fasting blood sugar level test.

Unhealthy sugar levels are any that are greater than usual. Prediabetes is the medical term for blood sugar levels that are greater than normal but do not yet indicate full-blown diabetes.

86 million Americans are estimated to have this condition, which, if you don’t make the healthy lifestyle modifications that your doctor advises, might progress to diabetes. Although not as much as diabetes, it also increases the risk of heart disease. With proper food and exercise, prediabetes can be prevented from developing into diabetes.

Sugar and Your Body

Why is having a high blood sugar level unhealthy? When present in your body at regular quantities, glucose serves as priceless fuel for all of your cells. It can, however, behave slowly poisonous.

The cells in your pancreas that produce insulin slowly lose their ability as your blood sugar levels rise. The organ overcompensates, resulting in persistently high insulin levels. The pancreas suffers lasting harm over time.

High blood sugar levels can bring about changes that result in atherosclerosis, or the hardening of the blood vessels.

Too much sugar can affect almost any area of your body. Blood vessel damage results in issues like:

• Kidney disease or kidney failure, requiring dialysis
• Strokes
• Heart attacks
• Vision loss or blindness
• Weakened immune system, with a greater risk of infections
• Erectile dysfunction
• Nerve damage, also called neuropathy, that causes tingling, pain, or less sensation in your feet, legs, and hands
• Poor circulation to the legs and feet
• Slow wound-healing and the potential for amputation in rare cases