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Are You Ever Confused About Some Of The Terms Or Acronyms That Get Tossed Around When Discussing Or Reading About Diabetes?

A DiabetesTeam Member asked a question πŸ’­
Inverary, ON

Ok, I'm a little bored - no "real work" scheduled for a couple weeks and the roads are covered in snow/slippery so here I sit on my couch (which is inherently bad for a Diabetic) 😁

We don't have an Oxford Dictionary for Diabetics so I'm going to see if I can list every (term) that I'm aware of and others can add on because I'm sure I will miss a few

First, the "types" of Diabetes:

Type 1, formerly called Juvenile Diabetes - an auto-immune disease that usually strikes teens and younger… read more

January 29 (edited)
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A DiabetesTeam Member

Next we have some of the "blood sugar" terms

Low - for us that is Hypoglycemia, blood sugar lower than 3.9 mmols/70 points
High - Hyperglycemia - any blood sugar greater than 7.8 mmols/140 points

FBS - Fasting Blood Sugar - our sugar level when we haven't eaten, drank, chewed gum or done pretty much anything for a period of 8 to 12 hours

FPG - Fasting Plasma Glucose - same as FBS, just different words 😁

Random - as it sounds, a "random" blood sugar reading - any result below 11.0 mmols or 200 points is considered a Normal Random Number

P-PG - Pre-Prandial Glucose (wow) - it's just a sugar reading immediately "before" you start eating

PPG - without the hyphen just to confuse you is Post-Prandial Glucose - may be also seen as 2hrPPG indicating a blood sugar reading 2 hours after eating a meal

A1C - or more correctly HbA1c or our Glycated Haemoglobin level expressed as a percentage (or a number in the IFCC system (metric) - sure 😁

Ok, just a measurement of how much blood sugar is in our hemoglobin (english spelling above) which gives us a 90 day snapshot of what our average blood sugar level was during the "past" 3 months

It's now the Gold Standard for treatment decisions

S.M.B.G. - Self Monitored Blood Glucose - if you are still unsure this is the common "stick test" (it's real name) 😁

C.G.M. - Continuous Glucose Monitor - the Dexcom, Libre and other "sensors" that you wear to measure blood sugar levels in your interstitial fluid (fluid around our cells) - so this tells you the sugar level at the point where you are trying to feed the blood sugar to your cells - at this point any insulin resistance you have is at it's highest point

O.G.T.T. - Oral Glucose Tolerance Test - in the days before A1C test this test was used to confirm a Fasting Test that indicated Diabetes (technically you need two different tests or two A1C tests at least 90 days apart to diagnose diabetes)

The OGTT was cumbersome test that takes over 3 hours - you go to a Lab, do a "glucose shooter" of 75 or 100 grams worth of carbs and your BG is test before you do the shooter than at 1,2 and 3 hours after to track "what is going on"

I could go into things like DiRECT, ACCORD which stand for Diabetes REmission Clinical Trial or Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes - studies that have now formed some of the core treatment guidelines, but not "everyday" terms

So what am I missing??

Let's hear them

PS - just remembered one "old term" - IDDM or Insulin Dependent Diabetes Mellitus (and sorry, the "mellitus" part is actually the full name for the various forms as in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus) and in the "old days" IDDM was used to differentiate a Sugar Diabetic (Type 2) that used Insulin from a Juvenile Diabetic (Type 1)

And I forgot Type 3C - which is caused by damage or removal of the pancreas or another disease, like Covid, that attack the pancreas and impairs our insulin production (but not auto-immune)

7 days ago (edited)
A DiabetesTeam Member

@A DiabetesTeam Member Thanks for listing the diabetic terms. I was not familiar with some of the terms.

6 days ago
A DiabetesTeam Member

@A DiabetesTeam Member, thanks for the explanation. I wish I knew more about what my grandfather went through. My sister who is 7 years older than me said the Drs were baffled as to how or why a man at his age could develop his type of diabetes. If it’s rare or unusual I swear it happens in our familyπŸ˜‚

4 days ago
A DiabetesTeam Member

Thank you once again dear Graham for important infoπŸ™

6 days ago
A DiabetesTeam Member

@A DiabetesTeam Member Labile or "Brittle" Diabetes is "associated" with any of the Types although it is more prevalent in the auto-immune forms (Type 1 and LADA) and Insulin dependent Type 2's so "may" be related to insulin use (??)

It is a little known (condition) that causes unexplained rapid rises and falls in blood sugar, quite severe

It's not it's own Type is just a (modifier) for very tough to manage diabetes because of the "swings" so Type 1 can be "brittle" or Type 2 could be brittle as well

I have worked with diabetes groups for a number of years now and have only ever met 1 person that had Brittle Type 1 - just don't even hear about it otherwise, it's super rare

PS - just checked the statistics - less than 1% of Insulin Users have Brittle or Labile - so where 27% of "all types" of Diabetics use insulin, so approx 1 in every 400'ish insulin users will experience Brittle symptoms

That would mean only about 1 in every 1500 (all) diabetics would experience Labile or Brittle symptoms - so not very common at all and unless it was chronic you may not even equate it to anything other that "well that was weird" for a couple of days

7 days ago (edited)

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