What tests detect diabetes?

What tests detect diabetes?

Anne Peters, MD, FACP, CDE (Professor and Director of Clinical Diabetes Programs, USC Keck School of Medicine) gives expert video advice on: What are the symptoms of type 2 diabetes?; When should I get emergency care if I have diabetes?; Why should I should I have my urine checked if I have diabetes? and more...

The good news is that it's really easy to detect diabetes, because it's a disorder of blood sugar. We know that a normal blood sugar is 100 or less. So, if you go in to see your doctor, and you haven't eaten anything overnight, you have, what we call, fasted for twelve hours (you can have water). They check your blood sugar, and if it's between 100 and 125, it means you have pre-diabetes, or you're someone who's on the way to get diabetes. If your blood sugar is 126 or more, it means you have diabetes. Now, in medicine, we never do anything once, so we say that if your number's abnormal, you need to go back in and have it rechecked so that we can make sure that that's truly the diagnosis. It's more important to me, though, that people know that they're at risk. Say your blood sugar's 112 this year and then it becomes 126 next year. What's happening is that you're just gradually getting worse and worse, and what you want to do as an individual is to change whatever you can change, or take medication, so that the disease doesn't get worse.