How Much Can A1C Drop In 3 Months?
Healthful Vitality | 11/29/2022 | How Much Can A1C Drop In 3 Months?
If you are asking this question, it means that you have been recently diagnosed with a diagnosis. So naturally, people are frightened once diagnosed and want to normalize their blood glucose values as soon as possible.
However, one needs to understand that most adults are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, a kind of diabetes that develops over several years. It is diabetes that occurs due to years or even decades of neglect. It never appears overnight or all of a sudden.
Type 2 diabetes is often associated with obesity. One is considered to be living with diabetes if the value is above 6.5% or above.
Though a person with A1C above 6.5% is regarded as living with diabetes, most of those diagnosed with diabetes have values much higher than this. It is not uncommon to have A1C 9% or 11%, or even more.
A1C is a very reliable test. It is more reliable than commonly sold glucometer. Moreover, it is a kind of test that never cheats. It does not provide information about blood glucose levels at the time of the test. Instead, it is an average blood glucose level for the last three months.
This test is called the glycated hemoglobin test, which measures the glucose accumulated in the red blood cells over the last few months or the last three to four months. Since the average age of red blood cells is 90-120 days.
How much A1C can one drop in 3 months?
As one sees, it is the average blood glucose level for the last 3-4 months, and the moving average cannot be reduced quickly. Hence A1C drops gradually over a few weeks. This is unlike the fasting blood glucose test.
In a fasting blood glucose test, one may significantly cut down the intake of carbs and start taking medications, and one can see blood glucose coming down within a day or two.
However, even if blood glucose drops to normal levels or significantly, the A1C test will continue to show higher blood glucose, as it does not show blood glucose values for the last few days but for the previous few months.
Since the average lifespan of red blood cells is three to four months, one can still see a significant drop in A1C levels. One can even drop it to normal levels with a strict diet and medications.
It means that dropping A1C below 7% or even below 6.5% is quite realistic. However, much would depend on the initial values and how well one controls diabetes.
A significant drop in A1C in three months is only possible through consistent effort. However, unlike other tests, a few days of effort will not work. If you have blood spikes during the day, hemoglobin will become increasingly glycated, and one will fail to see the expected decline in A1C.
To sum up, most people can expect to see a 10-25% decline in A1C in three months. However, it is only possible through extensive treatment and by following a strict diet. Some people living with mild to moderate diabetes can expect their A1C to drop below 7%, even if initial values were relatively high. Again, though, such a drastic change would require significant effort.
Related Article: What Does A1c 5.9 Indicate?