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Good morning and welcome to Episode 042 of the Train Your Brain Podcast with Dr. Michael Trayford. Every Monday we produce a 30-minute episode. Tuesday through Sunday we produce episodes with five-minute tips. Every episode of the Train Your Brain Podcast features a tip, so you can receive pointers 365 days a year that will help enhance the performance of your brain!
In Episode 042, Dr. Trayford provides you with another way to measure how your body is handling sugar. In addition to having your blood sugar levels tested, you can have your Hemoglobin A1c tested. Beyond just providing a mere snapshot, this test also lets you know what kind of long-term damage you may be sustaining from the way your body is processing sugar.
If you have any concerns regarding the information and applications discussed in this podcast, please consult your physician and a doctor who is experienced in functional neurology. Michael Trayford DC, DACNB is available for consultation by calling (828) 708-5274. Thanks for listening.
Today we’re going to be talking about a Know Your Numbers, type of tip. Earlier we talked about blood sugar in a previous tip. Fasting blood glucose is sort of a snap shot in time. It tells you about what’s happening with your blood sugar at that specific moment.
What we’re talking about in this tip is Hemoglobin A1C.
Have you heard of this Jason?
Jason: Ummm. No, I have not actually.
Well that’s fair. More and more doctors are starting to order Hemoglobin A1C tests. Anyone that has any blood sugar handling problems, like hypoglycemia, hyperglycemia, and diabetes. Hemoglobin A1C is something that is being looked at almost as a standard test these days.
There are cases where we’re seeing people that are not getting that type of testing done and we do this type of test with almost every single client we see simply because, as we talked about the fasting blood glucose is a snapshot in time. It’s that moment of your blood sugar and that’s it.
Hemoglobin A1C is a good two to three-month window of how your body is handling blood sugar. Basically the test looks at your red blood cells and the compounds associated with them. The life cycle of red blood cell is about two to three months long. It allows us to see what kind of damage is being done to certain components of the red blood cell.
We can start to see this particular factor Hemoglobin A1C, which is also known as glycated hemoglobin. We can see what kind of damage is being done to this particular substance due to too much sugar in the blood stream.
When there’s too much sugar in the blood stream it does damage to the blood vessel walls, the red blood cells themselves and many other things in the body. We can start to see the accumulation of that in this particular marker.
Some blood works have very big ranges. You will sometimes see these numbers like 28 to 100 on the reference range. And you say My Goodness! That’s a big-big range. Hemoglobin A1C is a fairly specific test and we basically what would be considered normal levels for Hemoglobin A1C is about 4 to 5.6%.
If someone is getting over 5.5% we start to infer that this person may have some challenges with blood sugar handling. They may have too much sugar floating around their blood stream. This is a really great number for people to help manage their diabetes.
We’ve seen people with double the normal values. This tells us that they have very severe type-2 diabetes. With that, we can use the numbers to our advantage. You don’t want to hide your head in the sand, so to speak. You want to know what your numbers are in regard to fasting blood glucose and Hemoglobin A1C. This helps you start to accumulate the knowledge of the things that need to be address with how the brain is working.
As we’ve talked about in the past. You brain needs a steady supply of fuel, which in most cases means sugar. You want to make sure that you don’t have too little or too much in the blood stream, because both cases could be damaging to the brain.
Hemoglobin A1C. Look it up. Basically it can be looked up as Hemoglobin A1C or 2HBA1C is another way it can be referenced and researched as well. You’ll find a ton of information on WebMD and all of those sites. But make sure your doctor is testing this whether you have diabetes or not, because it’s a great indicator that you might be heading towards diabetes.
Jason: when you were reading that stuff off Doctor Trayford, I got Bingo!
I love it! That’s great.
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