“Borderline” Diabetes??

You won’t find the term “borderline” diabetes in current medical textbooks about diabetes. I tell my students that “borderline diabetes” is a little like a “borderline touchdown”.

Neither of those terms makes much sense. There’s a line in the grass and if you cross that line you have a touchdown. There’s a line across the blood glucose levels that marks the “field” into three sections: normal, pre-diabetes, and diabetes.

Fasting blood sugar less than 100 mg/dl is NOT diabetes. From 100 to 125 mg/dl is considered “pre-diabetes”. Fasting blood sugar 126 mg/dl and higher means “real” diabetes.

Who says?!? The American Diabetes Association. Do those numbers surprise you? I’ve been a nurse for lots and lots of years and the numbers were different when I went to school in the olden days.

But those are the numbers NOW. The numbers have been changed over time for very good reasons. We can talk about those reasons later. But for now, I encourage you to “know your numbers”. What’s your fasting blood sugar?