Documentary "A Movie About Sugar" and the mystery of blood sugar

This is the 5273rd article of Da Yi Xiao Hu

Poverty is often linked to hunger, but strangely, in the developed country of the United States, obesity also goes hand in hand with poverty. The documentary "A Movie About Sugar" reveals this phenomenon. With the industrialization of the food industry, the conflict between the pursuit of profits by large companies and the public's health needs has intensified. Large companies occupy the market, including schools, and fast food and junk food have become children's daily diet. The high-sugar food industry not only affects the market and policies, but also changes eating habits, leading to serious childhood obesity. Although people call for healthy eating, it is difficult to change the status quo and there are doubts about the food system. The documentary points out the problems of the government and large companies, but ignores personal responsibility and the reasoning is not deep enough. However, the film's spirit of daring to expose the truth and protect interests is still commendable, and they also make everyone begin to reflect on healthy eating.

What is blood sugar?

From a medical professional perspective, blood sugar is undoubtedly a key factor in maintaining human health. Its balance is crucial. Whether it is too high or too low, it will have adverse effects on the body. Blood sugar, in short, is the glucose flowing in the blood. It is the direct source of energy to drive our daily activities. Just as a car needs gasoline to run, the human body also needs blood sugar to provide power. For healthy adults, the concentration of fasting blood sugar should be maintained in the golden range of 3.9 to 6.1 mmol/L, which is the basic guarantee for the normal functioning of the body.

Once the blood sugar level drops below the normal range, hypoglycemia occurs. People often feel dizzy, weak limbs, and accelerated heartbeats. This is the body sending an emergency signal to remind us that we urgently need to replenish energy. If the hypoglycemia condition continues to be unrelieved, it may even cause shock and endanger life in severe cases. Therefore, the prevention and response to hypoglycemia should never be ignored.

On the other hand, long-term high blood sugar is the breeding ground for the chronic disease of diabetes. As a complex and stubborn metabolic disease, diabetes is like an invisible sword, quietly eroding multiple organs and systems of the human body, including the cardiovascular, nervous system, kidneys, eyes, etc., causing functional impairment and greatly reducing the quality of life. Diabetes not only makes patients suffer from pain, but also may cause a series of serious complications, such as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, retinopathy, diabetic nephropathy, etc., which bring a heavy burden to patients and their families. Therefore, maintaining blood sugar within a reasonable range is the key to preventing diabetes and its complications.

There is also sugar in the urine

In addition to the key indicator of fasting blood sugar, urine sugar is also an important reference for assessing blood sugar levels. Under normal circumstances, the amount of glucose excreted by the human body through urine every day is extremely limited, so when a urine sugar test is performed, the result is usually negative, which means that there is almost no glucose in the urine. However, when blood sugar concentration climbs to a critical point beyond the processing capacity of the kidneys, a phenomenon called diabetosuria occurs. This critical point, medically known as the renal glucose threshold, is an important threshold for determining whether blood sugar is too high. Once blood sugar exceeds this threshold, the urine sugar test result will turn positive, indicating that glucose is present in the urine.

The most common cause of diabetes is diabetes. When the body's insulin secretion is insufficient or its function is impaired, blood sugar levels are difficult to control effectively, and thus rise to a level that exceeds the renal glucose threshold, ultimately leading to the occurrence of diabetes. This process reveals the close connection between diabetes and blood sugar and urine sugar, and also highlights the importance of blood sugar monitoring for diabetes prevention and control.

How to read the blood sugar test results on the test report?

When interpreting blood sugar test results, we usually need to focus on two core indicators: fasting blood sugar and random blood sugar. Fasting blood sugar, that is, the blood sugar value measured after not eating for at least 8 hours, is considered to be a state of hyperglycemia if it is higher than the range of 6.1 to 7 mmol/L, indicating that the body may have abnormal sugar metabolism. It is worth noting that if fasting blood sugar continues to be high and is accompanied by typical symptoms such as diabetes, polydipsia, polyuria, and weight loss, this may be an early sign of diabetes.

However, a single increase in fasting blood sugar cannot directly diagnose diabetes. Because blood sugar levels may be affected by many factors, such as mood swings, stress reactions, improper diet, etc., which may cause a temporary increase in blood sugar. Therefore, when abnormal fasting blood sugar is found, you should remain calm and go to the hospital for in-depth examination in time. The doctor will combine the patient's medical history, family history, symptoms and further blood sugar monitoring (such as 2-hour postprandial blood sugar, glycosylated hemoglobin, etc.) to comprehensively judge whether there is a risk of diabetes or whether the disease is already present. Such a comprehensive assessment can more accurately reflect the patient's health status and provide a basis for formulating appropriate treatment plans.

What are the diagnostic criteria for diabetes?

my country currently uses the World Health Organization (1999) diabetes diagnostic criteria. If the glucose in venous plasma is high to a certain level, coupled with the symptoms of diabetes, it can be confirmed that it is diabetes. The blood sugar mentioned here refers to the glucose in venous plasma, not the glucose in the blood collected from the finger.

Why do I need to test my blood sugar twice?

In order to fully evaluate the body's ability to regulate and process glucose, doctors will recommend an oral glucose tolerance test. This test accurately determines an individual's glucose tolerance by monitoring changes in blood sugar levels before and after glucose intake. Specifically, the test observes and records blood sugar values ​​at two key time points: one is fasting blood sugar, which is blood sugar measured without eating; the other is blood sugar 2 hours after taking sugar, which is blood sugar measured again 2 hours after drinking a solution containing a certain amount of glucose.

For healthy people, ideal test results are usually: fasting blood sugar is less than 6.1mmol/L, and blood sugar 2 hours after taking sugar is less than 7.8mmol/L. Such data show that the body can effectively absorb and utilize glucose, and quickly restore blood sugar to the normal range after ingestion, showing good glucose tolerance.

In contrast, when diabetic patients undergo this test, their fasting blood sugar levels are often high, and their blood sugar levels rise sharply after taking glucose, and the time required to return to normal levels is significantly extended. This series of abnormal reactions reveals the obstacles that diabetic patients have in glucose metabolism, providing an important basis for the diagnosis of the disease.

What is Glycated Hemoglobin?

In addition to the two conventional indicators of fasting blood sugar and random blood sugar, glycosylated hemoglobin (GHb) also plays an important role in evaluating the effect of diabetes control. Glycated hemoglobin, as the name suggests, is a stable compound formed by the tight combination of blood sugar molecules and hemoglobin molecules in red blood cells. HbA1c (glycosylated hemoglobin A1c) accounts for the vast majority of the proportion. Therefore, the level of HbA1c is often used clinically to represent the overall status of glycosylated hemoglobin.

The uniqueness of HbA1c lies in its ability to faithfully record and reflect an individual's average blood sugar level over the past 6 to 8 weeks, a time span that happens to cover most of the life cycle of red blood cells, making HbA1c the "gold standard" for evaluating the long-term control of diabetes. By regularly testing HbA1c, doctors can intuitively understand whether the patient's blood sugar management is appropriate and whether the treatment plan needs to be adjusted.

More importantly, many studies have shown that good blood sugar control can keep HbA1c within the normal or near-normal range, which not only helps alleviate the symptoms of diabetic patients, but also significantly delays the development of diabetes-related complications, thereby improving the quality of life of patients and prolonging their lifespan. Therefore, the detection of glycosylated hemoglobin has irreplaceable value for the comprehensive management of diabetes.

Beware of hypoglycemia

Finally, I must solemnly remind everyone that hypoglycemia is also a health hazard that cannot be ignored. Blood sugar is the direct source of energy for our daily activities, whether it is thinking, exercising or simply breathing, it is inseparable from its support. Once the blood sugar level is too low, it may not only directly damage body cells, especially cause irreversible damage to the brain, which is a major energy consumer, but also induce a series of serious health problems, acute myocardial infarction is one of them, and its consequences are disastrous.

Therefore, it is very important to maintain a regular eating habit, especially breakfast, which should never be skipped. After a night's rest, the nutrients in the body are almost exhausted, and the blood sugar level naturally decreases. If you skip breakfast, you will not be able to replenish the required blood sugar in time, resulting in dizziness, fatigue, lack of energy and other symptoms in the morning. In severe cases, it may even cause hypoglycemia shock and endanger life. Such consequences are obviously unbearable for anyone. Therefore, for the sake of health, please pay attention to breakfast and make it the starting point of your day's vitality.

Author: Bachu County People's Hospital

Endocrinology Department