Blood test results

As I expected, I received most of the results from my blood tests yesterday evening.

The most important result, as far as I am concerned, is the level of free glucose in the blood. This has dropped from 110 mg/dL to a much more reasonable 96 mg/dL,  taking me out of the pre-diabetes range, although of course there is still room for improvement. On the other hand, the  hemoglobin A1C % had a more modest reduction from 6.1 to 6.0, which is still outside the recommended range. This test is for glucose bound to red blood cells and indicates a value that was correct to about three months ago. 

An interesting result was the value for uric acid; a high level of this compound in the blood causes it to crystallise out of the blood, leading to gout, from which my father suffers. My level has almost always been over 8 mg/dL, which is off the scale; this time it had dropped to 6.9 mg/dL, which is within the normal range.

Both HDL (good) cholesterol and LDL (bad) cholesterol levels increased slightly. The most important number for all the cholesterol tests is the ratio between total cholesterol and HDL: the lower the better. My ratio is now 3.8, which is the lowest value that I have ever achieved - good!

The final important result for me is haemoglobin: this has risen from 13.0 g/dL to 13.6 g/dL, a value that now brings me onto the lower values of the scale - as opposed to having too low a level and being in danger of anaemia. 

All these improvements can be attributed to dietary changes along with the vast increase in exercise over the past six months. These results are very encouraging, meaning that I should continue doing what I have been doing. I am supposed to make an appointment with my dietician in order to discuss these results, but as we are now entering the high holiday period, I imagine that the appointment will be in November (if not December).

One change which I have yet to adopt is eating red or yellow bell pepper slices at home whenever I feel hungry. I have to make the habit of cutting up one pepper on Friday morning and another on Saturday morning so that I always have the slices available. If I can do this during the week, there is no reason why I can't do this at the weekend. The primary gain is the reduction in calories, but also bell peppers are very good sources of vitamin C, which in turn helps the absorption of iron.