Interpreting Test Results
How to interpret your A1C?
The A1C test—also known as the hemoglobin A1C or HbA1c test—is a simple blood test that measures your average blood sugar levels over the past 3 months. Higher A1C levels are linked to diabetes complications. If you have diabetes, reaching and maintaining your individual A1C goal is really important, which means monitoring blood sugar levels over time. A normal A1C level is below 5.7% (or, little-to-no risk of diabetes), a level of 5.7% to 6.4% indicates prediabetes (or, a higher risk of developing diabetes in the future), and a level of 6.5% or more indicates diabetes. Within the 5.7% to 6.4% prediabetes range, the higher your A1C level, the greater your risk is for developing type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is influenced by lifestyle choices like diet and exercise, although some people are also genetically at risk. This means that if your family members have diabetes, you may have a higher chance to develop diabetes. A1C is an important tool for managing diabetes, but it doesn’t replace regular blood sugar testing at home for patients who already have type 2 diabetes or that have type 1 diabetes. For example, blood sugar goes up and down throughout the day and night, which isn’t captured by your A1C results. Two different people can have the same A1C level, one with steady blood sugar levels and the other with high and low swings.
How do you lower your A1C?
The best person to help you with your A1C is your doctor. Your doctor knows all your conditions and can better advise you on how to reduce your A1C levels if you have type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes. Remember that avoiding sugar, having a diet high in fiber and low in carbohydrates, and exercising often (at least 30 minutes per day) can reduce your risk of developing type 2 diabetes and also improve your health overall.
How to interpret your Body Mass Index (BMI)?
Body Mass Index is a useful measure for your health in terms of your relative size. It is calculated from your height and weight, dividing your weight in kilograms by your height in meters squared (m2). BMI is an estimate of body fat and a good gauge of your risk for chronic diseases that can occur when more body fat is present. The higher your BMI, the higher your risk for diseases such as heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, gallstones, breathing problems, and certain cancers. BMI is intended as a tool for adults only, as children and adolescents are constantly growing so their weight-to-height ratios follow different patterns than adults who have achieved their full height. In considering your BMI, it’s important to consider your personal circumstances. Specifically, BMI may overestimate body fat in athletes and others who have a muscular build, while it may underestimate body fat in older persons and others who have lost muscle. Additionally, the ethnic and genetic background can influence the association between your BMI and health risks.
The guide values for BMI are:
You should try to stay within the normal range. If you need help losing or gaining weight, you should talk with your doctor. Only your doctor has access to all your health measurements and can advise you on how to improve your BMI in a healthy way for you.
How to interpret your Gut Microbiome results?
Intestinal health is important for the functioning of your whole body, as bacteria break down food and produce molecules that help your body function. Disrupting this balance – making it easy for some bacteria to grow and harder for others – can lead to devastating consequences. Despite not clearly knowing what every species of bacteria does, scientists believe that the combination of the four major phyla of gut bacteria (Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes) can be used to indicate relative intestinal health and health overall. A phylum (plural is phyla) is a bigger picture classification of how closely species are related. Each phylum of bacteria in the gut contains thousands of bacterial species.
What is Alpha Diversity?
Science is a long way from knowing what each of these thousands of bacterial species does for your digestion and your whole body. However, it’s becoming clear that balancing the size of each species’ population is important in having a healthy intestine able to fight off pathogens like disease bacteria and viruses, as well as affecting chronic diseases like obesity and type 2 diabetes. Alpha diversity is a way of understanding how species live together in one specific location — in this case, your gut. The number of actual species present is called species richness. For example, a location with five phyla of bacterial species is richer than a location with four phyla of bacterial species. However, it’s also important to consider how many species of bacteria there are of each phylum, and how big species’ populations are relative to each other. This proportionality is species diversity. If the location with five phyla is dominated by one of those phyla, it may be richer, but it is not very diverse. If the location with four phyla of bacteria has an equal number of individuals of each species, then it is less rich but more diverse. The Shannon alpha diversity index catalogs the enrichment of the major phyla in your gut, with high values of the index representing more diverse communities. The lower the score calculated by the index based on the species present, the lower the species diversity in the location tested. And, vice-versa, higher scores mean more species diversity. The range of Shannon alpha diversity index scores in the alumni survey is between 2.431 and 3.503. Although there is no clear functional range for this index at the moment, your participation in this study adds to the understanding of how this index relates to health for future participants in MA`O and other communities.