The importance of normal blood glucose (sugar) levels is related to the prevention of some of the complications of high blood sugar. Your healthcare team can help you set the blood glucose target range that is right for you. If your blood glucose level in not within the ideal or normal blood glucose range you may begin to experience type 2 diabetes symptoms as well as the symptoms of low or high blood sugar. Symptoms of undiagnosed type 2 diabetes include hyperglycemia or high blood glucose and things like more hunger or thirst than usual, frequent urination, dry or itchy skin, fatigue, blurred vision, frequent infections and slow healing of cuts. Some people do not have symptoms probably due to gradually blood sugar levels over the years. Mild symptoms may go unnoticed. Also, people differ in their awareness of symptoms.

You may wonder how diabetes can go undiagnosed when one gets a physical every year. Unless you have symptoms that alert you to the fact that additional diabetes testing may need to be done the necessary test may not be performed. One reason may be that a fasting blood sugar at the time of your annual physical may be normal. Likewise, a random blood glucose level at the time of your physical may be normal. If HgbA1C is done at a physical it may, also, be normal if the person is experiencing lows as well as highs in blood sugar. HgbA1C represents an average blood sugar range.

Noticing of unusual body symptoms and relaying those to your health care provider is important to diagnosing of diabetes. Mentioning those symptoms may result in more tests being performed. There are other tests like a 2 hour glucose test in which the monitoring of blood glucose levels takes place every one-half hour after drinking a specially formulated drink with a known amount of carbohydrate. This 2 hour glucose test can help diagnose diabetes that could be missed with fasting or random blood sugar testing. It is often used with a family history of diabetes so family history is an important piece of information to relay to your health care provider as well.

A diabetic may still have high blood glucose even after treatment so this is why self monitoring of blood glucose is very important to check to see if blood sugar levels are normal. With hyperglycemia or high blood sugar your diabetes is out of control. Factors that cause blood glucose to increase include more food than usual, emotional stress, infection, physical stress like being in pain or being sick, getting less exercise than usual, not taking enough or the right diabetes medication, and extra sugar produced by the liver.

Blood sugar levels are considered to be above normal when they rise above 100 or 120 mg/dL before meals or above 140 or 160 mg/dL 2 hours after a meal. This happens to everyone with diabetes at times but if this happens often, it is problematic and needs attention. It is important to keep blood glucose levels normal to help prevent the symptoms and complications of type 2 diabetes as outlined above. Symptoms of type 1 diabetes and type 1.5 or 3 diabetes will be outlined in another topic.