HbA1C question.

Hi Dr.Rosedale,

I really enjoyed your article Is the term, ‘safe starches’ an oxymoron?

However, you mentioned that “I have actually rarely seen a HbA1C below 5.0 in people on my diet,…”, is there a reason for that ? Shouldn’t people on Rosedale diet have lower fasting/post meal sugar levels, hence lower HbA1C level ? If memory serves me correct, 30% of the general US population have HbA1C lower than 5%, and that’s on Standard American diet !

Maybe it is not as high as 30%, but certainly should not be rare. Maybe you are talking about diabetics only?

Answer:
Most of my patients were diabetic, but even in very healthy athletes that I sometimes saw to improve athletic performance, the HbA1C was rarely under 5.2 and that was the low end of the “normal” range standard of the lab that I used. There very well could have been a difference in laboratory methods and standards. I have noticed in recent years that typical average HbA1C is considerably lower than what I had seen… As I mentioned this may be due to differences in laboratory testing.