She did everything right for four years. One number went the wrong way.

Hey Reader, Dr Karl here.

A1c is not a glucose test. It is a protein test.

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It measures the percentage of your hemoglobin that has glucose stuck to

it. Hemoglobin lives inside red blood cells.

A1c has two inputs, not one:

1. how much glucose is in your blood, and

2. how long your red cells stay

Nobody tells you about the second one.

Here is a client. Four years of work. Fasting insulin down 65%, from 9.6

to 3.4. Glucose down 16 points, from 108 to 92. CRP down 87%, from 3.6 to

0.47. Eleven pounds off.

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And her A1c went from 5.3 to 5.7, which is the line where a doctor writes

“prediabetic” in your chart.

Every number that measures how her body handles fuel got better. The one

number that supposedly summarizes how her body handles fuel got worse.

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Both of those things cannot be true about her metabolism. ​
One of them is true about her metabolism and the other is true about her red blood cells.
Think of it like barnacles on a boat. The amount of barnacles tells you something.

It tells you about time, how long the boat’s been in the water, at least as much as it tells you

about the water.

A red cell that lives longer because it is healthier, spends more time in the

glucose bath and picks up more glucose. That is arithmetic, not pathology.

Every textbook says red cells live about 120 days. That average is doing

a lot of hiding. The real spread between healthy people is wide, and

nobody measures yours.

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So when your A1c moves, you are looking at a number with two inputs and

being told it has one.

The full story is here​

Which of the two moved in you? You cannot answer that from the A1c. You

need the fasting insulin, the HOMA-IR, and a CBC sitting next to it. Most

people have none of the three.

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You’ll know if that’s you.

​

Dr. Karl Goldkamp

Keto Naturopath

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