Hi there, I’m a nineteen year old male living in the UK. I’m quite overweight, maybe obese even. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink. The only ‘health’ conditions I have are Acid Reflux and recently diagnosed with pre-diabetes after taking the HbA1c test. What I’m worried about is that I asked the doctor to do a full blood count to check my overall health - everything came back normal, except the HbA1c (it was at 43 mmol which indicates pre-diabetes as normal range is between 20 - 42). Upon reading the letter the doctor printed out, I noticed that there was an exclamation mark next to Haemoglobin estimation, Mean Corpuscular Volume (MCV), Mean corpuscular haemoglobin (MCH), and Mean corpuscular Hb. concentration (MCHC).
Now, here’s where the question lies. Yes, I know I’m overweight/obese and I’m currently doing something about it by going to the gym and eating more healthily to try and tackle the pre-diabetes (if I have it), but I want to know why those values were low? Do I have anaemia? The doctor ordered for a HbA1c test to be done and it came back 43? So surely if I did a test to test for haemoglobin and I have anaemia - it would affect it in a way, right? Now, although I may have mild anaemia, I’m just wondering if it would still affect it? Right now, the symptom I have are pale nails, shortness of breath, my hair falls out sometimes when I brush it, and awful fatigue. What shall I do? Is it the anaemia that’s affecting the HbA1c test or is it genuinely prediabetes? My doctor doesn’t seem to tell me, all he said was lose weight. I need answers because I’m sick and tired of Googling the answers.
Please see this article to see how Anaemia affects HbA1c levels: diabetes.co.uk/news/2015/ma...
Anyone, please help. Thank you. I’ve attached my levels down below.