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Understanding Your Blood Sugar: Why It Matters and How to Test It
- Julia Davies
- Oct 31
- 3 min read
Our blood sugar may be one of the key drivers of inflammation, tiredness & fatigue, and chronic pain.
If you have sugar dysregulation and don’t know about it, it can act as a simmering fire, keeping inflammation active and preventing your body from fully healing. From my years of clinical experience, once we detect and address blood sugar issues, it can dramatically improve energy, concentration, sleep, and overall symptoms of chronic conditions. But first, it’s important to understand the tools available for testing and their limitations.
Fasting Glucose: A Snapshot
One common test is fasting glucose, usually drawn after 8+ hours without food. It can tell you if you fall into diabetic or pre-diabetic ranges.
Pros: High fasting glucose clearly signals potential metabolic issues.
Cons: If your fasting glucose is normal, it doesn’t guarantee that your blood sugar regulation is actually OK. Many people with normal fasting glucose still have hidden dysregulation that can drive inflammation.
HbA1c: The Average Over Months
The HbA1c test measures how much glucose is attached to your red blood cells over the past 3-4 months. Generally speaking, the longer the sugar hangs out in your bloodstream the more you will get attaching to your red blood cells, so if you have problems with either too much blood sugar or you are too slow at clearing it you can find your HbA1c can start to rise.
Pros: Gives an average of blood sugar over time and helps detect consistently elevated glucose.
Cons: It misses spikes and drops, meaning sudden highs after meals or subsequent lows won’t show up. I often see patients with normal fasting glucose and HbA1c who are still metabolically dysregulated.
Post-Meal Glucose: A Moment in Time
After you eat, your glucose rises as carbohydrates are broken down. Insulin helps move this glucose and also amino acids from your food into your cells for energy.
Here’s what we look at:
Magnitude of the rise: A large spike may indicate poor blood sugar regulation.
Duration of the elevation: Glucose should ideally return to baseline within 1–2 hours. If it stays high for 3–5 hours, this may indicate insulin resistance.
Low glucose events: Sudden drops can cause anxiety, fatigue, poor concentration, and insomnia. Both high and low blood sugar can affect your sleep, physical and mental health and overall wellbeing.
Continuous Glucose Monitoring: The Full Picture
The most accurate way I’ve found to understand your glucose patterns is through a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM).
Worn for several days to weeks, a CGM tracks your blood sugar 24/7.
It shows how high your glucose goes, how long it stays elevated, and how different foods affect you.
Tracking your meals alongside the data can reveal patterns, helping you address diet, gut health, nutrient deficiencies, or metabolic issues that may be impacting your energy and inflammation.
If your CGM shows steady, in-range glucose, your blood sugar is likely not driving inflammation - great news. If not, interventions can include dietary adjustments, gut microbiome support, micronutrient support, and in some cases, thyroid or mitochondrial support.
Take the Next Step
To dive deeper, I’ll be hosting a 90 minute masterclass on blood sugar, inflammation, and chronic illness. Preparing your own CGM data ahead of time (I recommend the Dexcom One Plus system) will give you personal insights and make the webinar even more valuable. I will be sharing the parameters I use when analysing your data so that you can assess yourself and where you may have issues. You may wish to attend to gain a broader understanding of your metabolic health as we will go into a detailed look at how it all connects.
We will cover the following:
Blood sugar and insulin as a driver of chronic inflammation
Interpretation of CGM report (it is not essential that you have your own here)
How the lipid panel is involved - cholesterol and triglyceride levels
The gut microbiome connection
And as always your questions! There will be time to answer during the session
Blood sugar isn’t just about diabetes - understanding your glucose patterns gives you a great deal of insight into your health. which in my experience is one of the most valuable areas to focus on.
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