Incidence of diabetes is globally alarming due to stressful life style. High level of glucose in blood often remains as a source of infection and lay foundation for many other diseases also. Even though symptoms can give clue to diagnose diabetes (excessive urination / excessive fluid intake / craving for sugar / weight loss / obesity / fatigue / tremour / irritability, etc.), confirmation can be made only after proper testing, since those symptoms can also be a part and parcel of lot of other diseases too. As persistent high level of sugar usually damages nerves, kidney, heart, eyes, etc and many patients used to remain asymptomatic in initial period, routine screening tests / health checkups are absolutely essential to avoid complications, i.e., it is better to get checked if one has

• Crossed the age of 40
• Family history of diabetes
• Past history of gestational diabetes (diabetes during pregnancy)
• Any symptoms of diabetes
• Over weight / drastic weight loss
• Hypertension and High cholesterol levels

In case of diabetic one needs to monitor blood sugar level repeatedly, i.e., at the least once in a month and monitor over all health at the least once in a year (with master health checkups) to combat its complications. It is because, even during medications, blood sugar level can become erratic with much lower levels or higher levels. This sort of erratic nature can cause many complications including coma or stroke (with lowered or high level of sugar). So, one needs to be very cautious and should go for testing / analysis repeatedly to keep the blood glucose at desirable levels.

Diabetes Testing is very simple and can be done very quickly now, i.e., it can be done within a minute. Also it is no way expensive. Tests can be classified in two ways i.e., screening tests and diagnostic tests. Diabetes can be assessed with blood and urine tests. To start with analysis, one can go for urine test (Semi-quantitative Urine Test / Quantitative 24 hours urine tests) as it is very simple and can showoff the very high level of blood sugar level and elimination / presence of sugar in urine. But it can no way provide confirmation as it is often treated as one of the screening tests. Further in diabetic patients, urine should be screened for protein (microalbuminuria) and ketone bodies. Microalbuminuria in urine indicates diabetic nephropathy and Ketone bodies indicates fat metabolism and ketoacidosis.

Sugar test with urine – can be done by any time, but testing after 2 hours of food intake can provide clue about the utilization of foods / glucose in our body. Also collecting of mid-stream urine is important for accurate analysis. Presence of sugar is analyzed by two methods now, i.e. one by old benedict’s reagents and another by latest dipsticks. In case of Benedict’s test, if results shows

• Blue colour – urine sugar is Nil
• Green colour - + (0.1- 0.5 g/dl)
• Yellow colour - ++ (0.5- 1.0 g/dl)
• Orange colour - +++ (1.0- 1.5 g/dl)
• Brick red colour - ++++ (1.5- 2.0 g/dl)

blood test for sugar - Unlike urine tests, blood test can provide exact sugar concentration of the blood. High blood sugar (Hyperglycaemia) can be clearly monitored from time to time or day after the day with series of blood tests. It can also help physician to adjust the dosage of medicine and to assess the plan of treatment. Blood tests can be done by collecting blood sample from finger prick or from vein in hand.

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