HbA1c at 6.0? What If You’re Not Pre-diabetic, and What If It’s Something Else?
When I discovered this concept, a few weeks ago, I talked with several doctors. None has thought/been taught about this.
By Valérie Orsoni — Biohacker & Longevity Expert
Valérie Orsoni is a biohacker, author of 56 books, and founder of biohacker.fr. She has been tracking her biology through N=1 self-experimentation protocols since 1998. She is recently completed her Stanford Genetics Longevity Research certification program and is currently enrolled in the Stanford Medicine nutrition science program. She was named in the Top 50 Longevity Leaders by Life Spanning magazine and is currently the #1 on the Longevity Cup Leaderboard (chronological age -23 years).
For years, I had a stubbornly high HbA1c paired with a fasted glucose that was consistently, boringly excellent, usually under 90 mg/dL. (right now, I have been able to lower it using a special technique, which I will talk about in a future post).
More than once, a doctor looked at that HbA1c and told me I was borderline diabetic, and most definitely pre-diabetic . And more than once, I went looking for an explanation that fit the story: I was on an expedition, so surely I’d been eating more sweets, more processed food, running on adrenaline and trail snacks. That had to be it. Right?
Wrong. It turned out the expeditions had almost nothing to do with it. Not at all.
It wasn’t until I was at the YEARS Clinic in Berlin, sitting across from a genuinely impressive physician, Dr. Ann Netzler, that I got an answer that actually made sense, one that explained why, for some people, a high HbA1c doesn’t mean prediabetes at all.
I’ve since talked to several of my doctor friends about this. Not one of them had ever thought about HbA1c this way, or been taught to take the number with as large a grain of salt as it sometimes deserves.
So, without further ado, here’s what I found. I’m genuinely excited to share it with you. If you’ve ever been told you’re “borderline diabetic” on the strength of an HbA1c that didn’t match anything else in your bloodwork, expect to be blown away.
There’s a well-documented, if under-discussed, reason this happens: HbA1c doesn’t actually measure your blood sugar.
It measures
