Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Walking works

Good news today - I visited the health centre to get the results of my six-monthly battery of tests. My cholesterol is down to 3.7, LDLC/HDLC ratio is 1.9 and fasting glucose is back to 5.2 (it had reached 6.0 for the past two tests).

So it seems my regular morning constitutional is working. I am now walking half-way to work (who knows, in the warmer weather I might even go the whole hog), and anywhere else that's appropriate. I also try to reach 10,000 steps a day (keeping track with a pedometer, not counting them, that would be silly), but so far that goal is reached only about once a week. Still, the pedometer at least gives me an indication of how I'm going.

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4 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

It's very encouraging to see something simple make such a difference, wee done!

7:47 pm  
Blogger Unknown said...

Sorry, I misspelled the ‘well’ in well done ;)

7:49 pm  
Blogger Anthony Holmes said...

All the talk about regular exercise seems rather hypothetical until you get a 'number' like this, doesn't it? An HbA1c of 5.2 is a really nice number to get.

As someone with diabetes I get to see how the body responds to brisk walks of 5-10,000 steps through the dozens (thousands) of blood glucose measurements I do and my balancing of food and insulin. But it's not often that somebody without diabetes gets a nice clear picture like you did of the difference that exercise makes.

Wee (sic) done from me too!

6:24 pm  
Blogger Anthony Holmes said...

I've just picked up a mistake I made: Your test was fasting blood glucose (measured in mmol/l) as opposed to an HbA1c test, which gives a 1-3 month average. But coincidentally 5.2 is a nice reading for either test.

(The purist in me says a non-fasting test and/or an HbA1c might give a more complete picture. But hey, I'm not a doctor.)

7:51 pm  

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