Lowering your hemoglobin A1C is one of the most important things you can do for your overall diabetic health. It’s also a great way to impress your doctor and seriously piss off other diabetics with your low A1C score on diabetes forums (absolutely true!). We tend to wear our most recent A1C as a badge of bravery, or even be ashamed if it’s too high. Either way, you’re stuck with it. I assume you are eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly for the rest of this article. If you’re not doing those two things, stop reading right now and hit the treadmill with a mouthful of broccoli, immediately.

There are a combination of things that come into play when it comes to lowering your hemoglobin a1c, including diet, exercise, medication, stress level, self-management, and frequent monitoring. This article will focus on the best general course of action to achieve a good low score. The most important thing to remember about your a1c is that it is an average (average is the operative word) over the last 2-3 months. We all have peaks and valleys, but the hba1c reads the area in between, so we need to keep it below 150 (give or take) most of the time. It’s obviously easier to do once you have your diet under control and exercise regularly. If you don’t exercise and eat right, there is little anyone can do for you.

You test yourself before and two hours after meals, right? At least I do. In fact, I test when I wake up, after breakfast, before lunch, after lunch, before dinner, after dinner, and before bed. You may think this sounds crazy, and yes it does cost more for so many strips, but the way I see it, it’s just the money you used to spend on beer! Even my doctor called me “compulsive” for doing so many tests! But it’s because of this “compulsion” that I was able to get my a1c down from 13.75 (no kidding) to 6.3 in just three months. Now do I have your attention?

Now to the point, how to lower your hemoglobin a1c. The most important thing I focused on (besides eating right and moving a lot) are my numbers at bedtime. This is because your a1c is an average, and if you sleep 8 hours a night and your blood sugar is 140 while you sleep, that means that for 1/3 of the hours of the day, your blood sugar is blood was 140. Now imagine if your blood sugar was 95 while you were sleeping. That’s going to help your GPA immensely, isn’t it?

Now be aware of the little spikes after your three main meals. If you’re like me, I’ve tested an hour or so after a meal to see how high my glucose reading would be. The reason for this is that one hour after eating is when your blood sugar should be the highest. I found it as high as 180 before which was too high so now i avoid that food. Try to eat low GI (glycemic index) foods and find out which foods you personally should avoid. I’m sure you’ve heard that different foods affect different people differently, which is totally true, so I won’t go into the details here. Obviously, you should avoid high GI foods, junk carbs like white rice and most cereals.

Resist the urge to stress out. I know it’s tempting, but you have to learn not to worry about some of the things that mattered to you before. Stress can shoot you up like a candy bar (don’t even think about it!) If you want to keep your A1c low, stress is not allowed. Find an outlet like running, walking, or hitting a punching bag. Just don’t worry about the things you can’t control, okay? So you see, it’s all a simple numbers game. The lower you are, most of the time, the better. Let’s recap for the impatient ones who always jump to the bottom line (yes, I know you!)

1-Eat a healthy diet and exercise as much as your doctor and your body allow

2-Learn what foods to avoid by trying everything you can afford (eat low GI foods)

3-Stop stressing, it raises your blood sugar and makes you look stupid.

4-Go to sleep with as little baggage as possible (keep those numbers down at bedtime!)

If you follow these guidelines, you will see a very significant drop in your hemoglobin a1c test numbers. As always, seek your doctor’s advice before making any lifestyle changes. Stay positive and healthy!