Normal Values in Humans
Normal value ranges may vary slightly among different laboratories. Many factors affect a person's blood sugar level. A body's homeostatic mechanism, when operating normally, restores the blood sugar level to a narrow range of about 4.4 to 6.1 mmol/L (82 to 110 mg/dL) (as measured by a fasting blood glucose test).
Despite widely variable intervals between meals or the occasional consumption of meals with a substantial carbohydrate load, human blood glucose levels tend to remain within the normal range. However, shortly after eating, the blood glucose level may rise, in non-diabetics, temporarily up to 7.8 mmol/L (140 mg/dL) or a bit more. The American Diabetes Association recommends a post-meal glucose level of less than 10 mmol/L (180 mg/dL) and a fasting plasma glucose of 5 to 7.2 mmol/L (90–130 mg/dL).
The actual amount of glucose in the blood and body fluids is very small. In a healthy adult male of 75 kg with a blood volume of 5 liters, a blood glucose level of 5.5 mmol/L (100 mg/dL) amounts to 5 grams, slightly less than two typical American restaurant sugar packets for coffee or tea. Part of the reason why this amount is so small is that, to maintain an influx of glucose into cells, enzymes modify glucose by adding phosphate or other groups to it.
Read more about this topic: Blood Sugar
Famous quotes containing the words normal, values and/or humans:
“Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“Despite the hundreds of attempts, police terror and the concentration camps have proved to be more or less impossible subjects for the artist; since what happened to them was beyond the imagination, it was therefore also beyond art and all those human values on which art is traditionally based.”
—A. Alvarez (b. 1929)
“All humans have a heart that can tell right from wrong.”
—Chinese proverb.
Mencius.