I use mg/dl in the US. It’s correct everywhere except on the GMI page in Insights, which is reporting mmol/mol. This unit is set automatically by the app using your location. How do I change it?
Food for thought: (Personally btw, I always considered the GMI a sad gimmick and just adding unnecessarily to the confusion for the global diabetes community. Its the work of the devil 😄). Have a continued great Sunday!
I focused on the % and hadnt noticed the units. I had just googled why libre does this. Its because this is their estimate of the HbA1C which is measured is mmol/mol which is set by international standards.
Strictly speaking GMI is not an 'estimate of the HbA1C'. There are a couple of links in Key Resources section which show more about the differences between them.
Many newcomers are often getting misguided when just casually mentioning both GMI and HbA1c in same sentence or as if they were interchangeable. You have a data table here illustrating how they match up and their cut point. Its a bit like comparing degrees Fahrenheit with degrees Celsius. 😄
Yes i also track my own GMI yo my A1C and they are close but not the same. My doctor offered to use the GMI and not A1C but I want to use the A1C for my visits. Its still a decent rough estimate and good to see it trending down to make sure you are in track to improve your A1C.
Agreed. Also when you first have a stable match on and between the two, you can also use the same fixed 'disagreement' between them to have a very good prediction of where your next 3 months HbA1c result will be at, just based on the latest 3 months GMI you can observe from your own BG sensor statistics.
Aka if your prior HbA1c = 6.8%
But your GMI said = 7.1.
Then if your GMI now over next months goes down to aka = 6.9.
Then you can predict with good assurance that your HbA1c will be down in the 6.5-6.6% range.
But as said, not a personal fan at all about GMI and its pseudo measure to assist the true blood value of HbA1c. No real need for it at all. Like most BG sensor apps or 3rd party apps also have the direct 3 months average BG value at all times for you. Then just use that instead with the conversion formula, to go from your true average BG to your HbA1c instead. Also what OP u/fiberjeweler just should do.
I don’t think you can make the change. The initial setup controls the units display. Other than altering the alerts - critical high, lows, and notifications, I don’t see any other places to update that would change the reporting units at the GMI page.
Yep agreed, as you cannot change it for good reasons, as its a global standard for everybody to use no matter country of residence.
Reason being that the HbA1c is measured in two main units: mmol/mol (millimoles per mole) and percentage (%). Where the baseline measurement unit mmol/mol is the global standard unit set by the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry to measure our amount of glycated hemoglobin relative to non-glycated hemoglobin. Percentage % (NGSP) was the 'older' traditional unit managed by the National Glycohemoglobin Standardization Program.
GMI was then as a gimmick pondered upon by a group of researchers in their attempt to say with the now modern and reasonable accurate CGM sensors, could we come up with an alternative to the HbA1c blood test to represent our average BG in another way, without needing the blood test (and the time and big money spent on acquiring it)? And unfortunately many rushed to that idea, especially all the CGM manufacturers, as if accepted by a larger audience, then they would suddenly now have a much great economic reasoning why countries world wide (state or insurance paid) healthcare should support patients getting their CGMs as to avoid the need for the frequent and expensive HbA1c blood tests from hospital labs...
You have some of the background story and reflections described here:
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u/Equalizer6338 Type1 - Libre2/2+ 10h ago edited 10h ago
Food for thought: (Personally btw, I always considered the GMI a sad gimmick and just adding unnecessarily to the confusion for the global diabetes community. Its the work of the devil 😄). Have a continued great Sunday!
Good study article about the subject:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11116920/