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Nathan Formula to Calculate the Average Blood Glucose Level

Glucose is a sugar at the center of all life's processes. It is a monosaccharide that cells use for energy, and is the end product of photosynthesis in plant cells: through chemical processes within the plant cells themselves, sunlight is converted into energy in the form of glucose. The human body also requires a certain amount of glucose. But especially for people with diabetes, it is important to monitor the amount of glucose in the blood. The Nathan formula is a helpful tool for keeping tabs on this figure.

  1. Blood Glucose

    • The human body, like all other living things, uses glucose for important cellular processes. The hormone insulin allows the body to make use of glucose in reactions. In the bodies of people with diabetes, however, the pancreas produces significantly less natural insulin. As a result, the glucose in the blood cannot be used and ends up remaining in the bloodstream. This will present itself with symptoms like increased hunger and thirst, weight loss, fatigue, blurred vision and tingling sensations in the extremities. The risks of diabetes include atherosclerosis (hardening of arteries), heart problems and kidney disease.

    Nathan Formula

    • If you have diabetes, your doctor will check every few months on a figure called A1C. The A1C helps determine the average blood glucose level over an extended period of time. When there is too much glucose in the blood, it will bond or "glycate" with the hemoglobin in the bloodstream. Even once the amount of glucose has gone down, the level of A1C in the bloodstream remains elevated.

      The Nathan Formula is a method for converting the A1C score to an average blood glucose level. While it's not a precise formula--it's impossible to make an exact conversion, because A1C isn't an exact reflection of mg/dl blood glucose--it is a useful tool for estimating roughly what range your blood sugar has been in.

      The formula is: (A1C * 33.3) - 86. So if your A1C is 5.6 percent, the formula shows that your average blood glucose for the period has been roughly 100 mg/dl.

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