What makes a diabetic

Simply put: when your pre-breakfast blood sugar (plasma glucose) gets over 126 mg/dL (7 mmol/L).  Another measure is when 2 hours after taking a dose of glucose the blood level is still over 200 mg/dL (11.1 mmol/L), with over 140 (7.8) starting to suggest a problem.  Pre-breakfast 95 (5.3) is good, under 36 (2) is seriously low blood sugar, while above 180 (10) a safety-valve opens that sends glucose to the urine.  To confuse anybody, the numbers changed from mg to the 18 times smaller mmole, they increase by 14% between 'blood' and 'plasma' in syringe samples -but the numbers for 'blood drop' and 'syringe-plasma' are similar.  However, it's the big picture that counts, not the decimal points of the reading.  This is one area where a blood test is important since serious organ or foot damage (!) can happen early.