--is not that unusual. It's also a very strong argument for several-hour glucose tolerance testing--with concurrent glucose AND insulin levels being drawn (they didn't do the latter, I'm assuming).

I suspect that you have at the very least impaired glucose tolerance. It may be of a "diabetic" level, depending on who is interpreting the results, but your blood glucose level is shooting too high from such a small glucose challenge, adn this may well happen almost every time you eat, though what you eat and how much may affect the degree to which it happens.

I also suspect that you have insulin resistance--that is, your body has to pump out more insulin to drive glucose into the cells. What happens is, on glucose ingestion, your blood sugar shoots up due to cellular resistance, and your body has to put out massive amounts of insulin to get the glucose in there. But, your body may be putting out so much insulin that it overcompensates, and your blood sugar falls percipitously. (I'd bet around the time of your glucose readings in the 70's, and a little before, your insulin levels, if measured, would be sky-high.)

At this point, you are probably coping with the insulin resistance to a decent extent, and that is why your hemoglobin A1c is normative, but those spikes can be just as damaging--and CAN lead to neuropathy. There is a LOT of evidence now that pre-diabetic impaired tolerance can cause neuropathy, especially the painful small fiber kind. (This is discussed, with references, in the following thread:

http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/sh...027#post185027

--which you may well have seen already.)

The problem with all this is that eventually the insulin resistance can build to a point at which yor ability to produce insulin isn't enough, and then you have a diabetic crisis on you hands when blood sugars shoot to really high levels. Obviously, one want to avoid this.

If nothing else, exercising and diet changes are warranted--they probably are for most of us whether we have these kind of readings or not. And, if you can tolerate it and they'll go for it, let them give you a 3-hour glucose tolerance test with concurrrent glucose/insulin levels at baseline and then every half-hour--I know this will make you feel like a pincushion--but the patterns of glucose/insulin rises and falls will likely be very illuminating.