Patients have a reduced glucose tolerance, indicating a reduced tolerance for glucose.
There is a standard for glucose tolerance, for example, in a normal patient, the maximum blood glucose after a meal, regardless of the size of the meal, remains stable at less than 10 mmol/L and returns to less than 7.8 mmol/L two hours after the meal. A lower glucose tolerance level indicates a lower tolerance for glucose and an increase in blood glucose, but not to the standard for diabetes.
Insulin secretion in the body is directly related to blood glucose; if blood glucose is high, insulin secretion increases accordingly, and when a patient’s blood glucose drops, insulin secretion decreases, so the amount of insulin is automatically regulated in response to physiological needs to maintain glucose in the body in a normal range.
The clinical test for glucose tolerance is to give the patient a certain amount of glucose orally or intravenously to check the patient’s glucose tolerance. If the patient’s insulin cells are not secreting, or are not processing glucose as quickly as normal, then the glucose tolerance is abnormal and the patient needs insulin supplementation for treatment.