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Work it out yourself
Four numbers worth knowing.
Your risk of diabetes, your risk factors for heart disease, your weight and waist, and what an HbA1c report actually means in the sugar figures you are used to. Nothing you type here leaves your phone.
Free to everyone
Take this to your family,
your village, your friends.
Everything on this website is free to read, to print and to pass on. Ask for the booklet on WhatsApp, or put your name down for मधुसंदेश and the camp notices.
या संकेतस्थळावरील सर्व माहिती मोफत आहे. ती वाचा, छापा आणि इतरांना द्या.
Your name goes into a WhatsApp message that you send, from your own phone. Nothing is stored on this website. Tell the clinic to stop at any time and it stops. No WhatsApp? Write to uniteddiabetes@gmail.com.
Four calculators
Numbers you can
work out at home.
Each one takes under a minute. None of them replaces a consultation, and none of them makes a diagnosis — they tell you whether it is worth getting tested, and what to ask about.
Nothing you type is stored. These calculators run inside your own phone or computer. No figure you enter is sent to the clinic, saved on this website, or seen by anyone else.
Calculator one
Diabetes risk score
The Indian Diabetes Risk Score, developed by the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation for Indians. Four questions, no blood test.
How this score is worked out
Points are added for four things: age (under 35 = 0, 35–49 = 20, 50 and above = 30), waist (0, 10 or 20), physical activity (0, 10, 20 or 30) and family history (0, 10 or 20). The highest possible total is 100.
Below 30 is low risk, 30 to 59 is moderate risk, and 60 or above is high risk. A high score does not mean you have diabetes. It means a blood sugar test is worth doing.
Source: Mohan V et al., Indian Diabetes Risk Score, Madras Diabetes Research Foundation.
Calculator two
Heart risk factor check
Diabetes and heart disease travel together. This counts the risk factors you carry and separates the ones you can change from the ones you cannot.
Why this is a count and not a percentage
A proper ten-year risk percentage is read off the World Health Organization risk chart for this region, which needs your age, blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes status together. That is a job for the consultation, with your reports in front of the doctor — a number produced from a web page, without a doctor reading it, can mislead in either direction.
What this tool does instead is honest and still useful: it shows you how many risk factors you carry, and which of them are within your power to change. The targets used here are the ones this clinic works to, following the American Diabetes Association Standards of Care.
Calculator three
BMI and waist
Indians carry more body fat, and more of it around the abdomen, at any given weight. So the cut-offs used here are lower than the international ones — overweight begins at a BMI of 23, not 25.
The cut-offs used here
BMI is weight in kilograms divided by height in metres squared. For Indians: below 18.5 is underweight, 18.5 to 22.9 is normal, 23 to 24.9 is overweight, and 25 or above is obese. The international figures are 25 and 30, which miss a great many Indians who already carry the risk.
Waist matters separately, and for diabetes it often matters more: above 90 cm in a man or 80 cm in a woman counts as abdominal obesity, whatever the BMI says. The waist-to-height ratio shown alongside should stay below 0.5 — your waist less than half your height.
Source: consensus guidelines for Asian Indians. A 2025 revision stages obesity further, using waist and whether there is any effect on daily activity or health alongside the BMI figure.
Calculator four
HbA1c to average sugar
HbA1c is an average of the last two to three months. This converts it into the mg/dL figure you are used to seeing on a glucometer — and back again.
The conversion, and what it does not tell you
Average glucose in mg/dL = (28.7 × HbA1c) − 46.7. This comes from the A1c-Derived Average Glucose study and is the conversion the American Diabetes Association publishes.
It is an average, and two people with the same HbA1c can live very differently. One may sit steadily around that figure; the other may swing between 60 and 300 and average the same. That is why the clinic looks at your glucometer readings and not only the HbA1c — and why an HbA1c can mislead in anaemia, after a transfusion, in kidney disease, in pregnancy and in some haemoglobin disorders.
Source: Nathan DM et al., ADAG study; conversion as published by the NGSP and the American Diabetes Association.
Before you act on any of this
A number is a reason to ask, not an answer.
Every one of these tools is a screening aid. None of them diagnoses anything, none of them knows your reports, and none of them should change a medicine you are taking. A high score means come and get tested. A reassuring score in someone with symptoms means nothing at all — symptoms outrank scores.
If any of these gives you a result that worries you, bring it in. The consultation is where it turns into a plan.