Why Low Blood Sugar Is Dangerous

Why low blood sugar is dangerous

Hypoglycaemia, or low blood sugar, is often known as a 'hypo'. It can make you feel unwell and affect your ability to drive. Simple steps will reduce the risk, and allow you to treat a hypo early, before it causes more serious complications.
Blood sugar - what's normal?
Under normal circumstances, your body does a remarkable job of keeping your blood sugar (in the form of glucose) stable. Usually your body releases a hormone called insulin, produced by your pancreas, in response to rises in blood sugar. Your body's cells need glucose as fuel to allow them to function. Insulin acts as a 'key', opening the door of your cells to allow glucose in. Another hormone helps raise your blood sugar if it gets too low.
Your blood sugar, which is measured in millimoles per litre or mmol/L, is usually maintained between 4 and 6 mmol/L when you're fasting, and up to 7.8 mmol/L two hours after a meal. Diabetes is diagnosed on the basis of raised blood glucose.
Hypos - what causes them?
People with type 1 diabetes need insulin in injection form, because they don't produce any insulin of their own. People with type 2 diabetes sometimes need insulin if their blood sugar can't be controlled with other tablets. If you're using insulin injections, the amount of insulin you need depends on lots of factors, including how much food you've eaten. More insulin than you need can drop your blood sugar below normal levels, causing a 'hypo'.
So too can some tablets used in type 2 diabetes, particularly sulfonylureas, nateglinide and repaglinide, which act by making your body produce more insulin.
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This Is What Diabetes Looks Like

When someone says they have diabetes, what image comes to your mind? If your answer is “nothing,” that’s a good thing. There’s no one “look” or “type” of person with the condition. Still, diabetes is a serious disease with a lot of stigma associated with it — for no good reason.
For the following nine individuals, diabetes doesn’t control who they are, what they like or dislike, or who they spend their time with. It doesn’t control what they can do and what they have done. Having diabetes may impact how they go about their everyday life, but it doesn’t impact who they are or what they hope to become. This is what diabetes looks like.
Shelby Kinnaird, 55
Type 2 diabetes, Diagnosed in 1999
People with diabetes can be any age, any weight, any race, and any sex. Things that work for me may not work for you. Experiment and learn what works for your body and your lifestyle.
I manage my diabetes by continuously learning about it and monitoring it. I read a lot about diabetes, lead a couple of support groups, educate myself about nutrition, ask my doctors questions, and participate in the online diabetes community. I test my blood glucose regularly, weigh myself every morning, and exercise at least five days a week (most of the time).
I've found that the more I eat fresh vegetables and fruits, the easier it is to manage my diabetes. If my numbers start creeping up, I log everything I eat until I get back on track. The most important thing to me is that food be both delicious and nutritious. If I try a new food, I make sure to take a blood glucose reading a c Continue reading

Dangers of Not Taking Insulin or Other Diabetes Medication

As water wears down a shoreline, even a rocky one, high blood sugar wears down the health of people with diabetes.
Unless an individual can control their blood sugar through lifestyle, diet and exercise, prescription medications are the only option for preventing acute life-threatening conditions and avoiding or slowing the onset of diabetes complications.
Short-Term Dangers
The short-term dangers of not taking prescribed medication are symptoms of weakness, fatigue, mental confusion and the life-threatening condition of hyperosmolar syndrome.
Hyperosmolar syndrome is diagnosed in people with type 2 diabetes whose blood glucose and sodium levels are extremely high because of dehydration. Symptoms of weakness, increased thirst and urination, nausea, confusion and fatigue can develop gradually over days or weeks. Eventually, convulsions and coma may set in.
This condition usually requires hospitalization and aggressive treatment using IV fluids and insulin. Though symptoms are often relieved within hours, hyperosmolar syndrome can cause death, even with proper treatment. If people fall into a coma before seeking help, there is a 50 percent chance they will die from the disease.
Although the condition called ketoacidosis is uncommon with type 2 diabetes, it may occur. When the body cannot process glucose for energy, it breaks down fat for fuel. As fat is metabolized, it produces ketones.
Too many ketones cause increased urination and thirst, dry mouth, cool skin, nausea and vomiting. Eventually, there may be a drop in blood pressure, loss of consciousness, coma or death. Treat Continue reading

Type 2 diabetes symptoms

What is type 2 diabetes?
Type 2 diabetes (also called diabetes mellitus type 2) is the most common form of diabetes. Insulin is not required for survival in type 2 diabetes. That is why they used to call it non-insulin dependent diabetes. Insulin resistance is the main problem in type 2 diabetes. It means that your body can’t use insulin effectively. You still make insulin but it is less effective. So, you need more insulin to do the same job. Without effective use of insulin, you blood sugar levels go up. That is what happens in type 2 diabetes. (They don’t call it non-insulin dependent diabetes anymore to avoid the perception that insulin has nothing to with type 2 diabetes.) Many type 2 diabetes patients need insulin to effectively treat high blood sugars because their bodies do not make enough insulin to overcome the insulin resistance.
Type 2 Diabetes symptoms
Type 2 diabetes symptoms develop very slowly. You may already have diabetes, but may not even have the first signs of diabetes for many years.
Here is the list of 10 classic diabetes symptoms:
Frequent urination
Excessive hunger
Excessive thirst (dry mouth)
Unusual weight loss
Extreme fatigue and irritability
Frequent infections
Blurred vision
Cuts/bruises are slow to heal
Tingling numbness in the hands or feet
Recurring skin, gum or bladder infection
If someone asks you, “What are the symptoms of diabetes?”, this list makes it easy to answer the question. However, the list of 10 diabetes symptoms does not help people figure out if they have diabetes. Many patients with type 2 diabetes have no symptoms fo Continue reading

Low Carb vs. High Carb - My Surprising 24-day Diabetes Diet Battle

Twitter summary: What I learned from doubling my carb intake: the same average blood sugar, but four times as much hypoglycemia, more work, stress, & danger.
As a teenager, I ate a high carb diet that included lots of Goldfish crackers, white sandwich bread, pasta, and white potatoes. It was tasty, but it put my blood sugars on a wild roller coaster every single day. Things turned around in college when I learned about nutrition, got on CGM, and spent time with health conscious friends. I soon realized that eating less than 30 grams of carbs at one time was a complete gamechanger. I’ve stuck with that approach ever since.
But is this lower carb method actually better for my blood sugars, or have I just been fooling myself? To find out, I took on a somewhat terrifying self-tracking experiment:
12 days of my usual, lower-carb diet, which averaged 146 grams of carbs per day (21% of daily calories). My carbs were primarily from nuts, seeds, vegetables, and a bit of fruit.
12 days of a higher-carb, high whole-grain diet, which averaged 313 grams of carbs per day (43% of my daily calories). My sources of carbs were NOT junk food: plain oatmeal, whole wheat bread, quinoa, wild rice, and fruit.
Neither of these was unrealistic. My lower-carb diet was nowhere near Atkins level (20 grams per day), and the higher-carb diet was consistent with the “average” 45% carb diet in people with diabetes (according to ADA).
Even though this was a one-person (n=1) experiment, I wanted to be as scientific and fair as possible: eating whole, unprocessed foods in both periods; counting and tra Continue reading