Thanks for getting back to me. I have a question for you about symptoms. I have been keeping a log in regards to food/liquid intake and how I feel. My light headedness has been pretty constant throughout the day. I wake up fine, but after about an hour or so, start with the light headedness, my arms and legs tingle, and I get very fatigues as well. This goes on pretty much all day regardless of what I eat. These symptoms go away around 3:00 in the after noon and don't come back until the next day. Is this symptomatic of RH?
Jim
Hmmm. In my experience, they
could be.
Sorry to be so cagey. But we are all different, so our symptoms vary too. I'll explain:
In my case, I used to wake up feeling ok. Fairly bright, alert and well. Then I would eat breakfast (toast, cereal, or similar -I mean, they are soooo much easier than the hassle of cooking an egg, aren't they?).
I would continue to feel ok for 2? 3? 4? hours. The timescale would depend on what I had eaten for brekkie, and how much fat was in it. But I only found that out later.
At that point, things would go downhill. Sometimes I would feel wobbly, shaky, hollow and ravenous (so I would eat masses of food and feel better (classic feeding frenzy, often with chocolate). But sometimes, if I couldn't eat quickly enough, my blood glucose would drop too low, the symptoms would go too far, and even if I did eat, my body would still feel the after effects, even when my BG (blood glucose) had returned to normal. .
When this happened, my symptoms would include tiredness, aching limbs, crotchety bad temper, a weird woolly headed apathy, bad short term memory. I would lose words, get numb cheekbones, feel sick, shake, become clumsy, incapable of conversation, unable to do maths, dangerous at driving, weepy and depressed. These feelings could last a few hours, or all day, depending on how low I had gone, and for how long.
This cycle might repeat all day, depending on what I ate. Or last up to 3 days, if I had 'bad one'.
Then I would usually wake up the following morning feeling ok again, and the cycle would start off all over again.
I gradually, through trial and error, discovered that eating fat for breakfast helped. So I began adding more butter to my toast, and even cream to my cereals. That definitely helped! The low would be gentler and later, and I would feel 'normal' until later in the day. Then, if I had a rich lunch (chips, chocolate, mayo), I could usually feel ok til late afternoon... 4-5 pm became my nightmare time. I used to dread it. And, guess what? I would reach for the chocolate.
So, as you can imagine, this was disastrous for my waistline! But it meant that I could deal with school, college and then work, with some level of concentration.
But whatever happened, by evening, I was worn out, exhausted, listless, and aching. And would just sit in front of the tv. I certainly had no energy for a social life, or any hobby other than reading.
My life changed radically when I found low carb as a diet option. It took years to get it right (I didn't have much info, or this forum, or the masses of blogs and recipes there are on the internet nowadays), but as soon as I realised to avoid sugar, bread, potato, rice, pasta and pastry, things improved. I stopped gaining weight (weight gain is a sign of excess insulin production), and felt much better.
But even now, 20 years on, if I eat 'stupidly' or go too long between meals, I can go too low (nowadays I know they are called 'hypos') and all the old symptoms come back.
Hope that helps.
It'll be interesting to see what nosher says...