Hi,
@FuryG , yes, night time hypos are messy, have had a few over the years!
If you've not already been on one, see if your doctor can send you on a carb counting course. Don't know if you're in the UK or not, in UK there's one called DAFNE, and it's used in a lot of other countries as well. I've been T1 for 28 years but still learned a lot of fine-tuning tips from it. There's a version called wicked for 16 to 20 yr olds in some parts of the country. They've got a lot of good advice about tweaking things to reduce the risks of hypos.
I know that in a hypo, there's usually panic involved but I find it helps just to keep in the back of mind that if I take 10 to 15 grams of jelly beans then it will take 10 minutes or so for that to have effect. So, for a lot of hypos, just get that 10 or so grams in you, then take a deep breath and say to yourself, "I know this isn't going to work for a while, it'll take 10 minutes or so for this to get into my bloodstream, so I'm going to be patient and wait, then test again." If still low then, repeat. A lot of people just keep on eating till they feel better but, because they've not realised about the 10 minutes it takes for the sugar to get from the stomach to the blood, they'll have over eaten, end up way too high then end up on a rollercoaster tryin to get it back down, overshoot, hypo again etc. etc.... It is difficult, but next time you have a mild hypo, just say, ok, I've had 10 gms, now I' m going to wait.
Of course, if it's a really bad hypo and I think I'm still dropping, I'd probably stuff my face a bit more. The DAFNE course I was on had a bit where partners/parents could come along to learn about dealing with hypos so that'd maybe be useful for your folks, how to use a gluagon pen, for example.
Remember also that unless you've had a batshit crazy amount of insulin, the insulin will wear off after 5 hours max and your liver will have already been releasing glucose naturally to drag you out of it. In the vast majority of cases, the worst that'll happen is waking up feeling lousy.
Some of the youngsters on my DAFNE course were tempted to run high just to avoid hypos. That's a bad plan, because you might not notice it in the short term, but running high too often causes a lot of serious long term damage which can suddenly catch up with you and will be worse than the occasional hypo.
If you get cold sweats in night hypos, have a look at
www.hypoband.co.uk. It's a wristwatch gadget which rings an alarm and phones people if your wrist gets too cold and wet.
And there's CGM as well. A sensor checks blood sugar levels every few minutes and rings an alarm if too low. Google dexcom and medtronic. These are quite expensive though. If in UK, NHS will sometimes fund them if night hypos are serious. There's a cheaper version Freestyle Libre which doesn't alarm, but someones figured out how to hack a sony smartwatch to make it alarm: google librealarm. Youngsters seem to be surgically attached to their phones anyway, so there's also gluconightwatch which will alarm the libre but you need to wear the phone on your arm.
Best of luck, mate, you'll figure out an answer to all this one way or another.
, and if hypo occur in first hour or 30 min of insulin shot (rarely) I get massive panic attack.
, and if hypo occur in first hour or 30 min of insulin shot (rarely) I get massive panic attack.
