New and confused

[Vixen1977]

Hi All,
I'm Jayne...39, living in the Midlands and a full time nurse and Mum.
I've recently been suffering from hypo symptoms. One particularly nasty episode was Sunday. As I was at work, I tested my blood sugars and had a reading of 3.2nmols. I was symptomatic...tachycardic, sweating, dizzy, nauseous and really felt shaky and awful. A colleague fetched a cheese sandwich and a sweet cuppa and within a short time I started to feel better. I had eaten a decent meal (pasta) around three hours before the hypo hit. An hour after eating, my blood sugar had rose to 8.5mmols. I still felt pretty ropey and pretty hungry.
The hunger and thirst are nothing new, but something I put down to different things, being on the go all the time. I eat a relatively good diet, but meals are irregular due to shifts. My latest fasting glucose in June was 4.6 (routine bloods). There is a strong history of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes on both parents sides, so I've always been aware of minimising the risks.
Recently, I've also experienced a lot of upper abdominal pain, which was put down to stress (relationship breakdown, long hours).
I saw my GP today after feeling unwell again. My BM was 4.2mmols two hours after breakfast. She's pretty concerned that I've had such varied sugars and given my family history has advised we treat as diabetes until confirmed otherwise. Palpation revealed tenderness over the pancreas and gallbladder area so she has requested an urgent scan and is going to discuss my case with a diabetic consultant to decide the next course of action. She said there was no point doing a HbA1c as my fasting bloods didn't indicate it.
Although I'm a nurse, I'm no diabetes expert and all of this is a little confusing and rather alarming. I've been advised to test my sugars, follow a low carb diet and keep a diary. Today, my sugars were 4.2 pre lunch (cheese and salad sandwich on wholemeal and fruit) and 5mmols two hours after lunch...within a short time I was feeling hungry and wobbly again.
Any thoughts folks? Anyone else experiences this? Any advice?
Help! X

 

[Guzzler]

Until you have a formal diagnosis of Diabetes and of which type it is really difficult to advise you.
Lowering your carb intake will do no harm until you are diagnosed though you must be aware that bread of any type and fruit will raise your numbers (which to my untrained eye do not look too bad btw).
It is good that you are aware of your familial history re diabetes but until you know what is going on you have to sit tight and wait for results. Good luck.

 

[Vixen1977]

Until you have a formal diagnosis of Diabetes and of which type it is really difficult to advise you.
Lowering your carb intake will do no harm until you are diagnosed though you must be aware that bread of any type and fruit will raise your numbers (which to my untrained eye do not look too bad btw).
It is good that you are aware of your familial history re diabetes but until you know what is going on you have to sit tight and wait for results. Good luck.

Thankyou...it's all rather confusing. I'm hoping it all turns out to be a blip and a bit of a kick up the bum to start taking better care of myself ;-)

 

[Daibell]

Hi and welcome. One type of diabetes comes to mind i.e. Reactive Hypoglycemia where blood sugar goes down instead of up and varies a lot. Your GP should be able to pin down your actual diagnosis but be aware of this rarer form of diabetes.

 

[Resurgam]

Do take the advice on eating a low carb diet seriously - you can't mess about eating fruit and bread and not expect to get production of insulin and as insulin resistance tends to drop as the day goes on you drop low. It happened to me when I was younger and also when I was reducing my BG levels recently - by mid afternoon I was feeling very tired and dismal.
Early in the day I stick to eating low carb foods so as to reduce the amount of insulin I have in my blood stream. Later on I can eat more - now that I am 10 months from diagnosis I am getting normal readings.

 

[kokhongw]

Do have a read around the Reactive Hypo threads...lots of good discussion on this issue.
http://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/category/reactive-hypoglycemia.70/

And here is a couple of charts to help you visualize the context...




The effects of excessive insulin response...a commonly ignored condition.