Is this a phenomenon anyone has? (caffeine-reactive hypoglycaemia)

Ellenor2000

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91
So you perceive a negative glycaemic affect and hypothesise that it may be the amount of caffeine in your diet but are unwilling to perform the simplest of tests (elimination) to test your hypothesis. You, instead, use cgm and test strips though you have not been diagnosed with RH or Diabetes.

Have I got this clear?

The CGM and strips are unrelated to the caffeine.

I always thought the negative effect was just caffeine being caffeine and I just lived with it. After seeing a hypo on the CGM screen correlated with those symptoms, that's when I got the hypothesis that it was a glycaemic effect.
 

Ellenor2000

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Messages
91
I can't help you on the coffee thing (even the smell of coffee makes me nauseous so I can't even try it out) but I wanted to answer this as it does not seem to be addressed.
The simple answer is ...
Yes, it is safe to lance yourself with a bare lancet. However, I actually find it difficult to do. The lancet bounces off my finger because I can't apply enough pressure. This may be because I am a bit of a scaredy cat so don't want to push too hard.
High enough doses of tea and hot chocolate will do it if you're vulnerable to this.
 

Ellenor2000

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91
This is going to sound a bit like a prim little miss but ...
I drink herbal tea and can't be bothered to inject insulin with a drink so rarely drink hot chocolate.
I do drink alcohol and eat cake so I can't be that puritanical :)

However, the main purpose of my comment was to highlight that, if you can do it, stabbing yourself with a "un-lanced lancet" is safe.
I ended up not needing to - I found the baggie of strips I had.

I don't know what the mechanism is of caffeine causing a hypo but I have no reason to suspect you'd be vulnerable to it given the metabolic circumstances (my system is, as far as I know, completely normal, whereas you have to inject insulin to not go into a metabolic acidosis). Feel free to try if you can get some regular tea down the hatch and have a bystander with a glucagon pen, though.

As far as hot chocolate goes, I don't put sugar in mine; I put an erythritol-based sweetener in it instead. If I put sugar in it (as I put black treacle this time and this time only in my drink of double cream, Balkan yoghurt and vanilla flavoring - ordinarily if I'm gonna mix anything with those three it's going to be cottage cheese blenderised with some of the yoghurt. Clearly I'm not on a ketogenic sort of diet at the moment) I would expect to see a rise (and the strip tests corroborate that).
 

CauthaFit2013

Member
Messages
5
Type of diabetes
LADA
I suffer from the same. If I eat carbs (which I normally avoid), I try to have an espresso or black coffee, and I notice I need less insulin (Type 1.5/LADA here).
 

LooperCat

Expert
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5,223
Type of diabetes
Type 1
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Other
Many type ones report a spike in blood glucose following coffee, even black - and have to dose for it. Luckily it has no effect either way on me, and I drink a lot of very strong black coffee.
 

Ellenor2000

Well-Known Member
Messages
91
Many type ones report a spike in blood glucose following coffee, even black - and have to dose for it. Luckily it has no effect either way on me, and I drink a lot of very strong black coffee.
That's why this confuses me - but then again I'm a Normal Person™.
 

Lamont D

Oracle
Messages
15,793
Type of diabetes
Reactive hypoglycemia
Treatment type
I do not have diabetes
Hi @Ellenor2000
And welcome to the forum.

I have a form of hypoglycaemia and it is mostly food that I am intolerant to but if I drink certain beverages, it has the same symptoms. And of course the hypos.
I don't like coffee, so I wouldn't know what reaction I would get from it, but tea is my go to drink for most of the day and decaffeinated is better for me, when I test. But it doesn't trigger the hypos, I don't drink tea after six in the evening because of the toilet trips, if I do!
If you do have a form of hypoglycaemia, 3.7 is in my normal range, and I don't consider it a hypo unless it goes below 3.5, you still get the symptoms but everyone is different.
I would ask if you are eating dairy all the time, there still could be too many carbs for you. Many dairy products if lower fat content or skimmed has too many carbs.
I would look at this, than the caffeine.
I have heard of people being effected by caffeine, but not hypoglycaemic.
Only tests will give you an answer.

Best wishes
 

LooperCat

Expert
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Type 1
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Hi @Ellenor2000
And welcome to the forum.

I have a form of hypoglycaemia and it is mostly food that I am intolerant to but if I drink certain beverages, it has the same symptoms. And of course the hypos.
I don't like coffee, so I wouldn't know what reaction I would get from it, but tea is my go to drink for most of the day and decaffeinated is better for me, when I test. But it doesn't trigger the hypos, I don't drink tea after six in the evening because of the toilet trips, if I do!
If you do have a form of hypoglycaemia, 3.7 is in my normal range, and I don't consider it a hypo unless it goes below 3.5, you still get the symptoms but everyone is different.
I would ask if you are eating dairy all the time, there still could be too many carbs for you. Many dairy products if lower fat content or skimmed has too many carbs.
I would look at this, than the caffeine.
I have heard of people being effected by caffeine, but not hypoglycaemic.
Only tests will give you an answer.

Best wishes
Could the gluconeogenesis from a carnivore diet trigger RH in the day way, do you think?

If I’m not driving or working, I’m happy to run in the high threes, I’m trying to achieve non diabetic levels when I can. It’s fine for noodling around at home, but I have to stick to the law when I’m behind the wheel, of course.
 

Lamont D

Oracle
Messages
15,793
Type of diabetes
Reactive hypoglycemia
Treatment type
I do not have diabetes
Could the gluconeogenesis from a carnivore diet trigger RH in the day way, do you think?

If I’m not driving or working, I’m happy to run in the high threes, I’m trying to achieve non diabetic levels when I can. It’s fine for noodling around at home, but I have to stick to the law when I’m behind the wheel, of course.

I wouldn't rule it completely out, but in most people I would think not. The whole process of Glucogenesis is to help with maintaining normal glucose levels that you depend on. Rather than giving you too much. However a liver dump is more likely to do this than Glucogenesis.

High threes are usually okay for me, but type 1s are usually supposed to be high fives aren't they?
 

LooperCat

Expert
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5,223
Type of diabetes
Type 1
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Other
@Lamont D Interesting, I’m quite intrigued by how RH is triggered and wondered if things like protein or in the OP’s case, caffeine could trigger a drop.

Quick derail: “supposed to be” and “what is healthiest long term” can be two very different things ;) Traditionally they’ve advised people on insulin to run artificially high in order to avoid hypos. My combination of very low carb diet and resulting tiny doses of insulin (I rarely take more than 2u at a time) mean hypos are much less likely - and when they do happen, they come on very slowly so I can treat them before they become a problem. The tech I have gives me ample warning, my watch buzzes if I hit 4.3 so I can make a decision to treat or not. Most times I just turn my pump off for half an hour and that sorts it.
 
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DianaMC

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147
Type of diabetes
Prediabetes
Treatment type
Diet only
Patient description: 19, AMAB, non-diabetic (ex-obese, so working under the assumption of remitted type 2 pre-prediabetes), health-obsessed semi-sedentary carnivoroid.

For background: if I eat carbs (which I normally don't) the blood (and ISF) sugar reaction is as expected if a shade exaggerated - I go high (7s and 8s doesn't feel good when you're using to running 3s, 4s and 5s!), and then I return to baseline. However, if I drink two cups of coffee made in a cafetiere/French press with the count of grounds you'd use for twelve to eighteen cups, I'll go as low as the high 2s mM.EBG (unit explained later in this post). What would the not-a-doctors of DCUK diagnose me as having? Caffeine-reactive hypoglycaemia?

So I've had this problem for nearly a year now where if I consume coffee, but not tea or Truvia-sweetened hot chocolate (though I've since figured out that they do the same thing, just less to the point where I'm still compos mentis enough to drive an automobile), I could, around a half hour to an hour after, jitter like hell, become cold, sometimes sweat sometimes don't, and can become disorientated (rare).

While experiencing a pretty severe episode of what I now call "glycaemic caffeinism" (though I'm not sure it was brought on directly by caffeine that time), I told a type 1 diabetic friend of mine what my symptoms were and he said something to the effect of "sounds like a hypo to me". I wasn't worried because I do always end up recovering without any apparent consequences, but I figured the guy knows of what he speaks, so I scanned my Libre and my interstitial fluid glucose showed low, pointing to that my blood glucose could be low (the symptoms added up for low blood glucose, as well). I always recover from these episodes without needing to ingest carbohydrate (although I likely should have) and never lose consciousness. Given the danger of that, though, I will from now be ceasing coffee usage because of my tendency to severely overuse it, and all of my caffeine will come from tea and chocolate, whose hypoglycemic effects are much more controlled (but still extant).

During the worst such episode I've recorded (which was within the last 7 days as of writing), I showed an ISF glucose of 2.7 millimoles.ebg (EBG stands for "estimated blood glucose" and should be assumed whenever someone gives a reading from Libre or Dexcom without saying they crosschecked it against a fingerstick from 20min before) and dropping. I have to suspect my nadir was 2.6 mM.ebg.

Since Erowid has a drug experience vault for caffeine, should I submit a story to them in the hopes they may publish it, titled "Hypoglycaemia"?

I don’t know if hypoglycaemia is sometimes related to a caffeine reaction, but the symptoms you describe sound similar to caffeine sensitivity (which is something I have). I don’t get it so much with tea. I get it somewhat with Coca Cola. But badly with caffeinated coffee in large amounts - ie more than one small cup. For me it’s feeling chilly, sweaty, nauseous, shaky and distant - pretty similar to when I’ve had allergy reactions to medications. I may also have head pain, an upset stomach and look pale. Jittery is a good description! And it does feel quite like blood sugar being low (as in lack of food, particularly - I wasn’t testing blood glucose when I first had a caffeine as wasn’t knowingly prediabetic then).

It might not be that issue for you, but caffeine sensitivity is a real issue for people who have it. It’s quite well documented in a book called Living with Food Intolerance, by Alex Gazzola - in case you or anyone wants to read more about it. The author mentions other symptoms, such as anxiety, mood swings, panic attacks, restlessness and heart arrhythmia.

Every so often, I forget (go into denial) and convince myself I can have two coffees or two colas! One time it did start giving me heart palpitations - but it wasn’t until my doctor asked if I’d been drinking coffee or coke (when I checked about the palpitations) that I made the connection (again!)
 

Ellenor2000

Well-Known Member
Messages
91
Do y'all want me to have another cup of coffee for your entertainment? You get to choose how many scoops of coffee beans I take.

So what are you eating at the moment?
I'm basically drinking double cream to which I add a tablespoon or three of Balkan yoghurt (never had a problem with it, it gives me a slight ISFG rise, so this isn't carbohydrate-sensitive hypoglycemia). The solid food is basically all chicken or cheese: chicken leg drumsticks I've just run out of, scrambled eggs, Cheddar cheese, and sometimes I'll have cottage cheese blenderised in the drink. I will also eat between one and five strawberries per day.

"Yesterday" (I'm running on Moscow time atm even though I'm in Canada) I broke the "low carb" nature of my diet by adding molasses (black treacle) to the cup of cream and yoghurt.

I don’t know if hypoglycaemia is sometimes related to a caffeine reaction, but the symptoms you describe sound similar to caffeine sensitivity (which is something I have). I don’t get it so much with tea. I get it somewhat with Coca Cola. But badly with caffeinated coffee in large amounts - ie more than one small cup. For me it’s feeling chilly, sweaty, nauseous, shaky and distant - pretty similar to when I’ve had allergy reactions to medications. I may also have head pain, an upset stomach and look pale. Jittery is a good description! And it does feel quite like blood sugar being low (as in lack of food, particularly - I wasn’t testing blood glucose when I first had a caffeine as wasn’t knowingly prediabetic then).

It might not be that issue for you, but caffeine sensitivity is a real issue for people who have it. It’s quite well documented in a book called Living with Food Intolerance, by Alex Gazzola - in case you or anyone wants to read more about it. The author mentions other symptoms, such as anxiety, mood swings, panic attacks, restlessness and heart arrhythmia.

Every so often, I forget (go into denial) and convince myself I can have two coffees or two colas! One time it did start giving me heart palpitations - but it wasn’t until my doctor asked if I’d been drinking coffee or coke (when I checked about the palpitations) that I made the connection (again!)

The effect of coffee on my system appears dose-dependent, though because I don't have enough data it's not statistically significant - if I have a 4-bag cup of tea I have moderately lower ISF glucose but remain cognitively normal and not symptomatic of hypoglycemia. By the way, that's a lot of caffeine for a normal person - my tolerance is particularly high. I may be fine (with moderately reduced ISF glucose) if I only sipped coffee throughout the day or used a lower number of grounds.
 

Jacqui T

Member
Messages
7
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
Dislikes
Loud noise, bad manners, cruelty to any being, large crowds
I'm no doctor, but I have been T1 for 24 years. I gave up caffeine about 15 years ago because it messed with my BG and made my heart race (to the point where it was over 200 beats per minute! and I had to be put on a drip to bring it down). If I have it right, you are wondering if the caffeine itself is causing hypos... Someone else mentioned cortisol - my own thinking is that we tend to think of a simple cause and effect scenario: Caffeine = hypo. It isn't simple, I believe that it is possible that the caffeine causes a cortisol and/or adrenalin response, which sets off a whole chain reaction in the body which leads to a hypo. Decaff works for me.
 
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