Dear Carey29,
I wrote a long reply only to delete it by accident! grr!
I am T1, diagnosed via antibody testing after 2 GD pregnancies, and I had similar experiences: dysglycaemia, tho in my case it was years before diagnosis, and the hypersensitivity to insulin. I regularly passed out or would shake all over and go cold and sweaty. I didn't test bg then as I had no reason even to think of diabetes, but clearly it was low since I passed out! As Catapilla and GrantGam say, this is the poor old beta cells trying their best but getting timing and quantity of insulin wrong.
In retrospect I used to have the severe hypos you describe if I had only eaten carbs, e.g toast and jam for breakfast. Have you noticed a pattern to your diet and the frequency of hypos? I would encourage you to make sure you always have protein and fat at meals, as they metabolise more slowly. You might also try smaller meals and snack in between, again on protein/fat foods.
As for insulin sensitivity, when I was first diagnosed I had whiplash like hypos on 1 unit of Novorapid and even hypoed on 1 unit of basal. I couldn't bear the high bg (psychologically or the physical effects) so I adopted a low carb diet. I still eat this way (30-45g per day) but am now entirely dependent on bolus insulin for meals and take some basal.
Although it is disconcerting, the plus side of it is that is probably a sign that your t1, like mine, is slow onset. (The University of Exeter recently published a paper on autoimmune diabetes and the different genetic markers that seems to determine age and rapidity of onset.) This means that you can get used to injecting insulin at small doses before things get more unpredictable. The downside is that the hypos and insulin sensitivity are unpredictable and so it is hard to integrate diabetes management into daily life. I found myself wishing my pancreas to cling on, but also wishing the beta cells would just get on and die already so I wouldn't have to deal with the randomness of it all! (I have since found that randomness only continues
)
Let me know how this goes, and hopefully tweaking your diet might help a bit. Be well,
Hannah