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Hypo scares me

How low and what method verifying glucose levels you haven't said if taking any meds. How high do you aim for?

Fairly regular in hypo territory here. Lada . Currently zero hypo risk meds
 
Perhaps try it and see - obviously not with loads of IoB and a massive negative rate of change of BG, but running low gradually should be doable and not overly unpleasant (and very easy to fix if you decide you've had enough).

You may find that if you're running high you get "false hypo" symptoms as you run down into normal BG territory - I generally find I can differentiate this from an actual hypo as I can do mental arithmetic/etc., whereas when hypo it's pretty hard work!
 
Hi Rachel - how long have you been type 1 ? Does your team know about your fear ?

Have you had an experience that's triggered this fear ?

They are the worst part of having t1d as far as i'm concerned, but I don't run high despite this, I try to aim for stability instead so avoiding the highs and keeping in range as much as I can, even if levels fall quickly you can feel a false hypo so maintaining stability as much as possible makes it easier to live with.
 
I agree that hypos are the worst day-to-day issue and to avoid that terrible sinking feeling of dread and despair that can occur when you're dropping like a stone and don't have enough food/appetite to deal with it, I limit my bolus injection quantities to avoid having too much IoB at any one time - this means I split my bolus for large meals (which is sensible anyway generally speaking as otherwise the insulin and digestion rates don't match.)

As long as I'm happy I can eat my way out of whatever insulin I've taken (which is typically nor more than 6U at a go, i.e. ~60g of CHO), and have something available to eat, I'm quite relaxed.

I'm not generally bothered about overnight hypos as long as I don't have IoB as drops are typically quite gentle and in my experience you wake up with a headache and deal with it. I realise that we're all different and YMMV.

I agree with @Juicyj that speaking to your team is likely a good idea, I've never experienced a particular fear, but if it were me I'd experiment with feeling what it's like and how you treat it to gain confidence. Having someone else around would likely also give you more confidence.

Good luck, let us know how you get on :)
 
Hei Rachel, if you’re new to all this I wonder if you have a CGM? If so or when you get them you can adjust the low alarm point to a setting above which you start to feel ‘symptoms’, so you have plenty of time to do something about it. But in order to do that you need to know at which point you start to get ‘symptoms’.
I can often feel my blood sugar level changing, but when I check it is actually going in the other direction to what I thought it was doing!
I was frightened to go to sleep when I was first diagnosed, in case I had a hypo while sleeping…but since I was exhausted, the fear never stopped or stops me sleeping.
I was advised a certain level to be at at bedtime, +2 if I have taken any alcohol and not to go to bed within 2 hours of taking fast acting insulin.
For a few months I tried to keep my BS lower than I aim for now, then realised I felt a wee bit ill most of the time.
I know that swimming plummets my bs very rapidly, so I carb up before a swim and check bs after 20 minutes of swimming. If I go for a walk I always have sweets or something in my pocket..except of course the other day when I had a ‘spontaneous’ walk after doing the weekly shop! Trouser pockets=empty, jacket pockets =empty, not even any blackberries to be had on the brambles! Comforted myself with the fact that my CGM generally reads a bit lower than a finger stick. But made my way back to the roadway sharpish. I was fine, but on doing a finger stick at home the CGM was reading true! I find the red on the libre app a bit disconcerting.
I had a medic alert bracelet made, once the doctors had confirmed which sort of diabetes I had. Think being told I would be on insulin for the rest of my life was a bit of a clue!
 
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Hi
Type 1 of 50 years here with a hba1c of 39 or 5.7.
You cannot achieve this without going low from time to time but i can function quite normally at 3.0 but any lower and i start to struggle.
I have a cgm which is magnificent and if i'm dropping i pop a couple of jelly babies in and off i go.

My predicted hba1c currently id 5.6 and i'm aiming for 5.2 but i don't think that is achievable.

I do not see a specialist or DSN as i often end up arguing particularly about hypos as their definition is different to mine.
If i'm 3.5 and feeling fine its not a hypo but i hasten to add this is peculiar to me and me alone!

Suffice to say my philosophy is different on the rare occasion i drive.

I have never been hospitalised which is down to good management now but thirty years ago was probably good luck!!

I wish you well

Tony

Just to add i don't like the word "hypo" and rarely use it and i just say to my wife I'm running a bit low.....
 
Yep - lows are scary, but we have the tools to tell us when its going to happen.

Look at getting a CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitor) that will alarm your phone when you start to go low (Libre 2+ and Dexcom One+ are available on the NHS).

I have no idea how many times these things have saved my life (but its a lot) :)
 
CheeseSeaker said:
Yep - lows are scary, but we have the tools to tell us when its going to happen.
Click to expand...
I don't find lows scary.
We need to have lows and highs so we know how to deal with them but i agree with us having the tools to tell us when its going to happen.
My philosophy is different as when i started off in the 1970s we had very little tools at our disposal and just had to trust how we were feeling.
Regardless of my Cgm i still wake up if i'm low.

Tony
 
I agree, I think there's a danger we no longer listen to our bodies, which means if we have a sensor failure or a gap (prescriptions taking an age for example) it's quite a shock. Testing so we know what it feels like to be hypo and to go hypo are useful things imo.

I spent most of my teenage and young adult years going low overnight and would wake up (with a headache, that may have been the alcohol too in the years at Uni, which was the likely cause of being low), eat go back to sleep.

I had one night that sticks in my memory where there was literally nothing to eat in the house I was staying over at so I went to bed hypo, didn't sleep well at all (unsurprisingly), but certainly survived until the morning at which point I got something and felt immediately better!

Certainly there are limits, I don't recommend doing this habitually (though I didn't lose hypo awareness, which is often quoted as a downside), but there were occasions when I simply didn't remember that I'd woken up, gone to get food and then gone back to sleep, OTOH there are the ones I do remember that I'd also try to avoid, like being unable to move one side of one's body until managing to drink some orange juice slumped on the floor, or waking up sitting on the floor in the kitchen clutching the sugar bowl and feeding myself sugar lumps - in the latter case I was really low, once I could stand up I found my blood tester which gave me a reading in the mid 1s, quite a long time after I'd started eating sugar. This was quite unusual though so I'd not worry about it, but rather think that in spite of this I was still able to go and get something (thereafter I simply put sweets by the bed, which made life much easier than having to traverse my then flat to the kitchen and scale the cabinets with jelly legs)
 
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