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Can people explain how they feel during hi's and lo's?

Highs for me are like brain freeze - I feel them in the bridge of my nose. It's an odd slightly bunged up sickly feeling.

Lows I usually notice when I start to stammer, it's a vacant feeling, you can't quite think, the world is in slow motion.
 
Lows I describe to non diabetics as when you are so hungry you can't concentrate and you get irritable, the. Comes the cold sweat, the trembling, I have slurred speech and I also can feel quite panicky until its over

Highs I feel exhausted, really thirsty and kind of sicky feelings in my stomach. I also get terrible pins and needles in my feet and hands, so annoying!!!
 
When I am low below 4 - difficult to concentrate, sweaty, hungry, shaky legs - need to eat/drink something asap.

When I am high (regularly over 10 these days) dry mouth, dry sore eyes, not easy to read, slightly blurred vision, very lethargic could sleep at the drop of a hat. Current reading 11.9

Cheers
 
My colleague whose desk is opposite mine is Type 2. When he starts banging the phone down, raising his voice ad occasionally swearing I sort him out with the glucose drinks & sweets he keeps in his drawer. It's a complete personality change, he's normally a sweetheat, quietly spoken and polite. His wife typed out instructions which we've stuck above the kettle soeveryoneis aware as they read them whilst the kettle boils. I am aware of his hypo before he is :)
 
When I did my photography degree many years ago, one of my final pieces was based on visual experiences when having a hypo. Many diabetics can describe quite vividly a change in how they see things at a particular point in the low. The point is different for each person but is usually where consciousness is about to Be lost. Mine is below 2 and is best described as watching a piece of video with random frames removed. At the point where the frame is missing there is a brief feeling of having no control and a minor adrenalin surge occurs giving a sense or euphoria. All this in a fraction of a second. The exact same feeling is recreated, bizarrely, when I drive down a stretch of road lined with trees in the autumn and the sun is low in the sky behind them. The flickering light is the exact same sensation.

My hypos are similar to most, sweaty, shaky, not really understanding what is going on bit my night-time hypos are better to describe. They have always been the same for 40 years too. It's a dream of being on a roller coaster which is getting faster and faster and the sense that it is becoming out of control. At the point at which it feels the roller coaster can't get any faster and would come off the rails I always wake up, sometimes screaming uncontrollably, but always with the sensation of everything being crystal clear at that precise moment in time and with a massive adrenalin rush and heart pounding. This is followed by passing out.

It's always amazed me that from as young as 5 this has always been the same when at that young age I had never been on a roller coaster.
 
Hi agree the comments.

From a low point of view I think different people react at different levels and even today different doctors differ in their advice as to what is a low or high. From my own perspective (type 2) I was on 80mg Gliclazides in the morning. About half an hour after tablet heading off for work (a brisk walk) I would find I was feeling wooly headed and dizzy, actually had to rest against a wall a few times. By measuring found my level was dropping down to around 3.9. Cut back from 80 to 40mg and now levels drop to high 4's or low 5's, so monitoring and medication changes help. Typically around 6.5 - 7.0.

On the high side I started at 21.6 when first diagnosed and no I didn't feel any effects what so ever. If there is anything at all I think on occassions when my levels get a little high my eyes tend to feel a little twitchy and sensitive just like they do when I have mild hay fever but I think high symptoms are much less noticeable and probably the danger of continuing to do damage.

Good luck with your study
Regards
Jeremy
 
The occasional gulp makes me shaky and sweaty, hyper I feel really ill, being sick, very bad back pain (in spite of being on high dose opiates) very very thirsty and needing to pee. I have been known to sit on the toilet with a large glass of water.

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Hi, if I am hypo I feel sick and hungry and tend to feel very clammy and sweat quite heavily. Sometimes I am physically sick. My eyes also hurt a lot and feel hot. I also feel a bit like I'm not in my body and a bit dizzy. If I am hyper I feel extremely lethargic and not in control of myself. Good luck with your project.
 
Hi All...

My feelings might not be typical because I had thyrotoxicosis at the same time as my Type 2 diabetes was diagnosed about thirteen years ago and so I subsequently had my thyroid "nuked" with R.A.I. so I have to take 150mcg of thyroxine every day to keep my body going. This alters my perception of hypos which are pretty much what everybody says (although I don't get them very often as my numbers are usually in the mid to high teens) - sweating, dizzyness, shaking, a feeling of not being there, weak legs, blurred vision etc. I also get very gobby! The only problem is, as I said, the thyroid problem stops me noticing hypos until my numbers drop below three then things start to happen pretty quickly! I've been down as far as two and it's scary but some glucose brings me back up very quickly. Usually other people notice my hypo before I do.

I've never actually lost conciousness with a hypo although I suspect that I may have had hypos when I was asleep because some mornings I have trouble waking up and keep falling asleep again until I have some sugar. Low BG makes me snore as well. I don't know if anybody else has noticed this, not MY snoring obviously - it's not that loud!

Apart from Irbesartan and Amlodipine for the usual hypertension that comes with Diabetes, I currently take 4x500mg Metformin, 2x80mg Gliclazide and 1x100mg Sitaglyptin daily with strict diet and still have trouble keeping my numbers below nine. My GP wants me to try Insulin but I don't want the hassle of dealing with the DVLA and my car insurance compeny just yet, although it's inevitable that I'll have to at some point. In the meantime we're monitoring my HbA1c closely.

I've asked about the other injectables but he says they're more or less the same as the oral stuff and wouldn't be any good in my case, although I suspect that the cost may have something to do with it!

I'm hyperglycaemic most of the time and this leaves me feeling generally miserable with lots of muscle and joint pain, difficulty in concentrating and feeling hot and sweaty.

I've found a quick treatment for hypos that would probably make my GP throw up his hands in horror. You can get little bottles of concentrated Red Bull, "Shots" I think they're called which contain glucose, caffeine and various herbal stimulants. A couple of sips rapidly increases blood sugar but you've got to be careful not to have too much or it goes too far the other way. I keep some in my Hypo Wallet in the car.

PLEASE NOTE - THIS WORKS FOR ME - DON'T TAKE IT AS A RECOMMENDATION

Best wishes

Malcolm
 
When i'm high I feel really angry, everyone is out to annoy me...even the radio playing a song I don't like or a pen that won't work! I also feel very dehydrated and almost flu like but part of me is guilty for being so angry at my loved ones.

When i'm low it's like i'm stoned; i know what i'm doing but just about and i sometimes get giggly. When it's very low it can be scary and i lose my vision as well as completely losing my focus or knowing where i am. i can't prioritise and i once found myself doing laundry, instead of getting glucose, when my blood was 1.3!
 
Hi one of my better experienced Diabetic Circuit Sisters described diabetes as a "Black Art" , In hypo`s it depends what you were doing as much as a couple of hours ago , was it concentrated brain work , playing sport , going for long walks , driving , playing musical instruments etc. etc . it all has an influence on where symptoms are dsisplayed , it is something to learn and fix in memory , but if you if you get a sudden drop in blood sugar particularly in sleep it will depend on your regime .
Keeping low insulin intake matched with lower carb intake is safest , but then Novo needs sell more insulin .
 
When I'm high I feel exhausted, as if I'm walking through treacle; sore eyes which don't immediately focus. I also feel thirsty. I also get a chlorine taste/smell.
When I'm hypo at night my initial symptom is I can't sleep or I wake up, I will have an odd taste in my mouth, and sometimes that's all unless I'm very low. During the day, my symptoms depend on what part of my body I'm exercising. If I'm walking, my legs go numb, if I'm writing, my arms go numb, if I'm talking my tongue goes numb. Once when I was quite low I lost my sense of sweet taste which made curing the hypo unpleasant.
If I'm dropping quickly, my symptoms are more pronounced; sweats, shakes, pallor, and inability to articulate so I can only utter random nonsense.
 
My sugar levels are normally high. Anything up to around the 20 mark and I feel great. Over that and I start to feel very thirsty to the point where it becomes all consuming. A low for me is anything under 5. If caught out without any means to lift it, I get very agitated, panicky and a little violent. I get very confused and would find it almost impossible to answer even a simple question. My legs get very hot and sweaty and then all I want to do is lay down before I fall down and pass out. Because of this and how I can have a bad low out of the blue, I tend to never go out alone, and never have done since having a bad experience where I tried to have a fist fight with a double decker bus. Anybody witnessing this would have wrongly assumed that I was drunk. Since starting a lower carb diet things have improved, but as I cannot take the insulin down till the sugar levels drop, hypos are always very close.
 
Lows: Confusion, hunger, shakiness, feeling spacy, can be snappy if asked questions, will get tearful if having a bad low, pins and needles in backside and upper legs if I get a low when walking, numb lips sometimes, difficulty reading as the words seem to float off the page. If I go low when asleep, I often have very vivid dreams that appear real to me at the time (can be very distressing as they're always nightmares) and I'll wake up feeling very confused and still think I'm in the dream, or other times I'll just lay there not being able to sleep.

Highs: Thirst, tiredness.
 
Lows: shaky knees, twitchy arms, no concentration, manic head- like a speeded up cartoon is going on in my brain. Can't process questions, very slow to answer if at all, stroppy. Have walked through town not knowing where I was supposed to be going and looked drunk. Very tired. Have also had lights in eyes so could not see when hypo'd at night.
Highs: mouth like blotting paper, blurry vision, tetchy, extremely tired.
 
When I get a hypo, I find that I start sweating and become very stubborn and try to carry on with what I am doing. I also become like a Jekyll and Hyde, in that when people try to help me, I insist that I don't need any help. Although my brain is telling me what I need to do, my body refuses to help me. I can stare at a sandwich and know that I have to eat it, but when I tell my hand to move the sandwich nearer to my mouth, it stubbornly refuses to do it.
 
sillynanny49 said:
Lows: shaky knees, twitchy arms, no concentration, manic head- like a speeded up cartoon is going on in my brain. Can't process questions, very slow to answer if at all, stroppy. Have walked through town not knowing where I was supposed to be going and looked drunk. Very tired. Have also had lights in eyes so could not see when hypo'd at night.
Highs: mouth like blotting paper, blurry vision, tetchy, extremely tired.
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Your comment about the speeded up cartoon going on in your head sums up exactly what I sometimes go through when I wake up with a bad hypo during the night and I can't figure out what's going on. It's the weirdest feeling - glad I'm not alone! :crazy:
 
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