Average number of hypo's per week

10 a week is excessive if that's an average throughout the year. I might have 2-3 a week but most are in the 3.5 to 3.9 range. Even with daily exercise last year I still wasn't hitting half that.

Since diagnosed 7 months ago had only once very bad feelings at 2.7. Often wake up between 3.0 to 4.0 ,but feeling fine. Eat my my breakfast and soon back near to 6.0 . Don t call these hypo s , just low.

After nearly 40 years experience & not needing any assistance with hypos in that time. I'm comfortable with keeping calm & treating them.. My emphasis is on controlling the highs that cause the long term damage.
A 2.6er woke me this morning in fact.

The whole hypo thing when talked about (as highlighted in the link.) gets bandied as a "symptom" of diabetes..?
Where as I see it as (in short.) a "side effect" of the treatment..

Insulin is a drug that does need constant monitoring with it's use..

All this talk of hypos has jinxed me, I tested at 3.2 before bed last night. Didn't go "locust", just a crafty fig roll

Australian Type 1 guidelines (page 110) state that studies show the incidence of mild hypos is twice a week and severe hypos once every 3-4 years.

I seriously dispute that anything in the threes IS a hypo. T1s are told to keep our BS above 4 because we MAY still have quite a bit of active insulin on board at any time. So if you are at 3.1 you can be feeling absolutely fine. If you have no bolus on board, only basal, and you're not exercising, you're fine. With BOB or a run for the bus looming, you need carbs. But for me it's only a hypo if I'm dropping fast. The definition of hypo that we use as T1s is CLINICAL, not biological. That is, it is.a way of making sure our treatment is adequate, we don't have any accidents, etc, not so much that our blood sugars are normal. I feel best, cognitively speaking, and in terms of mood, when my blood sugar is 3.8!

mandy_horsley said:

I'm type 2, and I don't low carb, but I do watch everything I eat and try to balance things out, making my carbs slow transition but I still probably have 2-3 hypos a week......it really depressed me as I thought I was starting to get good control.

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im type 1 but I wish my levels got anywhere near the hypo stage!! major frustration!!! still plodding on with one suggestion or another from the specialists!!!

vix107 said:

im type 1 but I wish my levels got anywhere near the hypo stage!! major frustration!!! still plodding on with one suggestion or another from the specialists!!!

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Ah the "specialists".. I have a new DSN. We get on well, but the last visit she started waffling on about a pump..?
You see my first appointment with her a year ago, I went low.
While she was talking I reached into my bag grabbed my meter & Lucozade & treated.. She stopped & offered me jelly babies mentioning she didn't even notice I was low..
Ahh, but I did!
First impressions last I suppose...
I feel I may have also hurt her pride.. Next time I'll make sure I pass out & give her a chance to use her training....

I think it depends what you mean by "hypo". My blood glucose quite often drops below 4 - very possibly 10 times a week - but I catch it and it's back up to 4+ again within a couple of minutes, and I don't think it's very problematic. I generally aim for around 5, which works pretty well for me. I'm not proper low carb, which might well help, but only eat a moderate amount of carbs - say 40-80g most days, mainly from vegetables. I've never had the kind of hypo where I needed any assistance (though do sometimes demand that my husband pass me the haribo) and my hypo awareness is pretty finely tuned.
If we're referring to blood glucose less than 4, I don't think 10 times is *that* excessive. If we mean hypos that affect the ability to function, I guess it might be...

Ah this post is making me slightly more worried. I'm having hypos at least once a day, often a few times especially when working and seem to be surviving on a diet of emergency cereal bars but I don't really count the 3s as hypos, I'm generally in the 2s or even 1s with little to no warning. Everyone keeps telling me to 'run a bit higher, it's safer' but if they could feel how I felt when I get even above about 9 they wouldn't be saying that! I know the seizures aren't doing me any favours but I'd still rather be low than high!

rachel162 said:

Ah this post is making me slightly more worried. I'm having hypos at least once a day, often a few times especially when working and seem to be surviving on a diet of emergency cereal bars but I don't really count the 3s as hypos, I'm generally in the 2s or even 1s with little to no warning. Everyone keeps telling me to 'run a bit higher, it's safer' but if they could feel how I felt when I get even above about 9 they wouldn't be saying that! I know the seizures aren't doing me any favours but I'd still rather be low than high!

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Yes you're running an increased risk, you want to avoid nocturnal hypos that youre probably prone to considering how low your running you BS. I've been there and done that when exercising loads. I count everything under 4mmol/l as a hypo.

Use the mobile diabetes apps to monitor closely, watch it like a hawk to reduce the number of lows your having. It'll help if youre not already doing so.

Next note, severe hypos can kill you. I remember my GF saying to me sometime ago when i had a seizure, she said it looked like i was gonna have a heart attack. Probably not far off the truth.

PseudoBob77 said:

Next note, severe hypos can kill you. I remember my GF saying to me sometime ago when i had a seizure, she said it looked like i was gonna have a heart attack. Probably not far off the truth.

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And they might possibly permanently damage your brain in either a minor or even a major way. When i was diagnosed, in a coma, once out of intensive care, i was in hospital for several weeks in the longer stay ward. In one corner was a young woman who could not communicate - everyone else talked in the ward , but she did not appear to recognise anything. One of the junior doctors mentioned, quietly, near the time i was to go, in answer to my query, as i had seen she was diabetic, and was having insulin injections given by the nurses, that she had had 'too much insulin'. This was a very long time ago, and care is so much improved now, but that young woman stays in my mind.

PseudoBob - to be honest overnight hypos are the least of my worries; my recent experience with a cgm has showed my overnight basal is pretty much spot on, so as long as I'm going to bed ok then I'm fine. I am trying to watch out and do loads of blood tests especially at work, but irregular shift patterns and an unhealthily high-carb diet as a result at the minute is not helping, and I'm still having far too many lows. I know they can be super dangerous, but I seem to have adopted the 'it'll never happen to me' mentality, which is fine until it does. It just happens so often and I'm ultimately fine (exhausted a lot of the time, but fine) that it doesn't seem that it'll ever be any more serious.

Ann - Brain damage is probably the thing I'm most scared of and is in fact the reason I'm looking to try and reduce my lows a bit now. I couldn't imagine not being able to use my brain as it is now. I just didn't think it would ever happen to me as I've been fine for so long. I think I need to try and see that I may not be invincible, or even if I can't, anyone's life would be better without seizures if they were having them regularly. I'll work on it, just seems a lot to be done and a lot of variables to take into account, and the stress just adds to my lows! I'm getting very frustrated with how much of a toll these lows are taking on my body; the beadaches, the twitchiness, the exhaustion, the emotions...I don't want to have to deal with the effects of my t1 every day! Maybe this is what's making me less inclined to do so, even though it would make the long-term prospects a lot better. But I definitely don't want to be the young woman in somebody else's mind a few years on.

I'm curious to know how many of you are on a CGM.. Just because you aren't feeling them and/or finding them during a standard reading doesn't mean they aren't happening. Looking at my 24 hr graph (Dexcom) I had one this morning that I didn't feel and corrected itself shortly after. I'd say 10/week isn't an unrealistic number given that most members on here are the ones who are well controlled.

Hi, Rachel, re the number of hypos you are having - i just looked at a few of your earlier postings. I think you have had Type one 20 years, that's often about the time hypos can begin to be even more of a problem if you have been well controlled. I noticed you have just graduated and have been job hunting and recently moved and doing shift work/irregular hours, and that some weeks ago you had a stomach bug that got you to hospital with DKA. (Even if you are ok now, bugs can change absorption of food for a while.) .....seems to be a lot of reasons here for more hypos - .all the life changes mentioned are recognised stressors, and just one of them could throw my diabetes for months.. I had some bad hypo times but i never, thankfully, had a seizure. I would be concerned. Has your diabetes team advised about the hypos and seizures?

I don't really low carb as such I just keep an eye on my carb intake but I've found most recently I've been under considerable stress and I'm having a few hypos more than I d really like . My fasting bloods are fine I just guess I need to keep s tighter control and be more aware.

TorqPenderloin said:

I'm curious to know how many of you are on a CGM.. Just because you aren't feeling them and/or finding them during a standard reading doesn't mean they aren't happening. Looking at my 24 hr graph (Dexcom) I had one this morning that I didn't feel and corrected itself shortly after. I'd say 10/week isn't an unrealistic number given that most members on here are the ones who are well controlled.

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In the UK, probably no more than 1% have a CGM. They aren't really offered under the NHS and are too expensive for most.

tim2000s said:

In the UK, probably no more than 1% have a CGM. They aren't really offered under the NHS and are too expensive for most.

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Unfortunately, I am aware of the barriers people in the UK have in obtaining/affording CGMs. I posted with the assumption that most probably didn't have a CGM.

My intent wasn't to be abrasive, but to explain that it's difficult to record a hypo when you test <10 times a day versus 288 times a day (every 5 minutes) with a CGM.

I had another hypo this morning that is a perfect example:
Left on a 30 minute run- level was 135mg/dL (7.5mmol/l)
Finish 30 minute run- level was 100mg/dL (5.6mmol/l)
45 minutes after run- level is 72mg/dL (4 mmol/l)
65 minutes after run- level is 75mg/dL (4.2 mmol/l)
75 minutes after run- level is 97mg/dL (5.4 mmol/l)

Relevancy- I had a quick hypo for 45 minutes after my run that lasted for only 20 minutes. It was one I did not feel and one I probably wouldn't have caught if I didn't have a CGM. Also, I did not intentionally correct (carbohydrates) the hypo at the 75 minute mark.

Side note: my situation is a bit unusual compared to most. I am still in the honeymoon phase, currently experimenting with a low carb approach (gradually lowering my intake from 100g/day down to 25g/day), and I'm currently taking only 7 units of basal insulin (down from 24units), and no bolus (although I previously never took more than 5-6units in a single day).

See that's an interesting view point. At no point in that trace would I consider you Hypo. Going back to when I was diagnosed, years ago, I was taught that at 4-5mmol/l you should start to see hypo signs coming on, but it wasn't actually hypo. Once you were lower than 4 mmol/l then it was considered hypo.