• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

bad night time hypo - booze related

the_anticarb

Well-Known Member
Messages
1,045
Dislikes
Spiders, winter, bills, ignorance, prejudice
Last night, I went out for a few drinkies - injected 4u novorapid as there were some beers/ sweet mixers in there (there were no diet mixers available). Came back and had the munchies, so ate a few things including toast and chocolate. Another 4u -I thought that would be about ok.
Oh and i had my 10u lantus as normal.

Come 3am and I wake up with one of the worst hypos ever - I could barely stagger to the fridge, where I keep some fruit juice cartons, and ended up lying on the kitchen floor shoving muesli straight from the packet down my throat (after I'd had the fruit juice which was the fast acting snack). I also had some sweets.

I thought I'd be really high after that as I did eat quite a bit of muesli and sweets. I got that uncontrollabe urge to eat that you can get with a bad hypo! But an hour later, I woke up with a bg of 3.0, hypo again but not as bad as last time. More sweets brought me up.

Anyway, the booze was obvioulsy to blame in some way but I was really suprised that despite having a lot of carbs in the earlier hypo this still wasn't enough to raise my blood sugar and I went low again an hour later.

I'm usually ok with hypos even night time ones but this one was really horrible - barely able to walk and heart racing.

My question is - is this all the fault of the booze? Why did I go hypo again an hour later despite a huge snack both short and long acting carbs? Am I better off not having any bolus insulin at all next time I go out drinking, even if I have a snack when I come home?
(I don't go out drinking very often, prob once a month, but I do like to let my hair down and have a few drinks when I do. Usually I wouldn't inject for the drinks but I was trying to be really good and keep my bg's tight this time particularly as beers etc will raise it)
 
Hi there, as I understand it you shouldn't take insulin for whatever carbs are in alcohol + you should have a snack of some long-acting carbs (without insulin) before bed after drinking.
The reason for this is that your liver won't be able to help you with your bs-levels at all since it's too busy dealing with the alcohol.
Take care!
 
Back
Top