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do i have some sort of hypo safety zone

L

lettey

Member
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6
hi all

silly question I know... but is it possible for my liver to dump enough sugar if my body recognises it's 'going low'?

You see, I made a mistake this evening - I took my insulin as required before dinner, two hours after I tested and was at 5mmol which I was very happy with. I then went to give myself my Lantus later on and I mistakenly injected Humalog instead. I had injected only 2 units until i noticed though, not the full 16 thankfully!! I then took my Lantus as needed.

I got a little worried and kept checking my blood sugar, it didn't fall at all, it stayed the same?

I also wonder this because although i've been sitting on 4mmol a couple of times before, soon after that, my blood sugar has risen without eating... i've never experianced a hypo yet.

is this even possible?
 
You have my sympathies for your condition worsening from only-just pre-diabetes to insulin dependent t2 over the course of a year.

As for your question, evidently it is possible. However, unless you were taking quite large Humalog does I would be very surprised if it didn't result in any drop at all but generally, yes, stored glycogen can be converted to glucose and raise blood sugars (thus the glucagon kits).
For reasons I don't quite understand this mechanism is unreliable in diabetics, and hypos should be adequately treated rather than relying on this effect.
 
Hi Lettey!

Yes, mine does that usually. It seems to be pretty good at correcting itself. I'm LADA and still producing some basal insulin, so I don't know if that makes a big difference to the body's ability to correct low BGs. I don't have many hypos and usually they are only mild (high 3s). I had one that didn't seem to want to correct and fell quickly into the 2s, but I'd had a glass of wine on that occasion and I know that wine seems to lower my BGs so i usually take less insulin if I'm going to have a drink. Perhaps alcohol stops the body correcting itself rather than actually lowering the BGs - I don't know, but generally, my body seems to know when my BG is going low and raises it a little. I'm afraid I don't know any of the science behind it.

Smidge
 
hello :)

Well thats some good news I guess!

I think I am LADA - they havn't said that word yet but I suspect I am. They changed my diagnosis from type 2 to type 1 and hypos were what I was very frightened about, so i'm glad that my body is looking after me in some way or another by realising at least it's low

Thanks for your replys :)
 
The problem with alcohol is that is a toxin that has to be removed by the liver, the organ that just happens to contain the main glucagon store.
Normally, after eating some of the glucose is used by the various cells and the rest is stored as glucagon; this is converted back to glucose when fasting to maintain stable BG; consuming alcohol interferes with this process (toxins need to be cleared first)
 
In most diabetics the beta cells still have an ability to eventually tell the liver to dump the liver glycogen store... But it's a safety net not to be relied on though as it can take too long to give the signal, Alcohol can knock the whole storage glycogen storage out, which the liver holds about 100g's of glycogen.

If you ate a either or a combination of high protein, high fat or pasta type meal, these tend to still impacting on the blood glucose many hours afterwards.. So it may be that the 2 units of insulin just counteracted the tail end of your tea!

Mind you I am surprised that you just didn't have a snack to counteract the 2 units of insulin, as this is what I would have done. Rather than spending half the night up testing
 
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