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How low can i go?

L

lynbrown

Well-Known Member
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Last night a hypo woke me at 1.30AM. It was a bad one and my reading was 2.2, my lowest ever. I take insulin and metformin. However, I had eaten a good evening meal so took no supper. I'm usually good about eating at suppertime but slipped up here.
How low could my reading go? Is there a stage at which I would lose consciousness? I got up and had some cereal. Bit washed out in the morning but otherwise OK.
 
Without understanding your insulin regime it is not possible to answer why you went so low last night. It is not advised so definitely worthwhile working out what happened. Perhaps you can talk to your DSN.
There are all sorts of things which affect our BG but the kind of thing which would lead to a low Bg are alcohol, exercise or too much insulin for the food we ate.
Anything below 4.0 mmol/l is a hypo and must be treated. I was told our brains need 2.8mmol/l to function properly (which explains why a common symptoms of hypos is an inability to focus on one thing). There is a level at which we will go unconscious but this varies per person. If this happens, our livers usually react by releasing glycogen. However, a "hungover without drinking" feeling follows the next day. A bit like your washed out feeling only worse.
If your BG gets extremely low and struggles to recover, you may go into a coma.

Our bodies get used to "normal BG". This is why some people used to high BGs will experience false hypos as they start to get their BG under control. If you experience lots of hypos your body will get used to this and you will not notice when your BG gets dangerously low. This is one of the reasons why hypos are to be avoided as much as possible and treated with fast acting sugar as quickly as possible.

If you are taking insulin you must have fast acting sugar with you at all times (including next to the bed).
Cereal is not fast acting especially if you ate it with milk.
Some people drink sugary drinks (like Lucozade), some people eat sweets like jelly babies (bit not chocolate because the fat slows down the sugar absorption) or dedicated treatments like GlucoTabs.
 
Hi. I agree you should have a source of glucose by the bed and to have some of that as well as cereal etc when you go very low. I went down to 2.7 a few months back during the night and have no idea why but the Dextrose tablets by my bed helped me recover
 
I have dropped to LO on multiple occasions over my 21 tears. That being so little glucose in my blood that the meter can't pick it up but have never passed out. Others are flat out at far higher levels. A huge variety of factors are at play on that front. To answer, yes it is possible to pass out from low blood sugars but it is rare as they body will fight back in a variety of ways to prevent it as described above. I would not panic at this incident. It can be scary but just make sure you have supplies at hand and you should be ok.
 
Dear repliers, thanks for answering. I omitted from my original query that I keep jelly babies next to my bed and took 4 before I got up for cereal. I am T2, have taken metformin since I was diagnosed in 2004. About ten years ago I started Novorapid during the day and Lantus at bed time. Such a lot of fine tuning goes into my insulin, I guess I occasionally get it wrong.
 
lynbrown said:
Dear repliers, thanks for answering. I omitted from my original query that I keep jelly babies next to my bed and took 4 before I got up for cereal. I am T2, have taken metformin since I was diagnosed in 2004. About ten years ago I started Novorapid during the day and Lantus at bed time. Such a lot of fine tuning goes into my insulin, I guess I occasionally get it wrong.
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Lynn - do you carb count and match up your insulin, or are you on regular fixed doses?
 
endocrinegremlin said:
I have dropped to LO on multiple occasions over my 21 tears. That being so little glucose in my blood that the meter can't pick it up but have never passed out. Others are flat out at far higher levels. A huge variety of factors are at play on that front. To answer, yes it is possible to pass out from low blood sugars but it is rare as they body will fight back in a variety of ways to prevent it as described above. I would not panic at this incident. It can be scary but just make sure you have supplies at hand and you should be ok.
Click to expand...

Hi there, I'm not so sure it is that rare. My job sometimes entails hearing about people falling ill and one of the most common causes of people falling unconscious and having to call an ambulance, is because they are diabetic and having a hypo.
 
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