Hypo symtoms

Helen1304 said:

Hi there
Can anyone advise me on symtoms of hypos. When I was pregnant I lost the symtoms of hypos. In one occasion I tested my blood and I was as low as 0.8 and had no shakes, sweats, dizzy spells etc.... Since my pregnancies I still haven't got the symtoms back but I was told they do gradually come back??

Click to expand...

Hi @Helen1304 ,

Hypo symptoms usually fade away because your body has got used to low blood glucose levels.
I believe the accepted wisdom is that you have to kind of retrain your body by living with slightly elevated glucose levels for a while, before you can start to feel the lows again.
DCUK does have a free to access training program. I cannot vouch for the content as I have not looked at it in detail.

http://www.diabetes.co.uk/education/hypo-awareness-program.html

Just woke up from a nap feeling rotten.

Dizzy, shakey, sweats and felt like I was going to be sick, could hardly walk... BS was 1.7, lowest I've ever had. I was also cold / clammy on the hands, made taking a BS hard and took three attempts to get co-ordinated enough to put blood on the test strip.

That's my symptoms of the day anyway.

Low Blood Glucose should produce progressive symptoms - at 4 mmol/l you should feel hungry and maybe a little agitated. At 3.5 mmol/l you should start to feel noticeably nervous. At 3mmol/l you should start to feel some twitching in your muscles, leading to shaky hands and you should, by then, be sure it's because of hypoglycaemia. By 2.5mmol/l you might start to get 'tunnel-vision' - when you cannot focus sharply, become a little confused and it gets even harder to find your reserves of emergency carbohydrates!
The lowest I ever reached [without fainting] was 1.2 mmol/l but by then I was nauseous, could hardly think coherently and was desperately drinking some glucose solution [which I had to hold with both hands!].
Whenever I have passed out, I have recovered unaided - because I seem to be still producing some glucagon - but I always feel as if I have been put through the wringer! Nowadays it takes me a whole day to recover from such episodes - which [for me] occur mostly at night - because the early symptoms just aren't enough to wake me from sleep - and they never have been, though I've been a Type-1 diabetic for 45 years.
I hope you can recover your sensitivity to low BG - as it's very valuable!