Hypo Treatment

[lizdeluz]

For me personally there're complicated psychological effects to the simple art of treating a hypo.
Psychological effects:

1. I'm treating my hypo, I'm eating 1 or 2 disgusting Dextro tablets as medicine.
2. I'm treating my hypo, I'm eating sweets. (Sweets don't feel like medicine, but like guilt-inducing excuses.)

Sorry, take no notice! I've always felt like this and I know it's the bane of life for a number of people with diabetes.
When I'm hypo, I look at my active on board, (if I can!) but my meter is screaming at me to eat at least 12g of carbs and I try to get the number of carbs right and then stop. It then screams again 3-5 mins later to check I've done it.
Since low-carbing, I can tolerate and function better at lower levels, and a1c is improving gradually.

@noblehead, I love the picture of 4 JBs squashed in a glucotab tin. Their little faces! But also a brill combo of sweets AND medicine!

 

[Dillinger]

As it stands, I've tended to find that just eating more of the glucose tablets has the desired effect, but I'd also say that "in basal" and "out of basal" isn't an effect I've noticed as having a direct impact on a low.

Oops - apologies that was me writing 'basal' instead of 'bolus' in my first post (which I've corrected now).

What I mean is; if I've got acting short acting insulin on board I'll hit it with a gel if not then I'll take a more softly softly approach. I agree that if you hypo at night you shouldn't mess around and I'd go for the gel then as well.

Best

Dillinger

 

[Dillinger]

It sounds reasonable provided that you actually need that much because I know from reading some people absolutely do
View attachment 8153

I think what I'm trying to get at is avoiding over correcting with glucose/sugars/juice and so on. By taking the gel when active short acting insulin is on board it may take me up and out of my target range but not to the extent stuffing my face with the children's Halloween treats would do.

I suppose if I can get that sorted out then it can be further refined.

It's not a regular event but it is the area where I am most likely to lose control.

You are quite right; I think the Libre would be great. I'll have to do some creative accountancy on our household budget to see about getting it.

I'm pretty sure it does this but could you confirm; you can access 8 hours of constant blood sugar levels with it; on the graphs above the numbers below are when you swiped the sensor and got an individual reading; is that right? So, for instance, you could see exactly what happens to your blood sugar overnight without having to swipe anything to do so?

Thanks

Dillinger

 

[noblehead]

@noblehead, I love the picture of 4 JBs squashed in a glucotab tin. Their little faces! But also a brill combo of sweets AND medicine!

Yeah, poor things

 

[tim2000s]

I'm pretty sure it does this but could you confirm; you can access 8 hours of constant blood sugar levels with it; on the graphs above the numbers below are when you swiped the sensor and got an individual reading; is that right? So, for instance, you could see exactly what happens to your blood sugar overnight without having to swipe anything to do so?

Thanks

Dillinger

Basically, yes. Most of us swipe far too frequently so don't have an eight hour gap between swipes very often, unless you are sleeping heavily and long!

 

[smidge]

Although you need to swipe every eight hours to make sure you upload the data from the sensor to the reader where it is then stored for 3 months, you also really need to download it from the reader to a PC or Mac to see the continuous data collected over the day, week, months. This is where its real power is. And as Tim alludes to - you actually get a little obsessed with scanning - although I'm sure that will decrease over time.

Smidge

Note: Just edited this to correct a typo - it is 3 months (90 days) that the data is stored on the reader - not 8 months as I typed earlier.

 

[phoenix]

If you do go a bit over 8 hours as I did one night you just have small gap in the data ( I had about 30 min missing)
I'm also seeing if I can do some creative accounting to work out if I can afford to use my second sensor now and get another for later.
The budget certainly couldn't stretch to permanent use and though I would like to do so, I'm not certain that I really need to use it on a permanent basis.

 

[Padders91]

I used to be really bad treating a hypo, specially when waking up with one, I used to stagger downstairs and quickly drink a glass full of orange, and eat 6 biscuits, which used to cause a up and down effect on my sugars, I think I have got it down to a t now though, as I usually now have 1 small glass of orange and 4 crackers.

 

[LucySW]

I'm pretty sure it does this but could you confirm; you can access 8 hours of constant blood sugar levels with it; on the graphs above the numbers below are when you swiped the sensor and got an individual reading; is that right? So, for instance, you could see exactly what happens to your blood sugar overnight without having to swipe anything to do so?

As Tim said, but if you want to access the actual numbers recorded automatically while you're not scanning, when you're asleep for example, you have to export the data to a spreadsheet .csv file. On the reader you can't access them, and on the graph you can only see what sort of ballpark they are in.

 

[cally]

I usually stick with lucozade if below about 3.3. I am quite good at judging the number of mouthfuls I need and not having too much.
The problem is that it quickly looses its fizz so I throw quite a lot away!
I don't eat something with carbs in it after treating hypo with lucozade, because it's not usually necessary ( for me)