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Hypo

Deborah 85

Well-Known Member
Messages
91
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
hey

So I was told by my doc that level reading of five and under puts you into a hypo, last night before bed my level was 4.1 but I felt fine, but I had some chocolate and when I checked in the morning it was back to 7.1. after work I was driving home I felt like my arms didn’t belong to me and I was really struggling to lift them. I felt very sick, got home and my level was 4.9, again had some chocolate and now feeling a bit better but how do I stop this from happening all the time? Am I not eating enough? Do I eat the wrong things! I’m so confused
 
A hypo is under 4.0, or 3.5 going by new 'regulations' - you doc is wrong. And so technically you've not had a hypo, but getting near or it can be classed as a false hypo (where your body is use to having high BG and you've recently got you BG under control and in the normal range) - question is what medication are you taking?
 
I agree 4.1 and 4.9 aren’t hypo, so not a worry unless you’re on medication that induces hypos. I suspect a false hypo and ‘treating’ a false hypo stops your body getting used to these lower levels.
 
Hi Deborah. If I recall you are fairly newly diagnosed? If this is the case, and you have spent many years in the higher glucose ranges, you may very well experience all sorts of peculiar feelings and readings as the pendulum swings back and forth through normality. This shouldn’t necessarily be a genuine medical concern unless you do actually go genuine hypo. Keep monitoring and be vigilant, but try not to let anxiety play too much of a role, as it will only further destabilise your glucose.

As an anecdotal story - shortly after diagnosis I once swung from ~13mmol/L to 4.4 in a matter of hours. I felt like I was dying, like the ground was swallowing me up. Very distressing. Now I think nothing of a 4.4 as it’s entirely normal. Stick with it and in a few years you’ll be a pro. Oh and yes your doctor is wrong but no surprise there. I’m getting more and more convinced that most GPs got their diabetes knowledge from Ladybird books in primary school
 
Hi, if you are not on any diabetes drugs (apart from Metformin) then I agree it is a false hypo, which may continue to happen if you continue to treat it with chocolate. Let your body get used to lower levels - and if you feel really weird, try a cup of tea with a drop of milk. If you are on certain diabetes meds then that is another story. It would help us to help you if you filled in some more information in your profile settings, such as type of diabetes and your medication, then we wouldn't have to keep asking!
 
The doc have put me on gliclazide as I can’t take metaformin.
 
Rachox said:
I agree 4.1 and 4.9 aren’t hypo, so not a worry unless you’re on medication that induces hypos. I suspect a false hypo and ‘treating’ a false hypo stops your body getting used to these lower levels.
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How do you safely treat a false hypo as I was shaking uncontrollably
 
Yeah I am very new to all this, thanks for remembering me I have never been that low before so I was slightly panicking and I had no idea to sort it out, I thought I was gonna have to take more medication to sort myself out. It was quite daunting.
 
No I’m not on metaformin, I’m on gliclazide. I can’t take metaformin. I didn’t know how else to treat it, I was a little freaked out if I’m honest. I didn’t know what to do for the best.
 
Deborah 85 said:
No I’m not on metaformin, I’m on gliclazide. I can’t take metaformin. I didn’t know how else to treat it, I was a little freaked out if I’m honest. I didn’t know what to do for the best.
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With gliclazide, you are indeed at risk of hypo's. When above 4 and below 5 but feeling rubbish, I'd treat with nothing more than a small piece of bread or a couple of bites of an apple or such and test to see how things are progressing after 15 minutes. You want to spend time in the 5's to get used to lower numbers

Deborah 85 said:
after work I was driving home I felt like my arms didn’t belong to me and I was really struggling to lift them. I felt very sick, got home and my level was 4.9
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Please don't do this again. Take your meter with you, and definitely do not drive when feeling hypo. It could end in an accident or it could end in losing your license. I get how it happened this time, being new to this. Don't feel bad about it but definitely learn from it.
And I agree with Bluetit, it would really help if you updated your profile to say that you're on Gliclazide.
 
If you are getting regular readings of normal blood glucose levels, you need to speak to your GP about your Glicizide dosage, as the drug is a blood glucose lowering drug.
And I concur with @Antje77 about driving whilst feeling rough with the symptoms of a hypo or false hypo.
 
That’s the thing though, I don’t actually know what a normal reading is. I didn’t know what a hypo was until I got home and saw what the level was and because I was told 4.9 and under is a hypo I just assumed that’s what it was.
 
Yes, had we known initially you were on Gliclazide our earlier replies would have been different.

Please, it will help us all to help you if update your profile settings to state your diabetes type and your medication, otherwise you will end up with inappropriate replies such as you have had on this thread.
 
Deborah 85 said:
That’s the thing though, I don’t actually know what a normal reading is. I didn’t know what a hypo was until I got home and saw what the level was and because I was told 4.9 and under is a hypo I just assumed that’s what it was.
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Your GP should have warned you about Gliclazide. Mine didn't either.
 
Deborah 85 said:
That’s the thing though, I don’t actually know what a normal reading is.
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This is for starters: https://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes_care/blood-sugar-level-ranges.html

There is a lot more info on the main website, so spend some hours surfing and reading, both on the website and in the forums. You can also use the search bar on the top right for questions about specific things, like gliclazide. Stupid search bar doesn't do shorter words or phrases, so searching for 'false hypo' won't get you very far, but google might help.

Not sure if you've had @daisy1 's useful welcoming post, but it will appear on this thread.
 
Deborah 85 said:
How do you safely treat a false hypo as I was shaking uncontrollably
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As a T1, I rarely post in T2 threads, because the conditions are different, but I have to say here if you got to the point where you were shaking uncontrollably, it means your body was going into what's called autonomic response and you seriously needed to eat some sugar at that point.

You can reach a stage where the body has i identified that your bg was way too low, so it started pumping out adrenalin to tell the liver to release stored glucose to get you back to a zone it's happier with.

Low bg on its own won't make you shake, you could slip away quietly into an early grave with a low bg if it weren't for the autonomic response. The low bg induces the adrenalin release, and it's the adrenalin which makes you shake.

A washed out feeling may continue for a while even after you've, hopefully, eaten some glucose - adrenalin kicks around the system for a while.

It's all well and good the other posters saying you should just try and ride these periods through, but if you're getting to the stage of shaking, you absolutely need about 10g of fast acting glucose.

Once you're better, then you've got time to figure out in the longer term whether your meds need adjusted, not when you're on the verge of fitting.
 
I have updated my profile, I just didn’t know how to do it before. I just seem to get past being at 7 or 8 and I have cut carbs way down, I just can’t see where I’m going wrong!
 
I have updated my profile.
I still don’t know if it was a hypo or if it was just a fake one.
 
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