Before LCHF, if I had a hypo I'd turn into a carb monster and eat everything in sight and then spend the rest of the day chasing highs. The trick now is to manage the hypo without having a blood glucose overshoot or as Dr Bernstein says, to raise your blood sugar predictably.
Glucose tablets (made from the same sugar as blood sugar) do not have to be digested or converted by the liver into anything else. Unlike other sweets, they are directly absorbed into the blood through the mucous membranes of the stomach. I always keep Dextro Energy tablets (available in any chemist) beside the bed. They contain 3g of glucose each and 1 tablet should raise the blood sugar of a 140lb person by approximately 15mg/dl or 0.83mmol/l. For a person who weighs 175lbs that goes down to 4mg/dl and 0.66mmol/l respectively.
Take your target glucose level, figure out how much below it you are (not easy when you're in hypo, I know!) and then chew enough glucose tablets to get you back to your target. Say your target is 5.5, at 2.8 you're 2.7 under target. If you're 140lbs, 3 tablets will raise your levels by 2.49, 3.5 will raise it by 2.9. If you're 175lbs, 4 will raise it by 2.6. You will need to check the impact this has on your levels and if you are still low after 45 minutes, take some more. As you have safely corrected the hypo, if you feel you need to eat, have a small, low carb snack with your usual medication.
As you eat less carbs, you might find your insulin requirements are falling as your insulin resistance lowers and so may need to adjust your background insulin, as this is what controls your fasting glucose levels.
Dr Bernstein's 'The Diabetes Solution' is an excellent resource to have in your diabetes toolkit and I can't recommend it highly enough. He has been a long term diabetic, who, feeling let down by the medical community became a doctor himself and has since helped many, many thousands of people achieve near normal glucose levels with dietary carbohydrate restriction.
http://www.diabetes-book.com/
Julie
