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Nocturnal hypos... anyone else...?

Dragonflye

Dragonflye

Well-Known Member
Messages
235
Location
Bradford
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Pump
Hey guys,
since i found this forum I figured id ask about this, im hoping i put this in the right area (complete technophobe and unfortunately put my previous post in the wrong area)
I'll try keep my life story brief... :D i was diagnosed in 1988 when i was the grand old age of 4 with type 1 diabetes... i could not for the life of me get the perfect control that the docs wanted (hba1c usually 8+) then teens i rebelled :( met my husband to be at 17 at which was the turning point in my life and i got control but only could get my hba1c into the 7%... had my daughter 3 years ago and managed to get brilliant control and my hba1c to under 7 for what must have been the first time in my life... unfortunately 10days after having my girl i was on my own with her when i had a severe hypo which scared the living daylights out of me because i could have done anything to my baby without knowing what i was doing... anyways i started to let my sugars run high for fear of hypo... finally got myself under control when i got pregnant again and again had brilliant control during pregnancy, however after my boy was born (6 months ago) i have kept good control...
OK now life story over with... I was wondering, throughout my life, throughout all the ups and downs, good times and not so good times i have never had hypo awareness (apart from my 2nd pregnancy which was weird) and have nocturnal hypos on a regular basis (2x per month on average) regardless of what i do at night with eating and not having humalog... unfortunately i think i can count on my hands the number of nocturnals i have had in which i have been able to sort out myself, i am lucky that i have always had my parents and my very understnading and caring husband. my hypos are scary during a night because i have muscle spasms, sweats, confusion, random comments etc... Im petrified to go out during the day without my husband with the kids in fear ill cake out on them...
OK NOW life story is over with lol i was wondering if others have experiences like this and how they manage?
 
Sorry, I have no experience of this - if I do have nocturnal hypos then I quite merrily sleep through them! I think I have had a few but I only think that because of how I've felt in the morning - ie that I've just had a really big hypo :lol: I always make sure my sugars are in range and I've taken account of any active insulin before I go to bed, because I live alone and I can't risk anything happening in the night, so I take it very seriously. I also make sure I'm not having too much background insulin - 13 units of lantus is always too much (this led to a week of waking up feeling like I'd had a hypo), 12 is ok, 10-11 isn't quite enough (although this changes throughout the month).
 
Ok, do you ever test yourself during the night? Say every night for a week at 2am...adjust dosage and then the following week every night at 5am...and adjust dosage as the weeks testings draw to an end?

i too have had some horrific nocturnal hypo's....I end up falling out of bed, carawling over the floors to hallway, bathrooms etc...meantime hubby used to be trying to calm my screaming and shouting...he always knew I was coming out of them when I headed for the toilet. the bed would be soaked with sweat and they were awful.

At no time during mdi did I ever sense my nocturnal hypo's. However, I do now that I am on a pump. I don't know why, I just do...10 months since going on to a pump, and I honestly don't know and can't recall having a bad one needing hubby since.

The only way to try and to eliminate them is to test, test, test during the night, and alter doses accordingly to the results. this won't eliminate them completely as activitys during the day can also affect night hpo's, but should make it easier to establish when you are being more vulnerable to them.

Sorry, I hope that sopmeone else may come along with some additional advice, but this is where my starting point was in trying to reduce the quantity of them.....also I had to split my lantus to a night and day dose-but this then caused me lower readings in the afternoons......and then my pump.
 
At 1 point the doctors put me on a transmitter thing that tested 24/7 for 4 days to try and figure a pattern, unfortunately non was found. The strange thing is ill go to bed at around 5 and have nothing to eat and ill be fine, but i potentially could be 8 and have something to eat and i would hypo during the night. :)
 
I used to sleep through my night time hypos :shock:

I'd would wake up in the morning unable to see, it would be like trying to look through a very thick dirty net curtain and feeling like I had a session the night before. Thankfully I have pretty bad DP's that used to bring me out of them.

One night I did venture off to the toilet, well I was found there after I walked straight into the bathroom door and woke everybody up..

But since I've been on the pump I've only had a couple of occasions where I might have slept through one has had hazy eyes in the morning and now Ellie my German Shepherd will wake me up if she senses one, which is pretty rare
 
So if you go to bed at 8's and then go low during the night-is it because you have had something different to eat for tea...ie pasta or some cheese with dinner...or could it be the other way round?

Do you do anything different on those nights with 1) food or 2) activitys? Are you carb counting for your meals, do you monitor your reactions to certain foods?

It may be worthwhile recording your foods and readings and activitys for a few weeks, and seeing if there are any patterns that form.

MDI log books don't really allow for writing of foods and levels and dosages, but it would be worthwhile perhaps devicing one that allows you to record these details before taking to HCP's....
 
I do record everything :) and unfortunately i lead quite a boring life when it comes to food, it's pretty much the same and doesnt alter much :) I wish i had the energy to be active lol running around after a 3 year old is all i get up to but yet again thats pretty consistant :)

I do carb count (have done since i was diagnosed 22 years ago) and i have a spreadsheet that pretty much records my daily life lol

there probably is some kinda pattern however my dietician, nurse or myself have yet to find it :)
 
Gosh, sounds as if you are and have tried everything!!!!

I hope there is somebody else that may be able to help with any other ideas....

Know how frightening nocturnals can be for us and for our partners....the pump allows a huge amount of help towards getting rid of them, but on MDI, I also tried everything, and am at a loss now as to what could help....
 
Well we are hoping the pump will make a difference :) I was mainly wondering if anyone else was as awkward as me with these damned night time hypos :)
 
I certanly was. Prior to pump, it was always my husband that had to help me, and they were awaful. I think because I have such a strange sleep anyway, when I went hypo, everything that was in my sleep for me became reality....they were absolutely awful, and despite trying every change of MDI and dosages etc, like you they came indiscriminately.

I can't believe the change I have had since going on to the pump, but I must also add that I have drugs now that give me a better sleep because of my fibdomyalgia, so it could be the 2 things that enable me to recognise my levels now whilst asleep.

The first thing my DSN wanted to do when going on to pump was to sort my night's out...however I explained that I was wanting my days sorted out, because it was the day time that I was by myself, (and because of my dvla incident) and night time I at least I had my husband with me. In fact, both were sorted out very, very quickly and pretty much at the same time.

I haven't had a nocturnal hypo since going on to the pump that gave me the terrorising hypo's that I used to have pre pump. Gosh, when I think back to them, I still experience the pure fear in me that I used to have of going low at night. They were absolutely horrendous, no other words for them. One night time one, many, many years ago when my hubby worked nights for a while-I woke my whole cul-de-sac at 4am in the morning. we hadn't long moved there and people didn't know us well then. All they could hear was 'help me' help me' being shouted by a female at the top of her voice and screaming like mad....I did get downstairs and got myself some hypo aid-not before the neighbours had all gathered at their doors and sent a young 30 year old (who was also recovering from breast cancer) to see if I was ok- (or if hubby was killing me!!!). It was awful and embaressing. The whole street got to know me well after that as they all had a bottle of wine afterwards from us for my waking them up. I also got a collection going in the cul de sac for the young lady with cancer to help her through her finances a little. So yes, been there as well, and come out the other side....it was one of the reasons why we bought a bungalow...so that if I went hypo - there was no chance of me falling down the stairs...

All so much better with pump...levels can be 5.8 - 6.3 - 5.8 at bed, during night and waking now...I have had blip times due to changes in my medication, but even when these caused a few lows during the night I know now......it has been life changing in that way alone....
 
Sometimes I think my son hypos at night just because he is in a really deep sleep. I will feed him something really small but I think it is just that he has been disturbed that sends his blood sugar back to normal territory. I have had some success moving his long acting insulin to a different time but he'll still occassionally be a bit low at 3am. It is really frustrating.
 
I suffered severe night time hypos after my husband died. It was not unusual for me to wake up, usually on the floor, to discover my bedroom wrecked, my face badly bruised and often with blood on my face, arms and legs. It was terrifying. Fortunately I was under the hospital and my consultant first suggested that I set my alarm clock for 2.00 a.m. and test my blood sugars. However I had a fairly high pressured job and needed my sleep. The consultant then decided to change my long acting insulin taken at night to Levemir. That improved things but I still had some night time hypos. Now I ensure I take sufficient carbs to see me through the night. If my blood sugars are below 12 I eat a banana before going to bed. That seems to do the trick and now I am not afraid to go to sleep. :)
 
I lost my sensitivity to hypoglycaemic attacks many years ago and I did not sweat etc until my BG reached 1.6 or lower. Strangely enough I was told this was due to the fact that I had maintained my HbA1c between 3.0 and 5.0 for years, and I had to raise it to between 7.0 and 10.0 for 6 months. This reset my "glucose thermostat" at 3.0 - so I begin to feel sick and sleepy at that level, but I still do not sweat etc.
Since then I still sometimes experience severe night time hypos, where I wake up on the floor sometimes bruised. At first I feel like I am in a nightmare as nothing seems real, but the stress response causes the rise of adrenaline and catabolic steroids, which result in gluconeogenesis. (This is the abnormal breakdown of fats and proteins to produce glucose.) This stress response frequently enables my blood glucose to rise high enough for me to make a rational decision - for me it is to grab some sugar cubes out of the open box full I keep by my bed. The difficult bit that I have learnt is to lie there for a while to enable the stress hormones to work, until I have the ability to reach the sugar lumps.

These do not happen much nowadays because, like others, I frequently test at 2am. This is not a problem for me now as I am retired, but broken sleep when I was working could cause tiredness. However in light of the recent research that says broken sleep leads to a raise in BS, maybe this saved me from more nocturnal hypoglycaemic attacks, who knows? Certainly since I started testing at 2am, I have had next to no problems. Interesting theory don't you think?
 
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