miss e j said:
Noone seems to have mentioned the effect of the liver reacting to the hypo with a shot of glycogen which will make the BG go up very high - on top of whatever you take to treat the hypo. Shame the liver is so slow to do this, otherwise we wouldn't need glucose tabs at all. I don't know of a way round this - apart from restricting hypo treatment to 15g. But even then , there's always at least a bit of a spike.
I've never been able to get a definite answer on what conditions make this happen - 99% of the time for me it just doesn't. I THINK (for obvious reasons I can't test this theory) that my liver only dumps glucose when I've been very low for a long, long time, ie if I don't wake up in a night time hypo. I have NEVER in 16 years of diabetes had my liver dump glucose due to a hypo during waking hours. I believe this is something that is impaired in type 1s, especially if there is insulin circulating (which there nearly always is). I don't get spikes from treating hypos unless I overdo the glucose.