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overtreating hypo

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the_anticarb

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Oops - woke up last night with a blood sugar of 2.3 felt really bad and somehow lost all control over what I was eating as I just had to eat as many sugary/carby things as I could find, felt like I was possessed by the carb demon!
Ended up downing some juice then eating a small pack of tangfastics, 3 blue riband and a bag of revels. And a small apple. Oops.....
Realised this was way more than I needed to correct the hypo so injected 15u novorapid but clearly wasn't enough as my blood sugar shot up to 9 and then this morning was in the 7s/8s despite correction dosing 2 x4u it's only gone down to 6ish about now. I think the excess sugar has used up some of my long acting insulin so it's having a latent affect on my blood sugars this morning.
As I am pregnant I can't afford to do this or let it happen again. I feel racked with guilt for how it may have affected the baby.
I know what I am supposed to do, 15g short acting and 15g longer acting carbs, and will try not to let this happen again but I feel so disgusted with myself that I lost control during my hypo. This only tends to happen when I go very low, it's like the part of my brain that is responsible /sensible switches off and I feel so ill that I don't care about the consequences I just want to munch. With a hypo in the 3s I can maintain some sort of control as my brain is thinking a lot more rationally.
Anyone else do this? Any tips for how I can stop myself next time? Is it purely a matter of willpower and riding the hypo out? It's difficult to find my willpower when my blood sugar is so low but I think this is a bit of a wake up call to me not to let this happen again.
 
Dont worry to much, I always do this aswell when im low my sense of control and responsability just dissapears until im above 5 and then it can shoot up to the amount of sugar and carbs I ate so I have to do an extra dose of novamix

If it has happend this once I wouldnt worry to much about it, everyone has at least one blip every now and then
 
Did you ever see those Toma and Jerry cartoons, where Tom is holding Jerry over his mouth and is about to eat him. On one shoulder is a littel angel version of himmself, and on teh other is a little devil version. Thsi is how I feel when I trat my hypos sometimes. the diabetes angel is telling me that I know what I should do...but I can't hear her over the thunderous roars of the diabetes devil shouting...eat the sweets, eat the sweets......and then, wehn my BG has come up a bt, the guilt starts. It really is a compulsion.
 
I think your mind is powerful enough to beat the cravings.

I've done this countless times only to regret it, I understand in your position that there's more guilt to be felt :|

These days I just keep telling myself that it's a feeling that will pass in 10-15 mins. The faster acting carbs you eat the better as it'll reduce the time for the cravings to last.

It does feel a relief when you've told yourself not to eat as much as you're desperate to and then you ride out those 10-15 mins of intense cravings.

Take the quick acting glucose sweets, assure yourself it's enough and find some way of distracting yourself for the next 10 or so mins.

This tends to work most of the time for me.

As the others have said, don't worry too much on this one occasion.
 

Ha ha that's exactly what it's like, from now on I am going to think of it as the carb demon trying to possess me - can I resist him? Also I think I need to keep out of the kitchen and maybe just stick to juice/sugary drink as once I start eating it's like I've crossed a line and won't be able to stop until all the food has gone. If I'm really hypo then it's difficult to walk about in any case so maybe I need to use that to my advantage and just grab the juice (I have capri sun packets on standby) and get out of there!
 
Viv - because it is really disturbing for my partner who is trying to get a good nights sleep before he has to go to work in the morning- It's bad enough that my hypos wake me up let alone him too! Obviously if I was in a really bad way I would do this, but last night I was kind of ok until I got out of the bedroom and tested myself, then it really hit me and I went down fast.
 
Oooh this sounds familiar.

What I do is not exactly what the common wisdom says, I do a more softly-softly approach but I have broken it down into a few simple rules:

1) If I am Hypo (even if I did just gourge) I will not use any Insulin.
The way I see it my maths skills go to hell when I am hypo and trying to calculate ratios at that time is a bad idea.
2) Add only the carbs to raise the BG.
I found that the lucozade tablets raise my BG by almost exactly 1mmol/l
4) Don't worry about the occasional high after treating a hypo (as long as it is not crazy high and no ketones)
3) Test, test and oh yes Test


If I over treat a hypo I have found it easier to accept that it will be high on next test but just correct at the next meal and bring it down gently. Avoiding any aggressive changes either way seems to have smoothed out my levels just nicely.

Good luck
 
Thanks Andy - I agree with your approach but when I have a tiny baby inside me who is dependent on me for thier blood supply it makes me a little less rational, so I am less accepting of the highs. Of course over correcting the highs leads to more lows leads to more highs etc etc so I know that sometimes a 'wait and see' approach is better - with pregnancy hormones making my blood sugars fluctuate like anything it's all guesswork at the moment in any case, sometimes my correction doses work just right, sometimes too much and I'll go hypo again and sometimes they barely touch the sides. Ah well not long to go now before the nipper comes out, only two weeks
 
alaska said:
These days I just keep telling myself that it's a feeling that will pass in 10-15 mins. The faster acting carbs you eat the better as it'll reduce the time for the cravings to last.
Click to expand...

This is what works for me as well. I have been overtreating hypos for years now and thought nothing of it, but I decided that as I want to get my body baby ready (it won't be another year or two before anything like that will happen but you need to be prepared as you know :wink: ) this can't go on any longer!

I have now been sticking to the 15g / 15g rule (unless it's just before a big meal) and I keep telling myself in my head to not panic and just wait until the feeling goes away. I know it's sometimes hard when you have quite a bad one (I usually get them at work which doesn't really help) but you just have to keep thinking that you have already treated it and it will go away, even if you can't feel it straight away! Hope it helps.

Enjoy your last two weeks and much more importantly, enjoy the little sprog! I'm very happy for you
 
I'm also pg. Do you share a bed with anyone? I tend to make my husband go and get me the food and that way it's more controlled. He's under strict instructions of half a glass of orange juice and one buscuit. It does help.
 
I'm actually amazed by most of your determination. When I hypo I binge, the "carb demon" made me laugh. If I hypo I'll eat 2 rounds of toast, probably wolf down a bowl of cereal and if i'm still not feeling any better I cram in whatever sugary treats I can find, perhaps a mini muffin if the rest of the family haven't had them already. I'm not overweight, I have a bmi of 22, don't get me wrong it's not that I'm greedy I just can't get over the desperation feeling of hunger.
 

I have found that Lucozade works really quickly! I used to binge as well just to try and get rid of that horrible feeling. Now I make sure that I always have a bottle of Lucozade on me and when I feel a hypo coming I have about a third of a bottle or half a glass (I try and stick to 100 ml because that should be more than enough) and that usually makes me feel better pretty quickly. Usually top that off with a banana for the longer acting carbs to keep it steady in the longer run if lunch or dinner is too far away.
 
There won't be many people who hasn't over-treated a hypo at some point in their time with diabetes. I was as guilty as anyone, would often eat fast-acting glucose and follow this up with 3 or 4 biscuits just to be sure, after one or two hours I would scream in frustration at my bg meter reading 10-12mmol, now I just treat with 10-15g of fast-acting depending upon my level and follow-up with a small fun-size banana.

Nigel
 
I love the little mini milkyway equivalents that L**l's sell. I keep 3 of these by the bed nowadays, and I just know that 1 of these will bring me up to normal levels. The are a real treat for me, so keeping them on bedside table is quite good, as I don't have to get out of bed (otherwise I would have huge munchies!!!) and I can eat just one and think it is a huge treat despite being in bed and having been asleep 10 seconds earlier. Don't disturb hubbby, and as I just love them, one of them is seen as a real treat and within 1 minute I am back to sleep again with no worries.

I got absolutely fed up of jelly babies, lucozades, glucotabs etc and it is wonderful just how well one of these works for me, and 1 is enough to stop me over indulging.

I find that if I have something that I really enjoy as a hypo treat then I tend to stick to what I should have. Needless to say I only ever eat these mini milkways when hypo, and it is such a treat to have a small piece of chocolate...
 
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