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Message: <blockquote data-quote="shaunsilk" data-source="post: 2571009" data-attributes="member: 513139">I see this is an old thread but thought I would add something important to the last two posts, and that is: The brain and the body have two different bg values which is why you can read values of 2.5 on the meter and still feel fine, because the brain is not necessarily at that level! Usually it is good to treat the hypo as the brain can/will eventually catch up! This is a very important concept and bares repeating The brain is separated by the aptly named BLOD-BRAIN-BARRIER (the barrier bit). This means levels in the blood and or drugs etc just don't cross over, in fact many things CANT cross over and back from the blood to the brain and there are processes that keep the levels in the brain and the blood separate. Again this is why your meter can read (say) 1.2 mmol but you feel OK because the brain keeps its own  glucose value and it almost certainly won't be 1.2 mmol when you do a finger capillary reading. So while your body hba1c maybe at 3.8 most of the time that won't be what the brain is! Usually you must be very low for a long time to cause brain damage because of this principle otherwise you would see masses of brain damage in type ones just from day to day and this is not what we see for this reason . So on one day you might be fine at 2.4 mmol (capillary reading) but end up hospitalised unconscious at a higher level, there is no direct correlation between blood-glucose and brain-glucose, and the best you can say is that the longer you spend very low the more-likely your brain will end up that low but it is of no certainty.(mod edit to comply with rules)</blockquote>

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