• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

symptoms...

M

mspice7285

Newbie
Messages
4
I've been a diagnosed type 2 diabetic for 2 years and went onto medication a couple of months ago.

This morning I experienced a feeling of light headedness, felt anxious and needed to eat something straight away. The guy who I was working with said he noticed a smell of acetone which went away after I ate and started to feel better.

Me question is - did I have a 'hypo'? no where in the symptoms is a mention of a smell of acetone... should I draw my doctors attention to this.

I'm on metoformin and glicklazide

Thanks, look forward to any replies..
 
now you've asked!

If you were on just plain Metformin the answer would in all likelihood be NO you didn't as that drug does not encourage insulin production so even if your sugars fell low your body would at some point compensate by getting your liver to dump glucose into your bloodstream. In that regard as a Type 2 diabetic on just Metformin it's widely accepted that you are no different from a NON diabetic in how your body behaves if your sugars drop low.

However...

Gliclazide works by stimulating the pancreas to release more insulin so it is feasible you can hypo. To hypo the Gliclazide would have had to overidden your livers glucose dump which is quite a hard thing to do. Normally hypos are defined as a rapid fall in blood sugars to below around 2.8 mmol/l

There are things called false hypos that many Type 2's can experience if their blood sugars are normally running "high" and then drop into the normal (4 - 6) range. Doesn't mean they won't make you feel bad. The solution to those is to get you sugars down to safe levels permanently rather than keeping them running high and worrying unduly about hypos imo.
 
Probably better to wait for one of the Type 1's to answer Hypo symptom questions as unfortunately they experience them more often and more severely than us Type 2's. As a Type 2 on Metformin I've never had one and I proved to myself a few weeks ago by exercising hard that the liver glucose dump thing worked in my case. Got down to 3.6 then five mins later without taking on any food or drink I was 7.1.
 
Back
Top