Hypoglycemia (Low Blood Sugar) Symptoms & Diabetes

Hypoglycemia (Low Blood Sugar) Symptoms & Diabetes

Signs of Low Blood Sugar

Most patients recognize the early warning signs of low blood sugar and counteract them by eating. Ideally, a simple sugar that is easily absorbed (such as a pack of table sugar, glucose tablets, lifesavers, juice, or regular soda) should be eaten.
While chocolate seems an appealing choice, as perhaps does cake and other sweets, these take far too long to be absorbed and are thus not ideal choices.
Half a glass of juice or soda should work adequately and care should be taken not to over treat so that blood sugars do not rise excessively.
If possible, the blood sugar level should be checked before and then again at about 20 minutes after treating. If a reading in the 70's or less is obtained, treatment by eating or drinking a simple sugar is appropriate.
It is also important to remember that once the blood sugar reaches a safe level, it needs to stay there. At this point it is recommended to take a longer acting carbohydrate (a slice of bread, for example) to sustain the blood sugar level.

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Preventing Low Blood Sugar Levels

Preventing Low Blood Sugar Levels
Signs of Low Blood Sugar

By knowing what causes low blood sugar levels and being prepared, you can lessen the chance that you'll have low blood sugar levels. But no matter how well they take care of themselves, people with diabetes will sometimes have low blood sugar levels.

Here are some additional tips to help you avoid low blood sugar levels:

* Eat all your meals and snacks on time and try not to skip any.
* Take the right amount of insulin.
* If you exercise longer or harder than usual, have an extra snack.
* Don't take a hot bath or shower right after an insulin shot.
* Stick to your diabetes management plan.
* Check your blood sugar levels regularly, so you can tell if your blood sugars are running too low and your treatment plan needs adjustment.
* Carry something containing sugar with you at all times and take it right away if you have symptoms. Don't wait to see if the symptoms will go away — they may get worse!

Alcohol and drugs can cause major problems with your blood sugar levels, so avoiding them is another way to prevent diabetes problems. Drinking can be particularly dangerous — even deadly — for people with diabetes because it messes up the body's ability to keep blood glucose in a normal range. This can cause a very rapid drop in blood glucose in people with diabetes. Drug or alcohol use is also dangerous because it may impair someone's ability to sense low blood sugar levels.

Learning how to recognize the signs of low blood sugar levels and get them back to normal is an important part of caring for diabetes. Keeping track of your blood sugar levels and recording lows when they occur will help you and your diabetes health care team keep your blood sugar levels in a healthy range.
Signs of Low Blood Sugar
hypoglycemia-overview

How is hypoglycemia treated?

How is hypoglycemia treated?

Signs of Low Blood Sugar
The acute management of hypoglycemia involves the rapid delivery of a source of easily absorbed sugar. Regular soda, juice, lifesavers, table sugar, and the like are good options. In general, 15 grams of glucose is the dose that is given, followed by an assessment of symptoms and a blood glucose check if possible. If after 10 minutes there is no improvement, another 10-15 grams should be given. This can be repeated up to three times. At that point, the patient should be considered as not responding to the therapy and an ambulance should be called.

The equivalency of 10-15 grams of glucose (approximate servings) are:

• Four lifesavers
• 4 teaspoons of sugar
• 1/2 can of regular soda or juice

Many people like the idea of treating hypoglycemia with cake, cookies, and brownies. However, sugar in the form of complex carbohydrates or sugar combined with fat and protein are much too slowly absorbed to be useful in the acute treatment of hypoglycemia.

Once the acute episode has been treated, a healthy, long-acting carbohydrate to maintain blood sugars in the appropriate range should be consumed. Half a sandwich is a reasonable option.
Signs of Low Blood Sugar
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Treating Low Blood Sugar Levels

Treating Low Blood Sugar Levels

Your diabetes health care team will give you guidelines for treating low blood sugar levels, depending on your symptoms. If you can, try to test your blood sugar levels to make sure that your symptoms are because of hypoglycemia. If you can't test blood sugar immediately, don't delay in treating your symptoms — you can always check your blood sugar after you've taken steps to get your blood sugar back up into the normal range.

When blood sugar levels are low, the goal is to get them back up quickly. To do that, you should take in sugar or sugary foods, which raise the blood sugar level quickly. Your health care team might suggest that you:

* Eat, drink, or take something that contains sugar that can get into the blood quickly. Your doctor may tell you to have really sugary foods or drinks (like regular soda, orange juice, or cake
frosting) or might give you glucose tablets or gel to take — all of these can help to raise your blood sugar level fast, which is what you need to do when it's low.

* Wait about 10 minutes to let the sugar work.
* Recheck your blood sugar level with a glucose meter to see if blood sugar levels are back to normal.
* Get a glucagon shot (see below), if your symptoms are severe or get worse after you eat, drink, or take glucose.

Sometimes, blood sugar levels can get so low that you may not be awake enough to eat or drink something to get them back up. When this happens, you may need a glucagon shot.
Glucagon (pronounced: gloo-kuh-gon) is a hormone that helps raise blood sugar levels quickly. Your parents, teachers, and coaches should all know how to give glucagon shots in case of a low blood sugar emergency or at least know to call 911. Your doctor can prescribe a glucagon kit, which should be kept in a place where the people who are close to you can easily find it.

Also, you should always wear a medical identification bracelet or necklace and/or carry an ID that says you have diabetes. Then, if you are not feeling well, whoever's helping you — even if the person doesn't know you — will know to call for medical help. This medical identification also can also include your doctor's phone number or a parent's phone number.
Signs of low blood sugar...
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When Blood Sugar Is Too Low

Signs of Low Blood Sugar

Glucose is a sugar that comes from the foods we eat, and it's also formed and stored inside the body. It's the main source of energy for the cells of our body, and it's carried to each cell through the bloodstream.

The blood glucose level is the amount of glucose in the blood. When blood glucose levels (also called blood sugar levels) drop too low, or sign of low blood sugar, it's called hypoglycemia (pronounced: hi-po-gly-see-me-uh). Very low blood sugar levels can cause severe symptoms that need to be treated right away.

Signs of Low Blood Sugar Levels in People With Diabetes

People with diabetes can have low blood sugar levels because of the medicines they have to take to manage their diabetes. They may need a hormone called insulin or diabetes pills (or both) to help their bodies use the sugar in their blood. These medicines help take the sugar out of the blood and get it into the body's cells, which makes the level of sugar in the blood go down. But sometimes it's a tricky balancing act and blood sugar levels can get too low.

People with diabetes need to keep their blood sugars from getting too high or too low. Part of keeping blood sugar levels in a healthy range is having good timing, and balancing when and what they eat and when they exercise with when they take medicines.

Some things that can make low blood sugar levels more likely to happen are:

* skipping meals and snacks
* not eating enough food at a meal or snack
* exercising longer or harder than usual without eating some extra food
* getting too much insulin
* not timing the insulin doses properly with meals, snacks, and exercise

Also, certain things may increase how quickly insulin gets absorbed into the bloodstream and can make hypoglycemia more likely to occur. For example, taking a hot shower or bath right after having an insulin injection increases blood flow through the blood vessels in the skin, which can cause the insulin to be absorbed more quickly than usual.

Other things that can cause insulin to be absorbed more quickly include injecting the shot into a muscle instead of the fatty layer under the skin and injecting the insulin into a part of the body most used in a particular sport (like injecting the leg right before soccer practice). All of these situations increase the chances that a person may get hypoglycemia.

Symptoms and Signs of Low Blood Sugar Levels

Different people may feel low blood sugar levels differently. People with low blood sugar may:

* feel hungry or have "hunger pains" in their stomach
* feel shaky or like they're trembling
* have a rapid heart rate
* feel sweaty or have cold, clammy skin
* have pale, gray skin color
* have a headache
* feel moody, cranky, or irritable
* feel drowsy, weak, or dizzy
* be unsteady or stagger when walking
* have blurred or double vision
* feel confused
* have seizures or convulsions
* lose consciousness (pass out)
Signs of low blood sugar...
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Hypoglycemia - Low Blood Sugar

Hypoglycemia - Low Blood Sugar

Low Blood Sugar is a pathological condition resulting to the low blood sugar level. This medical term literally means “under-sweet blood.” It has a significant variety of symptoms and signs although its primary threat is a huge effect of the insufficiency glucose supply as a fuel to brain. This condition will result to sever functional impairment of the brain called neuroglycopenia. Unpleasant malfunctioning of the brain can be as simple as just a “bad condition” to more complex situations like comatose and, in rare conditions, permanent damage of the brain or even death.

Low Blood Sugar can also affect non-diabetic patients. These are some possible causes. One is to accidentally drink oral medications for diabetics. Excessive alcohol drinking can impede the production of glucose, which depletes your body’s supply of glycogen. There are also severe illnesses that can contribute to the development of hypoglycemia. Drug-induced hepatitis is one.

This is because the liver is a primary organ in the production of glucose. A kidney failure, meanwhile, can affect your glucose level. Too much dieting that can result to eating disorders like anorexia nervosa may deplete the supply of substances that your body requires to undergo gluconeogenesis.
The endocrine system are composed of glands that secrete hormones that control various body processes. Certain disorders affecting the adrenal and pituitary glands can contribute in an inadequacy of primary hormones that control glucose production. These normally occurs more in children than in adults.

Certain tumors may not cause insulin overproduction but then utilize glucose, which later on results to overproduction of substances similar to insulin.
Hypoglycemia signs and symptoms may not be uncommon. The best way to know if they are leading to hypoglycemia is to seek medical advice. Nevertheless, these are its symptoms:

* Tremor
* Sweating
* Anxiety
* Heart palpitations
* Hunger

Since your brain requires a constant supply of glucose, hypoglycemia may have the following effects on the vital organ:

* Visual impairment such as blurred or double vision
* Seizures
* Confusion or abnormal behavior
* Loss of consciousness

It is very important to determine the specific cause of low blood sugar in order to establish what method of treatment can be best from the patient. Doctors would usually run blood sugar and other tests to know what triggers this condition in a specific patient.

Low Blood Sugar signs and symptoms can be treated by procedures of ingestion of glucose to the body or through the aid of hypoglycemia diet which is composed of foods digestible to the glucose forms. For example, a snack or a drink containing sugar will immediately increase the blood-glucose level, which will result in a quick improvement of the symptoms being experienced. When, however, the blood sugar level
becomes critically low and the patient becomes unconscious or can no longer swallow, a condition called insulin shock, it is important to seek emergency medical treatment. Glucose solution or glucagons hormone should be injected immediately into the patient.

Since low blood sugar is normally considered as a complication of diabetes mellitus, there may be a great need to modify one’s lifestyle in order to deal with this condition over a longer period of time.
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HYPOGLYCEMIA - low Blood Sugar

HYPOGLYCEMIA - low Blood Sugar
Nutritional Causes, Prevention and Therapies

While many practitioners recommend nearly identical dietary lifestyles for people suffering from low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) or diabetes (hyperglycemia), Sodium management, and the presence of adequate amounts of Fiber, are an important consideration to help improve sugar metabolism in both situations.
Sodium effectively slows insulin response, which in diabetics contributes to poor blood sugar control, however for individuals suffering from low blood sugar (or even hyperinsulinism), higher sodium levels can be an advantage because they prevent a quick rise and fall in insulin levels and subsequently reduce those dreaded blood sugar highs and lows commonly experienced with hypoglycemia.

Some practitioners also place great importance on the Glycemic Index (GI) of any particular food or beverage consumed, however from personal clinical experience, only the reduction or elimination of simple sugar / carbs is necessary, while complex carbs, or even most refined carbs don't have to be avoided at all - regardless of their glycemic index.

Signs of low blood sugar include weakness, mood swings, headaches, nervousness, irritability, or nausea with milder cases, and there is the potential of visual disturbances, shaking, sweating, confusion, palpitations, anxiety, dizziness, aggression or severe fatigue with more severe cases of hypoglycemia.

Regardless of lifestyle changes or treatments recommended by their practitioners, there are general rules which patients themselves can follow trying to control the symptoms of both, blood test-verified low blood sugar, or reactive hypogycemia (symptoms only):

• Meals have to be kept smaller and spread throughout the day. If possible, individuals prone for hypoglycemic episodes should not go for more than three hours without a meal or snack.

• When consuming complex or refined carbs, they should be consumed with some fat or protein.

• Emphasis should be placed on increasing protein intake -- eggs, nuts, seeds, chicken, turkey, lamb, beef, salmon, tuna..., or one may consider a protein supplement (if protein tests consistently low).

• Evaluating frequently-consumed foods by their potential to aggravate low blood sugar symptoms will not only help with meal planning at home, but also with dinner invitations, or when travelling.

• Because of its blood sugar-lowering and blood pressure-lowering potential, the sweetener Stevia should be evaluated first on an individual basis, before being regularly used by anyone suffering from hypoglycemia, or general glucose tolerance problems.

Feedback has been mixed, with stevia being well tolerated by some, but less so (i.e. aggravated low blood sugar symptoms) by others.

Allowed are all foods containing complex and most refined carbohydrates, while simple sugars / carbs should be eliminated. Following is a list of complex, refined and simple carbs:

Complex Carbs:
Legumes, such as lentils, peas and beans.
Vegetables, such as beets, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, corn, lettuce, peppers, potatoes.
Grains, nuts and seeds, including whole-grain bread, pasta, cereal and flour.

Refined Carbs:
Most unsweetened, but refined (non-whole-grain) cereal, bread, granola, pasta, general baked goods.

Simple Carbs (to be eliminated):
Candy, honey, pop, donuts, sweetened cereal, cakes, sweet fruit (particularly when overripe), fruit juice (unless watered down), white sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup, maple syrup, molasses, sucrose, glucose, fructose, maltose, dextrose, and other "...ose" variations.

Additional considerations to reduce symptoms of low blood sugar include the avoidance of Alcohol and Caffeine, as well as foods or beverages that contain high amounts of Potassium (which lowers chromium and manganese). The same applies to supplementing larger amounts of Vitamin C (which stimulates insulin and lowers manganese), and Vitamin B6 (which supports potassium, magnesium, and also lowers manganese).

Adding Supplemental Fiber to one's meals - particularly when carbohydrates are consumed - equally benefits individuals suffering from hypoglycemia, and those with hyperglycemia. This may include the most common type of soluble fibers such as Psyllium seed, available in powder, husks or tablet forms, or may consist of a special fiber blend containing konjac root extract (glucomannan), sodium alginate, xanthan gum, and others.

For Vegetarians, the lower protein content of many vegetarian foods can be a problem, as can be the higher potassium and lower sodium levels - particularly with beans and potatoes - when compared to animal products. One option is to place more emphasis on consuming celery, spinach or beets, which have a lower potassium / higher sodium ratio. But regardless, vegetables - unless thoroughly cooked - and fruit provide the least satiety, although baked potatoes (consumed without any fat) ranked highest on the Satiety Index. Unfortunately, the ratings were only valid for the first two hours after consumption.
For ovo vegetarians, having eggs for breakfast provides one of the best protein bases to help maintain adequate blood sugar control into the day, while oatmeal may be a reasonable compromise for vegans.

Most Nuts - if otherwise tolerated - can, or should be part of a hypoglycemic diet, being a convenient source of protein for those trying to manage low blood sugar symptoms. Cashews, chestnuts, and coconuts in particular have a lower potassium / higher sodium ratio, which helps sustain higher blood sugar levels.

Coconuts (i.e. coconut oil) also contain larger amounts of medium chain triglycerides
(MCT), which may offer nutritional support in a number of medical conditions, including seizures, poor immunity or immunosuppression, and various malabsorption syndromes. Nuts, particularly almonds, and (sunflower) seeds are also convenient, non-perishable foods when travelling.
Signs of Low Blood Sugar....
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