What Low Blood Sugar Feels Like

Have you ever seen the video that went viral on Fb by which 4 wonderful ladies with sort 1 diabetes discuss what hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) seems like?

I like this video, and it impressed me to consider what a low blood sugar seems like for me and to place it into phrases on this put up. I believe that is significantly helpful for family and friends who could not know or perceive what it’s like.

Please watch the video and contemplate sharing this text along with your family members when you suppose it helps clarify how you’re feeling when your blood sugar is low.

Key Factors:

• Hypoglycemia is mostly outlined as a blood glucose stage beneath 70 mg/dL (3.9 mmol/L). 
• Particular person experiences with hypoglycemia can range tremendously. Typical signs of gentle hypoglycemia could embody weak point, sweating, starvation, tiredness, and nervousness.
• Average or extreme hypoglycemia could contain signs equivalent to nausea, abdomen ache, confusion, blurry imaginative and prescient, or fainting and have to be handled promptly. 
• Establishing a plan for low blood sugar administration, particularly at evening, plus common blood sugar monitoring (presumably via the usage of a steady glucose monitor, or CGM) is essential for avoiding extreme lows.

What does low blood sugar really feel like?

Attempting to elucidate a sense is at all times exhausting, and attempting to elucidate one thing as distinctive as the sensation of low blood sugar is even more durable.

The bodily elements of a low are simpler to explain, so let’s begin with these. 

I nearly at all times really feel the indicators of a low blood sugar earlier than it turns into vital. I’ll really feel it when my blood sugar is round 60 mg/dL (3.3 mmol/L). 

(Hypoglycemia is mostly formally outlined as a glucose stage beneath 70 mg/dL. Nonetheless, signs seem at totally different ranges in numerous folks.) 

I’ll begin shaking just a little, my cognitive operate goes out the window, I get weak, and I sometimes begin sweating. These are among the many most typical gentle low blood sugar signs, which might embody: 

• Weak point
• Sweating
• Starvation
• Tiredness
• Dizziness
• Lightheadedness
• Temper swings (equivalent to nervousness or worry)

A half-cup of juice or 2 to three glucose tablets will normally get me again to regular fairly rapidly, and I’ll transfer on with my day. (Observe the directions in your glucose tablets to find out what number of to take, and study extra about treating hypoglycemia in Deal with Lows as Rapidly as Attainable.)

However once I don’t catch my signs earlier than they get extreme and my sugars dip decrease, that’s a complete different story. Signs of average or extreme hypoglycemia can embody: 

• Nausea
• Abdomen ache
• Nightmares
• Abnormally quick or gradual heartbeat
• Confusion
• Blurry imaginative and prescient
• Vomiting
• Impaired cognitive operate (psychological talents)
• Fainting
• Seizures
• Coma and even demise

I hardly ever expertise extra vital episodes of hypoglycemia through the day as a result of I can catch it earlier than it will get to this stage, however it would typically occur in my sleep. 

I’ll get up in the course of the evening and comprehend it’s dangerous if I’ve had a “stress dream” (for instance, issues will transfer excessively quick within the dream or I’ll be caught in a loop of some kind) or a nightmare, and I’m sweating profusely and shaking.

After which there’s the sensation — it’s an urge, an nearly primal have to eat. I’ll stand within the kitchen, drenched and shaking, with all of my instincts screaming “feed me!”

It is sensible. At this level, my mind isn’t getting sufficient glucose to operate because it ought to, so the instincts take over to ensure that me to not die.

It’s, to place it mildly, extraordinarily uncomfortable. And when you don’t have a plan in place, a technique for what to do throughout lows, you’ll rapidly have emptied the fridge and cupboards and eaten something you may get your arms on. 

The conventional indicators that inform you to cease consuming are merely placed on standby when your blood sugar is low.

I’ve written a whole put up about how I deal with lows at evening, and I at all times attempt to observe that technique. And no, this method doesn’t at all times work (and what works for one particular person could not essentially work for an additional).

keep away from low blood sugar

For some folks, lows may be very scary, however I’ve by no means handed out from a low or had a seizure, so lows don’t scare me as such. However I’ll nonetheless do all the things I can to keep away from them.

In reality, I hardly ever have lows, and I believe there are a number of causes for that. Most significantly, I put on a Continous Glucose Monitor (CGM). Since my CGM warns me earlier than I’m going low, I may be proactive and forestall it from taking place within the first place. 

I additionally manually verify my blood sugar ranges incessantly and have spent plenty of time determining my insulin wants for various occasions of day, kinds of train, and sorts of meals. 

This didn’t occur in a single day, however I’m blissful to say that for me, low blood sugars are actually rare and infrequently extreme.

Last ideas

All of us expertise lows in another way, however I believe anyone who has ever skilled what low blood sugar seems like will agree that it’s past uncomfortable.

So, subsequent time one among your family members asks, “How do you’re feeling when your sugar is low?” contemplate displaying them this text and video. 

It’s unimaginable to completely perceive in case you have by no means had a low your self, however this could no less than give them some understanding of what you’re going via.

Urged subsequent put up: What Ranges of Blood Sugar Are Harmful?