Help! What's Wrong With Me?

[cynicaltomorrow]

I can't figure out if I'm hypoglycemic.. or if what's happening to me is just normal. Yesterday (for example) I had eaten a piece of pumpkin pie (around 2), but had forgotten to eat anything of substance after that. Then, around 6, I went and had a Gluten-free Casein-free mocha. I definitely felt the rush from the sugar and/or coffee. After a couple hours.. I started sweating, got brain fog, anxious, uneasy, craved sugar. I knew I had to get another drink to fix the problem or I was going to like pass out or something. Anytime I get like this.. I just have to keep consistently eating sugar throughout the day to keep from crashing. Does this sound like something that happens to normal people.. or could I possibly be hypoglycemic? I'd appreciate any responses. Thanks!

[Melanie]

I think someone on here (Tara?) is hypoglycemic and will give you more advice than I can but I will try.

1. You shouldn't eat just sugar to prevent a crash. You need to balance the sugar with protein or fat. My friend had bad hypoglycemia (my opinion but I don't know what is concidered bad) and her doctor told her to eat meat slices, cheese, or peanut as snacks and to ward off symptoms.

2. I don't know if you are hypoglycemic. I have symptoms like that once in a while so I consider myself maybe slightly hypoglycemic and make sure I eat balanced meals and snacks but my symptoms may be normal. My glucose tolerance test I did a couple of years ago was normal so I don't think I could be really diagnosed with it. My friend who had it bad experienced these symptoms everyday. I don't really think it matters if you have it or not. You have symptoms (I don't know how frequently) and you still need to take action to control them and you control them with your diet. You have to be aware that you have these reactions and should try to prevent them. If people ask me, I just tell them sometimes I get hypoglycemic symptoms.

[tarnalberry]

Those are hypoglycemic symptoms, though you can't rule out other things. It doesn't mean you're going to be dx'ed with hypoglycemia off a test, but you may still need to treat it as such, and you definitely need to talk to your doctor about getting tested. The worst thing for you to do is treat the odd feelings with a rush of sugar. It is only going to exacerbate the problem. You need to make sure each meal or snack you eat is balanced (in whatever proportion YOUR body needs) with fat/carbs/protein. For me, that's somewhere between 25/50/25 and 30/40/30.

[red345]

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[Melanie]

But be sure to follow the ingestion of sugar with protein or fat to help your glucose levels stablize.

As far as I know, hypoglycemia is more like Type II diabetes and not Type I diabetes. They are very different and a better approach for type II and hypoglycemia is to eat something balanced (it has some carbs/sugars in it that help raise the blood glucose levels but has something to stablize it as well so you don't get another episode) when having an episode and when trying to prevent the reoccurance of episodes.

[mommida]

You could also be anemic. During pregnancy glucose testing, I nearly passed out with the same symptoms. The glucose challenge was normal but the iron levels were low.

Laura

[tarnalberry]

Eating after a sugar crash for a hypoglycemic is different than eatting after a crash for a diabetic. Part of the reason is that, with hypoglycemia that is NOT caused by a treated diabetic condition, the body is naturally producing too much insulin anyway. Eating something sugary in response will just cause the body to produce yet more insulin, which isn't going to help the situation for more than a few minutes. The issue isn't so much one of often having high or low blood sugar levels, but fluctuating blood sugar levels. The best way to keep them stable is to eat balanced meals.

I should have been clearer that I was speaking of a case of hypoglycemia in someone without diabetes, which is a slightly different beast.

[red345]

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[tarnalberry]

That's merely an argument for talking to the doc about it asap, as in the case of non-diabetic hypoglycemia, it will contribute to blood sugar swings. I'd like to note that most non-diabetic hypoglycemic issues are not cases where blood sugar is getting low enough to cause immediate, life-threatening issues. Of course this is not always the case, and as you note, it's important to find out what's going on so you don't mistreat.

I'd also like to note that a balanced snack/meal would definitely still contain carbohydrates. It just wouldn't be entirely carbohydrates, and have enough protein and fat to keep from causing a large insulin output. Having this problem myself, I can tell you that - in some cases - treating with a dose of carbs can make you feel WORSE (even lower blood sugar) half an hour after you have it because the body pumps out more insulin and then drops the blood sugar even lower. So you have to be careful with that route as well.

So yeah, I guess it boils down to "see your doc!" so you can treat it properly. :-)

[judy05]

Why not get a monitor and test yourself when this happens,

then you will know what is happening and can give the doctor

something concrete to go on?