If you have hypoglycemia, your low blood sugar (glucose) level is below the normal range. Your body uses glucose as its primary energy source.
Hypoglycemia and diabetes management often go hand in hand. Low blood sugar may, however, occur in persons without diabetes due to several uncommon diseases and other medications.
Treating hypoglycemia urgently is necessary. A fasting blood sugar reading of 70 mg/dL, or 3.9 mmol/L, or lower should be a warning sign for hypoglycemia in many individuals. Your figures, however, could be different. Inquire with your doctor.
The goal of treatment is to lower your blood sugar as rapidly as possible, either with a high-sugar meal or beverage or by taking medication. It is necessary to identify and address the source of hypoglycemia for long-term therapy.
Symptoms
Hypoglycemia symptoms and indicators may appear if blood sugar levels go too low and include:
- Seeming pale
- Shakiness
- Sweating
- Headache
- Hunger or sickness
- A rapid or erratic pulse
- Fatigue
- Irritation or worry
- Difficulty paying attention
- Unsteadiness or faintness
- Lips, tongue, or cheek tingling or numbness
Signs and symptoms of hypoglycemia may include:
- Unusual behaviour, confusion, or both, such as the inability to carry out daily chores
- Inability to coordinate
- Unsteady speech
- Fuzziness or tunnel vision
- Nightmares when sleeping
- Extreme hypoglycemia may result in:
- Inability to respond (consciousness loss)
- Seizures
Whenever I see a doctor
Immediately seek medical attention if
You could have signs of hypoglycemia, but you don’t have diabetes.
You have diabetes, and nothing seems to work despite trying to manage your hypoglycemia by drinking juice or regular (not diet) soft drinks, eating sweets, or taking glucose pills.
If you have diabetes or a history of hypoglycemia and severe hypoglycemia symptoms or become unconscious, you should seek immediate medical attention.
Causes
You have hypoglycemia when your blood sugar (glucose) level drops too low for normal body processes to continue. This may occur for several reasons. A side effect of diabetic treatments most often causes low blood sugar.
Blood sugar control
Your body converts food into glucose when you eat. Insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas, aids in entering glucose, the body’s primary energy source, into the cells. Insulin enables glucose to enter the cells and provide the energy your cells require. Your muscles and liver both contain glycogen, extra glucose storage.
You will cease manufacturing insulin when you haven’t eaten in many hours, and your blood sugar level falls. The pancreatic hormone glucagon instructs your liver to release glucose into circulation by dissolving the glycogen stored in your body. Until you eat again, this maintains your blood sugar levels within a normal range.
Your body may also produce glucose. Your kidneys and liver both play a significant role in this process. The body may break down fat reserves and utilise the byproducts of fat breakdown as an alternate fuel during extended fasting.
Potential causes include diabetes.
Diabetes may cause either a lack of insulin production (type 1 diabetes) or a reduction in insulin sensitivity (type 2 diabetes). Consequently, blood glucose levels increase and can rise to dangerously high levels. You could use insulin or other blood sugar-lowering drugs to solve this issue.
However, too much insulin or other diabetic drugs might result in hypoglycemia when your blood sugar level drops too low. In addition, hypoglycemia might happen if you exercise more than average or eat less than usual after taking your daily dosage of diabetic medication.
Potential causes other than diabetes
People without diabetes are substantially less likely to experience hypoglycemia. Some causes include:
Medications. Accidentally ingesting someone else’s oral diabetic medicine might result in hypoglycemia. Other drugs can potentially induce hypoglycemia, particularly in young patients or those with renal disease. One such is the malaria drug quinine (Qualaquin).
Excessive use of alcohol. Drinking excessively without eating may prevent the liver from releasing glucose into the circulation from its glycogen reserves. The result may be hypoglycemia.
A few serious diseases. Severe infections, renal disease, advanced heart disease, and liver diseases such as severe cirrhosis or hepatitis may bring on hypoglycemia. Additionally, kidney problems might prevent your body from adequately eliminating drugs. Due to an accumulation of drugs that reduce blood sugar levels, this may impact glucose levels.
Prolonged hunger. Malnutrition and famine may cause hypoglycemia because when you don’t eat enough, your body uses up the glycogen reserves required to produce glucose. One condition that may result in hypoglycemia and long-term malnutrition is an eating disorder termed anorexia nervosa.
A surplus of insulin. You may get hypoglycemia if your pancreas produces too much insulin due to a rare pancreatic tumour called an insulinoma. An abundance of insulin-like molecules may also be made due to other cancers. The pancreas’ peculiar cells may cause excessive insulin release, which leads to hypoglycemia.
Hormonal imbalances. Specific diseases of the pituitary and adrenal glands may cause insufficient levels of specific hormones that control glucose synthesis or metabolism. If a child has too little growth hormone, they may have hypoglycemia.
Hypoglycemia after a meal
Usually, but not always, hypoglycemia happens after not eating. After certain meals, hypoglycemic symptoms can appear, although it is unclear why.
Reactive hypoglycemia, or postprandial hypoglycemia, may happen in patients with procedures that alter the stomach’s normal function. Although stomach bypass surgery is the procedure most often linked to this, it may also happen to patients undergoing other procedures.
Complications
Hypoglycemia left untreated might result in:
- Seizure
- Coma
- Death
Hypoglycemia may also result in:
- weakness and wooziness
- Falls
- Injuries
- Automobile collisions
- Dementia risk is higher in older persons.
Prevention
The condition diabetes
Observe the diabetes control strategy that you and your doctor have created. Treating your diabetes and your risk of low blood sugar may be affected if you start taking new drugs, alter your eating or medication schedules, or start doing more activity. Discuss these adjustments with your healthcare provider.
Find out the warning signs and symptoms of low blood sugar. This may assist you in spotting hypoglycemia and treating it before it becomes too severe. You can detect whether your blood sugar is going low by often monitoring it.
A continuous glucose monitor (CGM) is a helpful alternative for specific individuals. A CGM may transmit blood glucose levels to a receiver through a small wire implanted under the skin. Some CGM devices may alarm if blood sugar levels go too low.
To assist in avoiding hypoglycemia, specific insulin pumps now include CGM integration and can stop delivering insulin when blood sugar levels are falling too rapidly.
Always have a fast-acting carbohydrate, such as hard candies, juice, or glucose pills, to address a dropping blood sugar level before it reaches dangerously low levels.
Unless you have diabetes
Eating many little meals often throughout the day is a temporary solution for recurrent bouts of hypoglycemia to help keep blood sugar levels from falling too low. However, this course of action is suggested as a short-term plan. Find the source of your hypoglycemia and treat it in collaboration with your healthcare physician.