Severe Hypoglycemia: What to Do

Many of the medications used to treat diabetes may lower your blood sugar too much, resulting in hypoglycemia.

This is typically defined as a blood sugar of <70 mg/dl (3.9 mmol/L).

Once your sugar drops below this value, your body releases hormones, such as epinephrine and glucagon, in an attempt to return your sugar to the normal range.

For every 10 mg/dl (0.6 mmol/l) your sugar drops, the concentration of these hormones doubles.

With their release, the typical symptoms of hypoglycemia ensue: sweating, heart racing, shakes, hunger, head aches and anxiety.

The risk of hypoglycemia is greatest with the sulfonylureas ( examples include Glipizide, Glyburide, and Glimiperide), the meglitinides (Prandin and Starlix), and insulin.

Hypoglycemic risk is significantly reduced with Metformin, the DPP-4 inhibitors (Januvia, Onglyza and Tradjenta), the GLP-1 agonists (Byetta, Victoza, Bydureon), and the thiazolidinediones (Actos).

The hypoglycemic risk of these drugs approaches that of placebo, especially when used alone.

Since the brain requires sugar to function, but is unable to make sugar, low sugar in the blood may result in brain -related symptoms.

These symptoms include personality changes, inappropriate anger, confusion, slurred speech, seizures, and loss of consciousness.

Brain-related changes are most often observed when the blood sugar (BG) is <50 mg/dl (2.8 mmol/L).

It is very unusual for sugars to drop low enough to cause brain-related symptoms, unless food access is limited, since most people eat something as soon as hypoglycemic symptoms occur.

5 Most Important Natural Health Tips for Diabetics

Maintaining normal blood sugar levels is a fundamental requirement of a healthy life, and your body’s failure to do so, as is the case in diabetes, can lead to severe complications, and early death.

Today over 7 percent of adults and children in the United States have diabetes. One third of them don’t even know it yet.

More shocking is that 54 million Americans are suffering from a condition known as “pre-diabetes,” high blood sugar levels that haven’t yet reached the extreme range of a diabetes diagnosis.

Type 2 diabetes accounts for 95% of the diagnoses, attributed mostly to weight gain, obesity and lack of exercise.

How To Avoid The Mid-Afternoon Energy Slump

Creating Your Health ~tip

One of the most important things that I would recommend to avoid the mid-afternoon energy slump would be to keep your blood sugar steady by eating at least three meals and two snacks a day; and by eating a low-glycemic diet that includes whole foods (not processed foods) such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains and/or sprouted grains. This way you won’t be having those dramatic highs and lows in energy throughout the day which cause glycemic stress.

Say for example, you have a bagel or a doughnut for breakfast. This will cause your blood sugar level to rise rapidly. This rise in blood sugar causes insulin to be secreted. (Insulin is our storage hormone). What happens is this insulin causes the sugar to rapidly change to fat, and it causes our body to hold on to the stored fat that we have (sort of like a sponge). It also causes glucagon to be suppressed. (Glucagon is our fat releasing hormone) What happens then is that the blood sugar begins to drop very rapidly; it even drops lower than what it was before you had anything to eat.