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What does a hypo feel like?

Since being diagnosed and learning about diagnosed, I wanted to know what a hypo felt like. Last night my levels went down to 3.0mmol/l (54mg/dL). It was really obvious: I went pale, had a shaky feeling and started to sweat quite a lot. It wasn't pleasant at all! I didn't intend to go that low, but probably didn't have enough carbs at supper time. I treated the hypo with some fruit juice and some Weetabix. Very quickly these bought my levels up and I felt better. The theory, I believe is that you should take some rapid action carbs - fruit juice, glucose tablets, and then some longer lasting carbs - wheat, pasta. I also felt really hungry whilst my levels were low and therefore devoured numerous crispbreads afterwards. The problem with treating a hypo, is that actually you need very little food to raise your levels. In fact, by bedtime my levels were 11.2mmol/l, which is rather too high.

I understand that people feel hypos as different levels and that people build up tolerances to low levels over time. This is of concern as you might not have symptoms and suddenly black out. That is probably a time when you need to go on an insulin pump. I will talk about those another day when I have done some more reading and gauged some opinions.

For a laugh (or cry!) I went on the McDonalds website earlier to see how much insulin I would need if I were to eat my favourite McDonalds meal (Big Mac, Large Fries, Large Chocolate Milkshake, BBQ Sauce Dip). There are 200g of carbohydrates in that lot, which would need 20u of insulin. That is nearly as much insulin as I use in a day! Puts into perspective how hard your body has to work to control sugar levels in a healthy person.
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justme said…
Liekd that last paragraph. Although I am not a McD fan myself, there is some other fast faood places around here that's probably the same. And when I think of McD I also tend to think of rather smaller portions, compared to some other fast food joints - ... mmmm.. makes me wonder.
23 February 2007 at 08:33
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