Assisted hypo?

[UnexpectedDiagnosis]

@UnexpectedDiagnosis - this episode sounds very much to me like a 'one off occasion' and IMHO you have actually done what also appears to me as absolutely the right thing to do about it.

Why comments have been made by others about alcohol being involved is because

1. Oh yes it can exacerbate dehydration - and like it or not, being optimally hydrated means that your Libre sensor is much more likely to reflect a more accurate reading of your blood glucose about 10 minutes ago BUT in any event when BG is changing very quickly it is never going to be all that reliable, hence exactly why we are all warned to check any such scan result with a proper fingerprick blood test before assuming it IS correct and treating a reading under 3.9 or over 10 and - more importantly in this case

2. It normally has the effect of reducing anyone's BG !!

So - when you know you're going to have more than 'just the one or two' - please please make certain you have enough to eat - if not during, before is definitely OK or even after might be - as long as you're still capable! 😉

I dismissed alcohol to be honest as I had been awake since 7am and felt fine, no hang over and I didn't drink much the night before, I was perhaps tipsy at most.

It's not happened since so hopefully it was just a freak occurrence.

 

[SimonP]

First of all I hope you had a nice break, despite the hypo.

I doubt it's alcohol too, and I realise this is now perhaps veering off topic somewhat. In my experience and as far as I understand from the science, the tendency towards a drop in blood glucose is over an extended period while the liver is breaking down alcohol. I had a quick look through the literature for a threshold value (above which concentration of alcohol the liver stops converting glycogen into glucose), but didn't find anything very useful - in fact the whole process is very complicated and doesn't appear to be well understood. I may have missed something though!

I wondered about a threshold as when you start drinking there's apparently no effect, though this may be counter-acted by the carbs in drinks/the fact you're often eating or have eaten recently/etc., but I was more interested in understanding how long the effect might last the morning after. I didn't find anything.

It would be interesting for those who have suffered from a "lantus low" to look at their blood glucose very much later in the day (once any overshoots have abated), presumably they will have less basal insulin active which will make a noticeable difference to their later blood glucose. It would probably be quite hard to pick out the effects of what one hopes are very rare events from other random variability, and equally there may be longer lasting metabolic effects of having been hypo that will cloud the picture (even more than it already is!)