Trauma caused T1 diabetes and sleep

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T1TraumaZoe

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Hi,
I am a newly diagnosed T1 29 yr old. I've had some pretty bad trauma earlier this year and been diagnosed with PTSD. Then beginning of November I'm diagnosed with T1, I have been told by a few diabetes nurses/specialists that trauma may have caused my immune system to go haywire and kill my bete cells.
Has anyone had T1 caused by possible trauma?
Also anyone else terrified to sleep?
Thanks a lot,
Zoe
 
Welcome @T1TraumaZoe 🙂 Is it a fear of hypos making you afraid to sleep? What insulins are you taking? How is your blood sugar?
 
Inka said:
Welcome @T1TraumaZoe 🙂 Is it a fear of hypos making you afraid to sleep? What insulins are you taking? How is your blood sugar?
Click to expand...
Hi,
Yes fear of hypos, i've not had one yet. I had a libre from last Friday but it malfuntioned so I'm back to finger testing till some point next week, the reason I got libre was because of PTSD and fear of being hospitalised.
I'm on novorapid and basaglar.
My bloods are pretty good, nurse said I was one of the quickest new diagnoses she's ever met to get it under control. But sadly that doesn't help fear. With libre, it was easier as alarms were great but now I'm without for a bit I'm stuck with this fear again.
 
Libre is a very recent invention as I’m sure you know, so do try to bear in mind that many, many people with Type 1 managed not only with finger-pricking but with only urine testing over the previous decades. Even having finger-pricking is a positive thing.

When I’m concerned about nighttime hypos, I often set an alarm to wake up and test around 1.30/2am. That way I can be reassured and I can also eat a little bit extra if I need to. It helps me sleep too to know I’ll be checking.

Beware of too strict control early on. It causes unnecessary stress and you’ll probably still be making some of your own insulin too which can be erratic. Also, go to bed on a good number. I was told to be 8 or above. This helps avoid hypos. Is basaglar a once daily basal insulin? You might be better off on a twice daily one because then you can have less at night, which, again reduces the risk of hypos.
 
A hypo is not nice but sometimes the fear of the unknown is worse.
I was given some advice when I was first diagnosed. It is not the right thing for everyone and probably not something a doctor would advise but it helped me:
Put yourself in a very safe situation - at home with someone you trust with you and a heap of fast acting glucose such as cola or dextrose or lucozade. And take a little more fast acting insulin than you have calculated that you need. If you have a half unit pen, take half a unit extra. Otherwise, take a unit extra.
I found, once I had experienced a hypo in a safe environment and recovered quickly, I was less afraid of them.

SA I said at the start, hypos are not nice and this suggestion is not for everyone but it eased my anxiety because I knew what to expect and knew I could recover.
 
T1TraumaZoe said:
Hi,
I am a newly diagnosed T1 29 yr old. I've had some pretty bad trauma earlier this year and been diagnosed with PTSD. Then beginning of November I'm diagnosed with T1, I have been told by a few diabetes nurses/specialists that trauma may have caused my immune system to go haywire and kill my bete cells.
Has anyone had T1 caused by possible trauma?
Also anyone else terrified to sleep?
Thanks a lot,
Zoe
Click to expand...
Hi… sorry you have been suffering so much. I’ve never heard of a connection between trauma and type 1 diabetes, I’ve heard that stress hormones can contribute to type 2 however. I do find this interesting. I myself after some counselling was told I had PTSD. I felt a fraud to admit this was what it could be as I associated this with very serious trauma ,surely that couldn’t be me? I had some therapy for this, as I was constantly replaying one particular event in my head over and over. It helped a little. I did develop diabetes a short while after but I’ve had in and off issues with blood sugar for a many years, maybe this just tipped the balance. I was however told that my extreme exercise at the time of diagnosis may have also been a trigger which I suppose is similarly a stress on the body. One thing I have learnt is sometimes we never fully know what’s happened and why. We are always here for any of your questions and of course any emotional support. It really helps. All the best xx
 
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Sorry to hear about your diagnosis @T1TraumaZoe

Sounds like you’ve made a great start, but it’s a lot to adjust to and get your hear around in the early days and weeks.

I hope you can find a way to be more relaxed (but not too relaxed!) about the risk of hypoglycaemia. The vast majority of hypos are very ‘low level irritation’ affairs, and are quickly resolved with 10-15g of rapid acting carbs, then checking again in 15 minutes to see that your glucose levels have bounced back. You may also be advised to have a small snack (eg 10g of slower-acting carbs) to help reduce the risk of a ‘double dip’.

Good luck, and let us know how you get on 🙂
 
My mum is convinced that her T1 was brought on by the stress/trauma from my dad having a motorbike accident which nearly killed him, when they had been married less than a year. Nothing proven of course, it might just be coincidence, but it’s interesting all the same. I’m equally convinced that my daughter’s was caused by a virus as she was fine before that and then afterwards the sweet smell on her breath never went away and symptoms gradually started appearing and she was diagnosed exactly 7 weeks later. My mum’s was a lot slower to come on but she thinks she knows the reason why.
 
My T1 started a couple of months after my wife's life threatening brain haemorrhage (followed by a second two weeks later). My mum had been T1 for decades, so went round and diagnosed myself using her kit. I have no doubt that autoimmune conditions can be caused by trauma. My ulcerative colitis, another autoimmune condition, started within a few weeks after the diabetes, as if to confirm my opinion.
 
Hi Zoe and welcome to the forum. Sorry to hear about your PTSD and fear, they really can't be helping with the type 1 diagnosis. It sounds as though you are coping with your diabetes very well, but maybe, as others have said, you need to be a bit less controlled about it in order not to let it stress you so much. If you can manage to follow @helli's advice and let yourself have a hypo, in safety with someone else there, you might feel a bit less scared of them once you have experienced one. They are very unlikely to hospitalise you, so long as you treat them, and it would be useful to know how they feel and how to treat one as soon as you can.

I've had diabetes for nearly 11 years and (thanks to another condition which makes it difficult to control the timing of my body's reaction to food and to fast acting insulin) I've had at least one hypo most days for all of those years, and often two or three a day. But I've never been hospitalised with one, and I've only once had one bad enough that I needed help dealing with it - and that was my own fault for not treating it immediately. I also find that on the (very, very rare) occasions that I hypo in the night I nearly always wake up, and on the (even rarer) occasions I hypo without waking up, my liver has enough stored glucose to deal with it without any help and I am fine by morning. I always make sure I eat a couple of biscuits before I go to bed and that my blood sugar is over 8 and level (or 7 and rising) before I go to sleep, and my blood sugar usually stays around 7-9 overnight.

The Libre is really helpful, I hope you get another one soon - being able to scan if you wake in the night is very reassuring.
 
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