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Type 2 low bloods
- Thread starter Mr Singh
- Start date
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rebrascora
Well-Known Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
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- She/Her
Which BG meter are you using? Some people have reported the Sinocare ones can give a low reading if you don't get enough blood on them, rather than an error message.
First rule of BG testing is to double check if you get a reading which is unusual or doesn't correspond with how you feel before you do anything about the reading.
Fruit juice and biscuits would be overkill for me treating a real, insulin induced hypo. One or 2 jelly babies is usually more than enough, so do try not to panic if this happens again. Metformin cannot drop you too low, especially if you have not been taking it for the last 2 days. Did you feel wobbly or unwell when you got the low reading?
Low levels like this can happen naturally to non diabetic people, usually in response to extended periods of exercise, sometimes during the depths of sleep and alcohol can cause it. The thing is that the body is able to rebalance these levels itself by the liver releasing glucose, so you won't drop dangerously low and 3.4 is not dangerous in itself. It is just that those of us who use insulin need to preserve our hypo awareness by not allowing our levels to drop this low because our bodies can get used to it and then we don't notice until we do get dangerously low (below 3). Also, whatever insulin we have injected which is causing us to drop too low, can continue to do so because we can't turn it off or take it out again, so it might drop us faster than our liver can counteract. If you don't inject insulin, then your body will just stop producing insulin once you get to these levels, so your liver can bring them back up again.
If this was a genuine reading and you felt ill before taking the reading, then it might be useful to consider what you had been doing in the few hours before you took it... Ie. Have you done extensive exercise, have you been drinking, have you had a high carb meal? The latter can in some cases cause your levels to spike really high and then cause your pancreas to kick in and produces too much insulin too late in response to that high spike and that results in your levels crashing back down again very fast and sometimes a bit too low. This is called Reactive Hypoglycaemia and very occasionally happens when people are newly diagnosed diabetic due perhaps to visceral fat preventing good signaling between the organs that balance your BG levels (liver and pancreas) or it can I believe be a completely separate condition unrelated to diabetes.
Anyway, the lessons to learn from this incident are....
1. Don't panic.... I know, easier said than done.
2. Double check any odd readings before taking action.
3. If it was a genuine low, see if you can figure out what caused it and perhaps try to prevent it happening again.
4. Try not to overtreat a hypo, especially when you are not on medication likely to drop you dangerously low.
First rule of BG testing is to double check if you get a reading which is unusual or doesn't correspond with how you feel before you do anything about the reading.
Fruit juice and biscuits would be overkill for me treating a real, insulin induced hypo. One or 2 jelly babies is usually more than enough, so do try not to panic if this happens again. Metformin cannot drop you too low, especially if you have not been taking it for the last 2 days. Did you feel wobbly or unwell when you got the low reading?
Low levels like this can happen naturally to non diabetic people, usually in response to extended periods of exercise, sometimes during the depths of sleep and alcohol can cause it. The thing is that the body is able to rebalance these levels itself by the liver releasing glucose, so you won't drop dangerously low and 3.4 is not dangerous in itself. It is just that those of us who use insulin need to preserve our hypo awareness by not allowing our levels to drop this low because our bodies can get used to it and then we don't notice until we do get dangerously low (below 3). Also, whatever insulin we have injected which is causing us to drop too low, can continue to do so because we can't turn it off or take it out again, so it might drop us faster than our liver can counteract. If you don't inject insulin, then your body will just stop producing insulin once you get to these levels, so your liver can bring them back up again.
If this was a genuine reading and you felt ill before taking the reading, then it might be useful to consider what you had been doing in the few hours before you took it... Ie. Have you done extensive exercise, have you been drinking, have you had a high carb meal? The latter can in some cases cause your levels to spike really high and then cause your pancreas to kick in and produces too much insulin too late in response to that high spike and that results in your levels crashing back down again very fast and sometimes a bit too low. This is called Reactive Hypoglycaemia and very occasionally happens when people are newly diagnosed diabetic due perhaps to visceral fat preventing good signaling between the organs that balance your BG levels (liver and pancreas) or it can I believe be a completely separate condition unrelated to diabetes.
Anyway, the lessons to learn from this incident are....
1. Don't panic.... I know, easier said than done.
2. Double check any odd readings before taking action.
3. If it was a genuine low, see if you can figure out what caused it and perhaps try to prevent it happening again.
4. Try not to overtreat a hypo, especially when you are not on medication likely to drop you dangerously low.
I have the sinnocare accu 2 , i really have no clue what I am doing, history of diabetes in the family, and especially in our community. Such a mind field and its starting to piss me off. Excuse my language. I just really don't know what to do anymore.
Might be a good idea to double check next time just in case.
For a T2 it shouldn't be a problem.. in fact it might even be desirable..
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