What are your hypo symptoms?

[KookyCat]

I had an interesting chat today with a fellow diabolical and was struck that our hypo signals were very different, now I’m curious about what other folk experience.

So for me there’s quite a nice little package of signs:
1. Below 4 but above 3 - unusual warmth, I’m a cold soul so it’s unusual for me to feel warm
2. Below 3 or rapid descent - stomach cramps, quite painful and unpleasant, followed by hypo legs or a complete loss of coordination, and much clearer vision.
3. Below 2 - giddiness, and babble/mixed up words and fainting

My fellow chatter has none of these, he gets a headache and a powerful hunger, so he tends to overcorrect and eat too much. I have only ever felt hungry once, I tend to feel sick and don’t want to eat so over correcting isn’t an issue. I’d always just sort of assumed that the signs were much the same for other people so now I’m intrigued. He was quite surprised that I can tell what level I am by the type of symptom I’m getting. What signs do others get? Are they as structured as mine?

 

[Bexlee]

Interesting idea to ask as everyone seems to be different.

I feel a wave of warmth, go a funny pale colour, feel sick then a cracking headache. Sometimes I just have a headache and think oh best check. I Can get a numb tingly feeling if very low.

 

[Robin]

I definitely have different signs depending on the type of hypo. Sometimes, in the night, I just wake up. I can be lying there in the small hours, and it suddenly dawns on me that I'm awake for a reason, so I test, treat, and quite often then get up to go to the loo, and realise I’ve got that slightly wobbly feeling.
If I get a slow one at home during the day, I start mixing up my words. On a walk, and I start stumbling over my own feet, but if it’s a faster or lower drop, I get green blotches that come and go in front of my eyes. Weird, or what!

 

[Kaylz]

Signs I've experienced
1 - dripping wet chest, I have a small chest and no cleavage so always a sign lol
2 - jelly legs
3 - unable to open a simple coffee canister
4 - unable to focus or see properly
5 - feel awful so ask others what I should do as mind goes blank lol
xx

 

[KARNAK]

Fall over and break bones, so far 4 times this year, honest ask @eggyg.

 

[grovesy]

When I was on Gliclazide, I got a variety of symptoms,
1) feeling anxious despite sitting at home in the armchair,
2) Shakes
3)Tingling arm, visual disturbance with headache
4) numb lips.

 

[Lucy Honeychurch]

Like Robin I get different cues for different times and reasons for hypo:
If asleep, I wake with urgent need for a wee (I think it's my bodies way of alerting me) and stumble my way to bathroom, then test, treat and wait...the longest 15 minutes of my life!

If I'm having a very quick crash I feel very dizzy and blurry vision, also breathless, clumsy, anxious.

Slower descent I suddenly feel very sick, followed by extreme hunger, thirst, shaky, rapid heart rate,

 

[Bruce Stephens]

Fall over and break bones, so far 4 times this year, honest ask

Nasty. I've only done that once, a couple of years ago now. Three metatarsals (though exactly how they broke is anyone's guess). Since using the Libre (and with changes to the insulin regime) I've avoided such severe hypos (at least so far). (Haven't woken up to a paramedic for years, now.)

But sure, hypos vary between individuals. My mum was warned when I was first diagnosed (decades ago now) that I might become violent, so presumably that's one reaction (might be rare, I guess, and just be very memorable).

 

[trophywench]

Violence is quite a common sign, sadly - however my husband says T1 automatically turns every one of us into a liar because if he thinks I look hypo (apparently I get a certain 'set' to my mouth which is never replicated at other times) or an acting a bit ???? so he asks me 'Are you alright?' I always reply 'Yes' and then if he presses the point I am likely to get a bit aggressive sometimes and snarl eg 'I'm fine - stop nagging me!' at which point he gets my meter and starts it off then asks if I'd like him to bodge my finger - no way Pedro - hypo or not! LOL Swine's always flipping right.

Symptoms are usually feeling tingly round my mouth, then realising my co-ordination isn't working very accurately - pesky strips refuse to separate from each other, who was the clever dicky who decided to put the ridiculously tiny strip slot in a ruddy meter that a hypo person is going to use, etc etc.

By then I will be seeing sunspots and treatment is URGENT!

 

[Bexlee]

That’s funny @trophywench we certainly do deny there’s anything wrong when there is.

My work colleagues did a crib sheet of what to look for with me and said I could get grumpy. I responded with how do you know the difference between a hypo grumpy and just normal me?!! They responded with there’s a strange look about you too. When I mentioned it to my hubby he said it’s true ......no it can’t be !

Test strips and meters are a trial at the best of times !

 

[Lucy Honeychurch]

A work colleague says I go pale/grey colour 😱

 

[khskel]

Stumbling over words and if it's below 3 sweating and general clumsiness

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Jane always said she could spot it by my looking pale and waxy

I get hunger... anxiety... trembly feeling... poor coordination...

sometimes tingling lips... flashing/strobe spots in the centre of vision... drowsiness...

and later on I get sweating... talking drivel... inability to concentrate... stubborn argumentativeness... obsessive repetition (or completion) of a task...

All sorts really!

 

[leonS]

15 mins ago BG was 3.1, now 4.6. How did I know? - just a vague feeling telling me that all was not exactly as it should be! No problem getting test strip from container, or inserting it into meter, nor putting test area onto blood drop! All can be difficult even when BG is normal.

I live alone.

Diabetic specialist says I do not need CGM! I am NOT happy with this assessment and am working on it.

 

[eggyg]

Raging hunger, so much so it’s painful, is nearly always my first symptom, then sweating and claminess, blurry eyes then I want to close them and go to sleep. Occasionally I’ve talked a load of gobbledygook, well more than usual, and Mr Eggy gets the meter out! If I’m standing, wobbly legs and dizziness. And denial of course!

 

[KookyCat]

This all really interesting, grumpiness is not one for me, I get a bit giddy kipper (steer clear of me if I have high blood sugar though, vicious doesn’t touch that situation), and I don’t think I’ve ever had the hunger. I have had floaters in the eyes but that’s a fainting cue for me so probably didn’t clock that as hypo related. I tend to lose words, so my brain knows what it wants to say but the mouth can’t get it right.

Ooh fascinating this, did a bit sherlocking about the super vision and apparently it’s Adrenalin, which is also at the root of the rapid heartbeat, feelings of anxiety and hunger. On the hunger front apparently some folk feel it as hunger some as nausea.

On another front I’d struggled with the term “hypo awareness” because that sort of implies the signs are there but you don’t feel them. If I understood the incredibly technical article I read correctly it’s actually the body stops reacting to low blood sugar because it considers it normal, so really is hypo non-reactive which makes more sense. There I was scratching my head wondering how on earth you could not be aware of shaking, stomach cramps, etc. The human body really is utterly fascinating 🙂 and quite terrifying in equal measure.

 

[nonethewiser]

Another who doesn't get the anger or grumpiness, first sign is hunger and clamminess on forehead, when falling fast legs feel heavy like walking in snow.

 

[Sally71]

I'll ask my daughter to reply later, but from my point of view: usually she goes into a slump and starts talking rubbish, or is talking almost normally but it just doesn't sound quite like the way she usually talks somehow (choice of words maybe), or lots of pauses in her speech while she's trying to think of words. Sometimes she gets the shakes or goes pale (and she doesn't have much colour in her face to start with!), if it's a really bad one she'll start complaining that everything has gone pink or she can see shapes like pairs of lungs or peanuts floating round the room! One time at primary school she was having a nasty one that wouldn't come up again and was getting very upset because she couldn't remember what the word "parentheses" meant (I'm amazed she could even think of a word like that with hypo brain, especially as she was only at breakfast club and hadn't even started the day's lessons yet...) . If it's only a slow drop she might not notice until she does a test anyway, for mealtimes or something, and then realises that oh yes she did feel a bit low!

 

[Sprogladite]

For me it depends on how fast my levels are changing. If I'm having a scary nose dive, I feel extremely sick, cold sweat, shakes, numb lips. If it's a "normal" hypo (lol), then I go pale, again shakes, headache, sometimes extreme hunger, jelly legs, breathing sometimes goes a bit funny.

Very occasionally I have one creep up on me where I display no outward signs other than I will just start talking a load of cr*p or doing something very random, not be able to explain myself and then get upset when people don't understand what I'm trying to say/do. Recent examples include telling my father my head was square and then getting extremely agitated when he didn't understand what I meant and told me my head was normal, and transferring all the forks to the fridge and the chocolate biscuits to the bin. Because that's where they needed to go apparently. I don't tend to remember these incidents and only have vague memories of them happening at all but I'm assuming my parents wouldn't make this sort of stuff up! Lol 😳

 

[trophywench]

That reminds me Sprog - I need to clean the cutlery drawer out! LOL

Was it because we were recently talking about 'It's a Square World' that you decided your head was square d'you think?

Also makes me wonder why they teach words like 'parentheses' to kids these days unless being jovial to older kids - I think you could go your whole, usefully employed, etc etc life without ever needing the word!