Dealing with hypo's

5live

I was watching the match last night and fell asleep. When i woke up i was in the early stages of a hypo(2.6) and had a biscuit before putting the dogs into the shed for the night. I was wondering what people do when their sugars are low and are biscuits the handiest solution?

robinph

If I have a nice chocolaty something lying around then it won't last long once I've got the excuse of an oncoming hypo. I'm sure the nurse will be saying to eat something more sensible though.

BC

Lucozade or Coke works fastest for me.
You also need to have something slow releasing as well like a slice of toast. Otherwise you may just have another hypo again a few minutes later.

graflynn

If I'm out and about I take 3 glucose sweets (either Lucozade or dextrose brand) and I'm not tempted to overtreat my hypo cos they are not delicious.

But if I'm at home I go for about 100ml of lucozade the drink - it's a lot more pleasant and I've just discovered they have it in apple flavour.

5live

Thanks guys. I normally eat a polo or two because i find my blood sugars lower in the morning than if i had a digestive or choc biscuit. But the kids seem to demolish the polos faster than the choc ones(must get the kids DNA tested coz they CANT be mine). The apple flavour locozade might be an option but i try to avoid soft drinks unless really low and nothing else will do. I will keep a bottle in stock though

CathyMoran

I use the sports energy drinks from Tesco for lows as mine tend to be quite bad. Am also female and trying for a baby/may be pregnant and looking after a baby who is almost 6 months old so I need to have my hypos treated in a hurry. The Tesco drinks are also fairly reasonable price wise.

kowloon

I have a bottle of lucozade on standby.
I used to keep a small bag of cola bottles, the sugary ones, for such an occasion, but they kept disappearing. Some people forget that I might need them at any time and are happy to eat them on the grounds that they'll replace them later.

scarymoon1

I used to have lucozade and usually drink too much and my blood sugar goes high. I now tend to have locozade sweets - even though they are horribe I tend only to eat a couple to treat the hypo.

Meauldsegosha

I use the lucozade sweets. Have packets of them everywhere - handbag, car, bedroom, desk in work. Use to keep a bottle of lucozade in work fridge but they kept going missing, even after I put a sticker with "please do not remove needed for medical purposes". Greed f*ckers :rolleyes:

CathyMoran

Another place to have them is your bathroom at home - I have my own mini-fridge in work and a few bottles at my desk, have a few bottles in my son's nappy bag, a few in my bag and there are a few in the car...it seems excessive but we are going for one more baby.

justplainme

I find the small cartons of orange juice (200ml) handiest - they get into blood stream quick & stops you from over treating the hypo's which I used to have a habit off.. nothing worse than feeling you need to keep eating because you panic thinking your bloods won't come up fast enough just an aside - would you class a 2.6 as an early stage of hypo??

5live

justplainme wrote: »

I find the small cartons of orange juice (200ml) handiest - they get into blood stream quick & stops you from over treating the hypo's which I used to have a habit off.. nothing worse than feeling you need to keep eating because you panic thinking your bloods won't come up fast enough just an aside - would you class a 2.6 as an early stage of hypo??

Yeah. I have been lucid with bloods showing 1.9 once or twice. I may have been lucid lower but not for long:rolleyes:. I also have been confused at 3.5 so not sure if my brain messing with me or my meter not accurate below 4. I am farming so in spring between little sleep and constant activity i cruise along at or below 6 and am fairly used to hypos 3 or 4 times a week. Not nice but what do you do

CathyMoran

5live wrote: »

Yeah. I have been lucid with bloods showing 1.9 once or twice. I may have been lucid lower buy not for long:rolleyes:. I also have been confused at 3.5 so not sure if my brain messing with me or my meter not accurate below 4. I am farming so in spring between little sleep and constant activity i cruise along at or below 6 and am fairly used to hypos 3 or 4 times a week. Not nice but what do you do

I have several hypos every day, would still be fairly lucid at 1.4, was able to do a test when my blood sugar was below 1 yesterday. Not to be recommended - after my oesophagectomy my control went out the window, not good

Alanstrainor

CathyMoran wrote: »

I use the sports energy drinks from Tesco for lows as mine tend to be quite bad. Am also female and trying for a baby/may be pregnant and looking after a baby who is almost 6 months old so I need to have my hypos treated in a hurry. The Tesco drinks are also fairly reasonable price wise.

Make sure you check the amount of carbs in those sport drinks. I know lucozade sport actually has a very low amount of carbs meaning you would have to drink almost three times as much of it over a normal original zizzy type lucozade, to have the same affect.

CathyMoran

Alanstrainor wrote: »

Make sure you check the amount of carbs in those sport drinks. I know lucozade sport actually has a very low amount of carbs meaning you would have to drink almost three times as much of it over a normal original zizzy type lucozade, to have the same affect.

Yep, I know, I also know how much to take depending on how bad I am - the Lucosade contains caffeine and I try and avoid that, also it is very easy to over compensate with the Lucosade. Thanks for pointing it out to other people though.

CramCycle

5live wrote: »

Yeah. I have been lucid with bloods showing 1.9 once or twice. I may have been lucid lower but not for long:rolleyes:. I also have been confused at 3.5 so not sure if my brain messing with me or my meter not accurate below 4. I am farming so in spring between little sleep and constant activity i cruise along at or below 6 and am fairly used to hypos 3 or 4 times a week. Not nice but what do you do

I have similar experiences as well, I have felt lucid at 0.8 and 0.9 but been unable to walk at 3.1 sometimes. I can't find references but I am fairly sure of the following:

Many older glucose monitors are not highly accurate (i.e. can vary upto 1mmol/liter from the actual measurement).

Taking the test from either left or right side will give different results (seen a presentation on this recently with data), hence why constant blood glucose monitors are so highly recommended, as with constant fluctuations, even minor, it should give you a better picture of the state your in.

Although you may feel lucid, this is not always true, many clinicians have reports of patient upsets as they swear they are OK even though behavior to an outside observer would not agree with this. I myself have argued blue in the face I was OK when people I know and trust have said i clearly am not, leading me to become agitated, even though when I recover i still believe i was fine, they swear it was obviously not the case.

But thats their point of view, i still think they are wrong :rolleyes:

kowloon

+1 on the inaccuracy of the glucose meters. I compared my meter and my backup, both the same type and on the same batch of strips and the two meters were significantly different. I'd say there's variance between batches of test strips too.