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And it's the war with my hypoglycemia again. Just tested at 84 only 2 hours after a damn decent lunch including starches and sweet tea. . . around 80 is where most people test after 8 hours fasting! It should be over 100 right now but nope, not when you have hypoglycemia. Everyone talks about how dangerous diabetes is and, don't get me wrong, diabetes can be very, VERY dangerous but everyone seems to forget it's just as dangerous twin, hypoglycemia.
How is hypoglycemia dangerous? Imagine this: You go to sleep feeling just fine but suddenly your blood sugar levels crash in the middle of the night. When your blood sugar gets too low people are very prone to passing out and at the least get very groggy and tired. If you're already sleeping there's a chance you're not gonna wake up if your sugar crashes. If your sugar falls too low you slip into a coma. Now, the coma isn't an end all, if you live with people and they check on you they can get you medical help and, as soon as your blood sugar levels are up again you'll likely be fine. However if you live alone that could be it. With no one to wake you, no one to check on you, unless something somehow wakes you up before you slip too low, then it could all be over because, the longer your blood sugar is dangerously low, the more risk of organ damage.
Scary isn't it? Thankfully most of my bad drops are very sudden and I wake up because of the quick shift in how my body is feeling but not everyone with hypoglycemia is so lucky. What's even worse is that, when sugar starts getting low, your mental ability goes. I woke up this morning feeling really off and my mind was too foggy and dulled to even realize that it was my blood sugar. I didn't have the mind about me to test when I figured it out but, judging by how I was feeling I'm pretty sure I was around the mid 40s, and that was three hours after eating, thankfully something woke me up, I'm not sure what but something did and, if it hadn't and I had stayed sleeping for my normal 6 hours, I don't think I would have been getting back up without medical treatment.
It is scary living with hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemics and diabetics have a lot in common. We have to be constantly aware of what we eat and the sugar content but for different reasons. Those with severe hypoglycemia like I have really should test our blood sugar levels multiple times a day just like a diabetic (Trust me you get use to poking yourself with a lancet after a while) and people with both conditions often find themselves having to explain to others why they can or can't have certain foods. The different with that last one though is that everyone is aware of diabetes, not so much with hypoglycemia.
Normally when I tell people I'm hypoglycemic they go "Oh so you have diabetes?" Ugh, NO! Total opposite! Granted a diabetic person can slip into the hypoglycemic range from time to time, normally if their insulin dose is off or they've gone far too long without any sugars at all but that's a pretty quick fix. Most diabetics I know carry around some hard candy or something with them just in case they have a crash and most of the time that does the trick for them. Not the case with a hypoglycemic person.
For someone with hypoglycemia we are pretty much in a perpetual crash. How bad that crash is varies by how severe their case of hypoglycemia is. It can also vary by day. We find ourselves constantly needing an intake of sugar and, while sugars from fruits and the like are favorable there are some cases, like mine, where it is not enough. The thing with using fruit to keep your sugar up is that the fruit needs someplace to go. What do you do it you're like me who needs so much sugar that I simply cannot fit all the fruit I would need a day in my stomach without puking? That's why I'm known to abuse soda and tea, I have no other choice.
In my case, with how bad my hypoglycemia is I need about 200 grams of sugar a day just to survive. Those 200 grams a day keep my blood sugar levels between 70-80 points, that is still lower than it should be but it's enough to survive. It just means I don't have much energy. A good chunk of those 200 grams a day are slammed down right before bed to make sure I have enough sugar in me to last through the night without slipping into dangerously low levels, granted it doesn't always work but it can help.
I like trying to keep my blood sugar levels around 90-100 but that is so hard to do. I have to take in between 250-300 grams of sugar a day to do that. Now I'm not sure if you are aware of just how massive that number is but let me break it down for you to give you an idea:
Let's go for a middle ground, 275g a day to keep my blood sugar at around 90-100. That equals out to:
6.9 cans (12 oz) of Dr. Pepper -or-
8.9 serving (12 oz) of Gold Peak sweet tea -or-
19 medium bananas -or-
33.5 medium peaches -or-
11.6 cups of peanut butter -or-
94.8 cups of mashed potatoes
I could keep going but I think you get the picture now. And that's on top of all the other stuff my body needs each day. The cola and tea amounts are reasonable and doable for me, the amounts when you look at the foods however, not so much. Yet people still fuss at me about taking in the refined sugars. I don't have a bloody choice if I want to get enough in me! The others may last a little longer in theory (though my experience has been that, no matter what type of sugar I take in there isn't much difference, my body burns through it all the same) the amounts I would have to consume in a single day are not possible. I would be eating every waking moment of my life just to survive!
So instead I use the drinks and mix in some of the fruits and other stuff to try to keep my blood sugar up. That's what I have to do in order to survive. Hypoglycemia can be a nasty little thing like that. Most people don't believe me when I tell them that I'm doing what's best here to control it, they think they know what they're talking about and will insist peanut butter and starches are the best way to control my low blood sugar. I've found one good way to shut them up though, I let them see the results of my blood sugar testing on the monitor. Never get an argument from them afterwards.
Hypoglycemia is just as much of a disease as diabetes. The two are related and both are capable of running in someone's family, sometimes side by side (In my family type 1 diabetes is very common but there's a number of hypoglycemics mixed in as well, we seem to get one or the other.) and both can be just as dangerous. What's a little more dangerous about hypoglycemia, however, isn't the illness itself, it's the ignorance surrounding it. Even among the medical community it is often mistaken for being linked to diabetes. While related they can also be very independent from each other and lumping them together shows a serious lack of information. That is very dangerous, if treated wrong the results can be deadly.
I can't tell you how many times I have had to inform a doctor that hypoglycemia can be a stand alone disease and explain to them how it functions. These are doctors who are supposed to be treating these kinds of diseases and they don't even know about them? I will tell you, I am VERY happy when I come across a doctor who actually does understand stand alone hypoglycemia but there really aren't many of them.
So to wrap all of this up. Today is one of my worse days. I don't know why or what caused it but for some reason my blood sugar is dropping a lot faster today than it normally does. Granted this isn't the first time it's done this, I just have days like this sometimes but it is always tiring when it happens. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go pound down more sugary stuff to combat this so I stop feeling like the walking dead.
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2267 kcal
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Grasa: 55,94g | Prot: 88,72g | Carbh: 348,06g.
Desayuno: Strawberry Parfait Breakfast Smoothie, Organic Original Blend Acai Juice. Almuerzo: Slow cooked Seasoned and Braised Beef Steak in Bourbon Sauce, Churn Style Butter, Mashed Potatoes. Cena: Meat and Seafood packed gumbo. Pasa Bocas / Otros: Dr. Pepper (12 oz Can), Sweetened Iced Tea. más...
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