When you have diabetes, either type 1 or type 2, there can be a lot of worry over low blood sugar. It happens when the glucose in your blood is lower than the standard range because you may not have eaten enough, for example, exercised too strenuously or taken too much diabetes medication like insulin to keep your blood sugar in a healthy range. Even stress can have this effect.
Glucose is the primary energy source for your body, so when it drops low, you could feel shaky, dizzy and even nauseous. If it continues without treatment, it can bring on confusion, loss of coordination, slurred speech or worse, like seizures or blacking out. The formal term for the condition is hypoglycemia.
If you’re living with diabetes, you’re likely all too familiar with this.
“It’s an awful thing for a patient to experience,” says Dr. Stewart Harris, a leading research scientist and clinician in diabetes care. “Because they feel terrible. They’re scared, they’re fearful about their dosing of their insulin, about whether they can go to sleep safely. Their spouse is worried about them if they’ve ever had a severe event – which is far more common than most health providers are aware of because patients don’t tell their doctors about it, because they’re worried if they do, it may have consequences. They may lose their driver’s licence. So it is a terrible thing for people to live through.”