My blood sugar used to be a disaster. I'd regularly get hypoglycaemic, complete with hot and cold shivers, dizziness, etc. I saw the doctor a few times, but they ran a simple fasting blood sugar test, declared me to not be diabetic, and sent me on my way.
In recent years, because I basically never eat sugar* I've gotten this under control. But I would still regularly feel impulses which I was interpreting as low blood sugar, where I'd basically feel like my skin was itchy/tingling, and I had a strong craving to have carbs. And this seemed to be getting worse as time went on.
So I went to see the doctor and said "Is there anything I can do about this." - and his first (very sensible) response was "Well, we don't know that this *is* low blood sugar." And we had a brief chat, and he said that the only testing that they can do at the GP is a one-off blood sugar test. Which will tell us almost nothing, because my blood sugar clearly changes significantly during the day.
He suggested those finger-prick sensors. I went one better and picked up a
Lingo - a consumer version of the blood sugar sensors that plug in to your skin which diabetics use to track them and give them warnings when they drop too low. With the aim that I would gather data on my blood sugar and then go back to the doctor and say "See!"
I was somewhat nervous that inserting a needle into my skin for 2 weeks** would be painful, but it was actually fine. I felt a slight bruise about half an hour later, and since then it's only been sore when I knocked it against a door or when catching it putting on my t-shirt.
And then it told me....that I absolutely do not have low blood sugar. It's dropped below the normal range maybe twice in 2 weeks. And then only briefly (and once when I was asleep).
What I *do* have, is blood sugar which spikes for over 4 hours whenever I eat potatoes. Rice isn't so bad - I get smaller spikes, and only for an hour or so. But if I insert a chip in to my face the next 4-6 hours are full of spikes.
And the feeling I get where I'm craving? Turns out to be one of two things:
- Mostly it's when the drop from a spike is very steep - not to an unhealthy level, but a sudden drop from a very high level to the lower part of the normal range is enough to make me want to eat something to stabilise it. Which does seem to work a bit, but that means that I'm eating when I'm not actually hungry, and it's not dangerous, so my new response is to just hold on for 20 minutes and wait for it to stabilise by itself.
- And sometimes it's getting stressed/overwhelmed. Which, it turns out, feels physically exactly the same as having my blood sugar drop quickly. And where the cure is exactly the same - go and distract myself briefly until it passes (or deal with whatever it is that's stressing me out).
All of which has been very useful. Knowing what's going on internally is a relief, and calming, particularly as it's reassuring me that no crisis is occurring. I suspect that having had deeply unpleasant hypoglycaemic attacks in the past, I've trained myself to be overly nervous about other things my blood sugar is telling me. And not being able to tell the difference between the physical sensations of "I am stressed" and "My blood sugar has dropped" definitely has exacerbated that.
Oh, and now that I've stopped using snacking to try and control this, my hunger levels have dropped, presumably because my stomach has shrunk a bit.
Anyway, have a pic of what my blood sugar looks like if I eat protein snacks all day and then have fish and chips for dinner:
* And rarely have simple carbs. Or sweeteners, because eating/drinking things with artificial sweeteners in makes me crave sweet things.
** The cheapest option was two-weeks.![[personal profile]](/%20https://www.npmjs.com/package/ocr-https-www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker
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